The reckoning with Dr. Seuss' racist imagery has been years in the making
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I had never even thought about any of Dr. Seuss' characters as racist. Of course I didn't see the Confederate statues as racist either, after all, we are all humans. I did love the Lorax book though, and even searched it out and bought a copy after my son was an adult. I had read it to him as a toddler and we loved it.
john
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I finally found some of these and yeah, many people, including him, across the planet were and still are racist. Rather than scapegoating him as if he were some isolated person I think this should make us all look in the mirror. To just blame him misses the mark IMO. Back then it was the Japanese - we were at war with them - and today in the US it's the Muslims and Latin Americans, and now the Chinese for some morons, because you know, on Breitbart they said the virus was made in China on purpose. Heck, Trump was elected partly because of this racism and xenophobia. Tribalism is inherent to the human animal. It is a part of our animal nature. We are just smart stupid animals. But while this tribalism may have had some use then, today we need to become one world.
www.pragmaticmom.com
The Racist Side of Dr. Seuss You Didn't Know About - Pragmatic Mom
Before Dr. Seuss was famous, he drew racist political cartoons during the 1920s through the 1940s. Was Dr. Seuss himself a racist, or did he just draw these cartoon for a paycheck? He was a racist. Geisel himself was vocally anti-Japanese during the war and had no trouble with rounding up an...
www.pragmaticmom.com
Artyczar
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I never read any of the books that they're pulling, so I wasn't exposed to this racist side of him, so I didn't know about it either, but I see it now. My babysitter read Green Eggs and Ham to be almost every night before I went to bed. I loved it. One of my favorite books of his, which I bought as a young adult is, Oh the Places You'll Go, which I think was the last he wrote.
I was a big Bugs Bunny fan and most of those WB cartoons were made during the war, and plenty of them were racist, especially anti-Japanese. Some also depicted black people in a terrible way. I knew they were awful even as a kid and it wasn't funny. People like my parents, who seemed to be racist by some kind of generational default, thought that shit was funny and it would always horrify me. They grew up during the Depression and certain language was acceptable to them, like "negro," etc. It was that time I guess. I'd have to correct them until they got it right. they changed somewhat with the times, but it took a lot. It took bringing friends over and exposing them to differences, challenging their ideas they didn't know they had sometimes.
I am still looking into Dr. Suess to see if he was a purposeful white supremacism who was engaged with groups and whatnot, or if he was just an old timey racist from that generation--not that being old is a qualifier to make racism acceptable by any means. Mark Twain used the N-word in his literature (and some people attempted to change his books), but he did not depict black people in the same way Dr. Suess has. The N-word was used in the context in the time of slavery and he was merely making the dialogue authentic for its time. I did not think his books should be changed, or pulled. This is used in film in the same ways. I see a big difference in this and agree that these images are not appropriate for little kids to be looking at or identifying with (in the case of the Suess books). I don't know if the books should be banned or unattainable, but they at least shouldn't be sold to kids in the bookshops in the children's section.
What do you guys think of this kind of "children's art?" now that it's been brought to light? I must say, I feel a bit shocked with all this today, but see something I never knew before.
I was a big Bugs Bunny fan and most of those WB cartoons were made during the war, and plenty of them were racist, especially anti-Japanese. Some also depicted black people in a terrible way. I knew they were awful even as a kid and it wasn't funny. People like my parents, who seemed to be racist by some kind of generational default, thought that shit was funny and it would always horrify me. They grew up during the Depression and certain language was acceptable to them, like "negro," etc. It was that time I guess. I'd have to correct them until they got it right. they changed somewhat with the times, but it took a lot. It took bringing friends over and exposing them to differences, challenging their ideas they didn't know they had sometimes.
