Making Sense of Seuss: Is Dr. Seuss a victim of so-called “cancel culture”?
Content Warning: racist caricatures
March 2nd, 2021 would have been Dr. Seuss’ 117th birthday. On that day, “Dr. Seuss Enterprises” announced it would stop publishing 6 of his books because of racist caricatures.
Judge for yourself.
“And to Think That I Saw it on Mulberry Street” will also cease publication. Four other books are affected, but no one has ever heard of them: “On Beyond Zebra!,” “Scrambled Eggs Super!,” “The Cat’s Quizzer” and “McElligot’s Pool”.
Predictably, the right-wing is getting worked up about so-called “cancel culture” coming for Dr. Seuss. This is bullshit. No one is going door-to-door and seizing your childhood picture books. But new copies will not be sent into the world to poison children’s minds with racist stereotypes. The “defend Seuss” craze is an example of Republicans using social issues in an attempt to distract their middle and working class supporters from all the ways in which the Republicans are actually acting against their constituents’ interests. No way would Seuss have supported the Trump yahoos clamoring in defense of these works.
Who was Dr. Seuss?
Seuss’ given name was Theodor Geisel. Giesel was kicked off of his college humor magazine at Dartmouth for drinking gin with friends in his room during Prohibition. Giesel began signing his work as Seuss so that he could still work on the magazine.
After college Seuss worked in advertising, gaining prominence with his cartoons for Flit insect repellent. Seuss leaned heavily on racist caricatures in these ads.
Seuss’ success with the Flit ads in the 1920s and ’30s allowed him to begin to write books. In 1937 Seuss published his first childrens’ book, “And to Think That I Saw it on Mulberry Street”. This is one of the books that will cease publication because of its racist caricature of Asian people.
Two years later, Seuss published a book of cringey soft porn. He felt this was his true calling, but the public disagreed.
During WWII (1939–1945) Seuss took a break from writing books to draw political cartoons. In over 400 cartoons, he denounced Hitler and Mussolini, criticized the fascist sympathizer and celebrity aviator Charles Lindburgh, condemned anti-semitism, denounced racism against black Americans, and criticized the anti-communist House Un-American Activities Committee. All this time, Seuss’ cartoons continued to contain racist anti-Asian caricatures.
As seen in this cartoon, Seuss also supported the internment of Japanese-Americans:
Over time, Dr. Seuss became more progressive.
“The Sneetches” was an allegory against racism. “The Butter Battle Book” dealt with the dangers of nuclear weapons. “The Lorax” sounded the alarm about environmental devastation. Yertle the Turtle was a cranky authoritarian and the Grinch was obsessed with consumer culture. During Watergate, Seuss published a version of “Marvin K. Mooney Will You Please Go Now!” where the main character’s name was replaced with “Richard M. Nixon” everywhere it occurred.
Seuss came to realize that some of his illustrations were racist and harmful. Here is how he changed a racist illustration in, “And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street”:
Should we let Seuss off the hook for his racism as being a product of the times?
No. In every era, there are people who have been able to see beyond the hypocrisies and hatreds of their times. During WWII, Seuss feuded with anti-war activist and NAACP co-founder John Haynes Holmes. Seuss wrote in 1942:
In response to the letters defending John Haynes Holmes … sure, I believe in love, brotherhood and a cooing white pigeon on every man’s roof. I even think it’s nice to have pacifists and strawberry festivals … in between wars.
But right now, when the Japs are planting their hatchets in our skulls, it seems like a hell of a time for us to smile and warble: ‘Brothers!’ It is a rather flabby battlecry.
If we want to win, we’ve got to kill Japs, whether it depresses John Haynes Holmes or not. We can get palsy-walsy afterward with those that are left.
And then we have this, also from 1942:
How can we reconcile the complicated case of Dr. Seuss?
Marxism existed as a scientific critique of capitalism and class society since before Seuss was born. Seuss was educated at Dartmouth and had access to these ideas.
Without a grounding in class-conscious scientific socialism, Seuss was swept into nationalist, racist, pro-war hysteria. He bought into the lie that the allies of the American working class were the American capitalists, rather than the working classes of all countries, including the Axis.
Seuss was a great artist, a booster of children’s literacy, and inventor of the term “nerd”. But he is also is a case study on the limitations of being a liberal. If you accept the premise that capitalist class society is the only possible version of the world, you will be led down dark paths of moral corruption and contradiction.
What now? It is the right move to stop publishing the racist Dr. Seuss books. Hate crimes against Asian-Americans have increased dramatically over the past year, in part thanks to Donald Trump’s xenophobic use of the terms, “China virus” and “Wuhan flu”. Our responsibility as a society is to protect people, not racist illustrations.
These books can be displayed in museums as artifacts of the backwardness prevalent in the 1920s through 1940s. We can continue to enjoy the dozens of his works with our children that don’t contain racist trash that would plant stereotypes in a new generation. Right wing yelpers about “cancel culture” can move on to their next empty and ridiculous attempt to distract Americans from fighting for the things that are actually in the interests of the vast majority.
And we can all enjoy the Seussian absurdity of Republican Kevin McCarthy declaring, “I still like Dr. Seuss, so I decided to read Green Eggs and Ham!” and reading the book on twitter — even though that’s not even one of the discontinued books.
