Still, a number of his cartoons are offensive by pretty much any measure. They make use of mockery and stereotypes to get their points across. Political cartoons poke fun at individuals, movements, ideas and events. I would wager that many people found them offensive back then (1920s and onward). There is no question that many of his political cartoons are offensive by today’s standards.

Seuss, it might simply be nostalgia speaking. That is this writer’s bias, fully transparent. Seuss books as a child, too, such as Hop on Pop, And to Think I Saw it on Mulberry Street and One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish. Seuss books I loved as a kid were not even written by him, such as Go Dog Go, A Fish Out of Water and the one above, Summer.īut I did love a lot of genuine Dr. And the cover is designed to look Seussian. However, a study by activists must be scrutinized very carefully, because the authors have a strong bias and most likely an agenda to push.īefore listening to another word, you should know my bias. This is a worthy cause, and I assume it’s a great organization. They run The Conscious Kid, an organization “promoting healthy racial identity development in youth”. Katie Ishizuka and Ramón Stephens refer to themselves as “critical race scholar-activists”. Good and evil in one person? Whoodathunk?Ĭonsider an author’s bias when evaluating what they sayīefore placing too much trust in a study, it is always worth knowing something about the authors and their bias. His Wikipedia page paints a more objective picture, including some pretty nasty political positions, but also some altruistic intents. Read: The Cat is Out of the Bag: Orientalism, AntiBlackness, and White Supremacy in Dr.Seuss books, as well as a look at some of his political cartoons. Much of the discussion has been framed around a 2019 study of 50 Dr. Given that none of the six titles being retired are among those, this is not a case of “limited time only” appeal. Seuss titles shot straight to the top of the best seller list. Seuss.Īn interesting by-product of the announcement is that several Dr. But it got media play and people have weighed in both against and for Dr. Seuss’s legacy, announced that it would no longer publish six of his books, saying that “These books portray people in ways that are hurtful and wrong.” Seuss Enterprises, the organization in charge of Dr. It turns out that all the discussion is because Dr. Sooner or later, everybody gets cancelled, but I could not imagine why anybody would pick on Dr. It was on Twitter that I first saw news that people were cancelling Dr. But does cancel culture amount to book burnings?

Hop on pop cancel culture