I am still looking into Dr. Suess to see if he was a purposeful white supremacism who was engaged with groups and whatnot, or if he was just an old timey racist from that generation--not that being old is a qualifier to make racism acceptable by any means. Mark Twain used the N-word in his literature (and some people attempted to change his books), but he did not depict black people in the same way Dr. Suess has. The N-word was used in the context in the time of slavery and he was merely making the dialogue authentic for its time. I did not think his books should be changed, or pulled. This is used in film in the same ways. I see a big difference in this and agree that these images are not appropriate for little kids to be looking at or identifying with (in the case of the Suess books). I don't know if the books should be banned or unattainable, but they at least shouldn't be sold to kids in the bookshops in the children's section.
What do you guys think of this kind of "children's art?" now that it's been brought to light? I must say, I feel a bit shocked with all this today, but see something I never knew before.
Artyczar
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In reference to John's comment... I don't want to get into why Trump was elected in light of the subject of racism. That gets political and can bring up contention and party lines. Racism in general as a subject I think is okay to discuss because I think it's healthy to talk about it. We all need to. We all have biases and all need to look in the mirror, as you said.
I do think (personally), all becoming one world is wishful thinking. I don't see that ever happening. Probably ever. There are too many differences and too much water under the bridge, quite honestly. It's a nice idea for all of us to live in peace and harmony, but not everyone will get there. I think all we can hope for is more and more education and movement toward change (as much as possible, anyway). You can't change people all that much or overnight. I think it takes many, many, many generations to come to general understanding, but the past will always be real to certain cultures. That past is part and parcel to our differences--both the good and the bad.
I do think (personally), all becoming one world is wishful thinking. I don't see that ever happening. Probably ever. There are too many differences and too much water under the bridge, quite honestly. It's a nice idea for all of us to live in peace and harmony, but not everyone will get there. I think all we can hope for is more and more education and movement toward change (as much as possible, anyway). You can't change people all that much or overnight. I think it takes many, many, many generations to come to general understanding, but the past will always be real to certain cultures. That past is part and parcel to our differences--both the good and the bad.
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I have had good friends of almost every color. They all bleed red. The county I live in is very diverse in this day. We have many, many Hispanics and several blacks now living here but when I was growing up it was exclusively white. Also the county next to it. There was a story about some blacks who stayed the night in the adjoining county and they were hung from a bridge. Racism in this state and the state of Oklahoma took a long time to clear. We have a black man who lives in my county that every one calls Nigger Earl and that is what he wants to be called, he calls himself that. It just makes no difference to me what color you are, only what you are under the skin. 
Post script: As a kid I played with a little American Indian girl named Slatha RattlingGourd.
Post script: As a kid I played with a little American Indian girl named Slatha RattlingGourd.
Artyczar
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I like your childhood friend's name. I worked with a kid whose last name was Rainbolt. Kinda cool. There's is an artist in LA whose last name is Five Horses.
Anyway, it is interesting to hear stories of people who grew up with little contact with diversity, but are still embracing of everyone. I have found it's not necessarily your parents either. It's maybe just the person you are fundamentally. My brother and I grew up in the same city, same parents, same schools, and we are very different people. I don't know why he turned out the way he was. I've heard him make racial slurs in anger and never understood where it came from. We both had mutual friends of every ethnicity. We were both musicians and you'd think music would bring people together. I think it does in most cases, and I think it did (generally) for him. That could have been my parents influence there. I guess we all make our own choices? (Are these choices?) Hannah too grew up in a tiny little town in MN, all white, before moving to a big city, but didn't turn out like the generations before her.
Anyway, it is interesting to hear stories of people who grew up with little contact with diversity, but are still embracing of everyone. I have found it's not necessarily your parents either. It's maybe just the person you are fundamentally. My brother and I grew up in the same city, same parents, same schools, and we are very different people. I don't know why he turned out the way he was. I've heard him make racial slurs in anger and never understood where it came from. We both had mutual friends of every ethnicity. We were both musicians and you'd think music would bring people together. I think it does in most cases, and I think it did (generally) for him. That could have been my parents influence there. I guess we all make our own choices? (Are these choices?) Hannah too grew up in a tiny little town in MN, all white, before moving to a big city, but didn't turn out like the generations before her.
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I also worked for a while with a girl named Margaret Bushyhead.
Claude J Greengrass
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I must have been about 5 or 6 when an Hispanic family moved into our Detroit neighborhood. It was the talk of the street at the time and I still remember it. I didn't understand why almost everyone was excited about this. We lived near 9 Mile and Ryan. At that time, the early 1950's, 8 Mile Rd. was the dividing line between Black Detroit (south) and the "white" suburbs (north). We used to go to an all white church that was located on 8 Mile and occasionally went out to eat over on Gratiot and 7.
About age 12 we moved to a small white town out side Springfield Ill. Population 517. It was common knowledge that the town had a bylaw on the books; "N****r don't let the sun go down on your head". I remember some black folks started a church meeting in an old gas station on the main highway east of town. One night, some 'good old boys' fire bombed it when it was empty.
So yes, I had a vanilla childhood. University exposed me to many people from most every race and creed. Living and working in Canada, England, Germany, and Singapore and now back in the USA, broadened that experience. Where ever I have lived, I meet people who's company I enjoy and welcome and people that I would rather not associate with, regardless of colour, creed, race, religion, sexual orientation, and/or political beliefs. To this day, I cannot stand to associate with some of my family for more than 1 hour and two of the nicest, kindest people I have met, were 2 gay guys on same floor as our apartment in Vancouver.
Iain
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This seems to me a more expansive article on the subject.
slate.com
How Dr. Seuss Responded to Critics Who Called Out His Racism
The children’s author perpetuated offensive stereotypes even as he argued against them.
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This has nothing to do with Dr. Seuss but is a particularly horrific time in American history that is not well known. It is the town I was born in and my Mother was a little girl when it happened and she remembered the glow in the sky across town that night. A long article but it is eye opening about how cruel humans can be.
Claude J Greengrass
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You could see 'the glow in the sky' of Detroit from Flint in the summer of 67. Yes, people can be cruel.
Artyczar
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I personally never knew about this. My God! I recently watched LA92 and it was cited as the worst riot in American history, but that is simply not true after reading this. I lived through it and I am certain it was nothing like what is described here. This is simply awful and horrifying. And to not even have an accurate death toll is disgusting.
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It has, for the most part, been covered up in history. Something that Tulsa was not proud of.
N
Nufocus
Oh crap..... I remember spending much time with my boys when they were very young with these books. Racist??.... we had lots of fun, never had any sliver of thought in that regard.
P. Barrie
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Sensitivity and reaction to cruelty and racisim has become acute and in the forefront, and yes overdue, and rightfully so. Growing pains of society IMO. However, I don’t think that censoring is a good choice.
If we are going to learn from our past, we must never forget the past atrocities committed by humankind. The bondage in Egypt, The Crusades, the Spanish Inquisitions, Slavery, the six million, Jim Crow laws, genocides, etc., etc., etc. Hope we don’t run out of time to make it right.
If we are going to learn from our past, we must never forget the past atrocities committed by humankind. The bondage in Egypt, The Crusades, the Spanish Inquisitions, Slavery, the six million, Jim Crow laws, genocides, etc., etc., etc. Hope we don’t run out of time to make it right.
musket
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The term "Negro" was in fact par for the course in usage among blacks right up until the end of the civil rights era. It wasn't a slur until the Black Power folks decided it was. At roughly the same time, CORE decided that whites were no longer welcome in their organization, so I guess being VP of my local SCORE chapter when I was seventeen was wasted effort.
Japan may well be the most xenophobic nation in the world, and I say that knowing a good deal about Japan.
When I was studying what is popularly called kung fu in Boston in the early 80s, my best friend from the school was a black kid (only eighteen) named Tracy Banks. We often went into Chinatown to catch kung fu flicks. One time we went into a Chinese restaurant and were served food that wasn't fit for human consumption. Bad enough that the white ghosts had to be served--a white ghost paired up with an even worse black ghost was just too much.
At that school we had white (a fair number of whom were Portuguese), black (including West Indian) and Chinese students, men and women, and somehow we all managed to respect each other in the service of beating the crap out of each other. We were a family--that is the emphasis in Chinese martial arts. You don't respect your elder and younger relatives, and out you go.
My first teacher (different school), who was Toishanese, once invited me and my girlfriend to his home for dinner--a great honor. During the course of the meal, best soy sauce chicken I ever had, he said, "I wouldn't eat in a Szechuan place. You never know what you might be eating." At first we thought he was joking. He wasn't. He was deadly serious.
Last night my sweetie and I watched Standing in the Shadows of Motown, a documentary about the Funk Brothers, the musicians who made it all happen. In one excruciatingly embarrassing moment, Meshell Ndegeocello interrogated Bob Babbitt, who was white and played bass with the band after James Jamerson died (knowing full well that nobody could replace Jamerson), about the fact that Aretha Franklin's back up band was all-white and "from Nashville" (he actually had to clue her in that it was Muscle Shoals). Did he have any feelings about black artists maybe preferring black back up musicians in the aftermath of Martin Luther King's assassination? Babbitt wasn't so much offended as deeply wounded. He could barely speak. He was close to tears, At least she had the decency to say she was sorry. It certainly didn't seem to bother the black members of the band that Babbitt and Joe Messina were white. They all got Equal Opportunity Lousy Treatment when Motown moved to LA without giving them notice.
I'm sorry, I'm no conservative but I'm not going to wring my hands with white American liberal guilt. I don't recall having any racist feelings from reading Dr. Seuss or watching Warner Brothers cartoons, and I will not be labeled a closet racist by anybody without a fight.
Japan may well be the most xenophobic nation in the world, and I say that knowing a good deal about Japan.
When I was studying what is popularly called kung fu in Boston in the early 80s, my best friend from the school was a black kid (only eighteen) named Tracy Banks. We often went into Chinatown to catch kung fu flicks. One time we went into a Chinese restaurant and were served food that wasn't fit for human consumption. Bad enough that the white ghosts had to be served--a white ghost paired up with an even worse black ghost was just too much.
At that school we had white (a fair number of whom were Portuguese), black (including West Indian) and Chinese students, men and women, and somehow we all managed to respect each other in the service of beating the crap out of each other. We were a family--that is the emphasis in Chinese martial arts. You don't respect your elder and younger relatives, and out you go.
My first teacher (different school), who was Toishanese, once invited me and my girlfriend to his home for dinner--a great honor. During the course of the meal, best soy sauce chicken I ever had, he said, "I wouldn't eat in a Szechuan place. You never know what you might be eating." At first we thought he was joking. He wasn't. He was deadly serious.
Last night my sweetie and I watched Standing in the Shadows of Motown, a documentary about the Funk Brothers, the musicians who made it all happen. In one excruciatingly embarrassing moment, Meshell Ndegeocello interrogated Bob Babbitt, who was white and played bass with the band after James Jamerson died (knowing full well that nobody could replace Jamerson), about the fact that Aretha Franklin's back up band was all-white and "from Nashville" (he actually had to clue her in that it was Muscle Shoals). Did he have any feelings about black artists maybe preferring black back up musicians in the aftermath of Martin Luther King's assassination? Babbitt wasn't so much offended as deeply wounded. He could barely speak. He was close to tears, At least she had the decency to say she was sorry. It certainly didn't seem to bother the black members of the band that Babbitt and Joe Messina were white. They all got Equal Opportunity Lousy Treatment when Motown moved to LA without giving them notice.
I'm sorry, I'm no conservative but I'm not going to wring my hands with white American liberal guilt. I don't recall having any racist feelings from reading Dr. Seuss or watching Warner Brothers cartoons, and I will not be labeled a closet racist by anybody without a fight.
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john
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Your baby is a little bit racist, science says
Your baby is a little bit racist, science says
Could babies start showing racist traits before they mumble their first word? That’s the finding of two new studies out of the University of Toronto, published recently in the journal Child Develop…
nypost.com
Racism/tribalism is inherent to the human animal. We instinctively prefer those that look like us, that could be in our tribe.
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