Theodor Geisel was born in 1904, and as we all are, he was a product of his times. And as most of us do, we learn and change as we grow up and grow older and he did too.
Several people who knew him, given how he changed over the years, say he would have been supportive of the decision.
Some of the images that Dr Seuss Enterprises call “hurtful and wrong” depict caricatures of Asian people. During World War II, Geisel drew many anti-Japanese cartoons that were brutally racist against all Japanese people. He supported rounding up American citizens of Japanese ancestry and imprisoning them for the duration of the war.
One might say, well, it was war. Emotions ran high, and it was important to stoke those angry, vengeful emotions to get Americans to support the war effort. But tellingly, there was no comparable effort against Germans. Americans of German descent were not locked up in camps. Hitler and Nazis were vilified–quite justifiably–but “Germans” were often portrayed as including some who were good people, who were not Nazis, who did not support Hitler, and who might even be working against him.
Consider these cartoons. The first is obviously, recognizably, Hitler. A specific German person. And although hardly necessary, his name makes it clear. The next cartoon does not resemble either General Tojo or Emperor Hirohito. It’s just an exaggerated stereotype, with a sneer, beard stubble, and a pig’s nose.
The third one, well....
In the 1950’s, Geisel visited Hiroshima and saw the horrifying aftermath of the bombing for himself. “Horton Hears a Who,” which he dedicated to "My great friend Mitsugi Nakamura of Kyoto, Japan" was his apology for cartoons like those.
Before the war, he also published cartoons that are undeniably racist portrayals of Africans or African-Americans like this one:
In some of his early Dr Seuss books, the images were similar to those of his prewar and wartime cartoons, although thankfully he did not repeat the kind of language seen on the sign on the wall in that last one.
Still, the images were bad enough. Dr Seuss Enterprises decided that images in six of his lesser known books could be hurtful to children of Asian or African heritage (both in America and around the world) and decided to quit printing them. Most Americans have likely not even heard of them with the possible exception of “If I Ran the Zoo.”
The story of these books and how the publishers decided to let them go out of print is an interesting one in its own right, but there is another question here:
The whole story has been seized upon by Republican politicians, who have been rattling on about it non-stop for days and days (so far – no sign of this ending yet as I write this). The Senate Minority Leader made a big production of reading “The Cat in the Hat” although that book is not one of the ones discontinued. He and other Republican politicians have insisted that Dr Seuss has been “cancelled,” as if all of his books have been hauled off to the landfill or burned in a great bonfire – or would be if Democrats had their way – when of course nothing is further from the truth.
Democrats had nothing to do with the decision of the publisher to discontinue publishing six of Theodor Geisel’s 60 books. As a card-carrying Democrat I can testify that I am completely typical, and I love a great many Dr Seuss books. I read and reread them to my daughter and then to my granddaughter. But none of our favorites were any of the books no longer being published. I have never read any of those six. I had heard the title “If I ran the Zoo” but we never read that one, and the rest I’d never heard of. I assume they really weren’t very good, in addition to being pretty insulting to some, including children, who might read them. No loss. Really.
When we consider the world we want to make and leave for our children and grandchildren, the greatest enemy of doing good is people believing things that simply aren't true. There always have been and always will be people - including ourselves - who are mistaken or misinformed about this or that.
But to do good, part of the work has to be doing whatever we can to discard as much misinformation as we can from our own minds, be open to changing our minds, which means learning something about why that is so difficult and how to do it better.
We can make a real effort to learn what is true, and to share truth and facts and accurate picture of reality whenever we can. With humility, because all of us are mistaken sometimes, probably more often than we realize.
And we need to speak up and speak out whenever we see anyone trying to deliberately mislead us. If it's deliberate, it's going to be to manipulate us in some way, for their own gain, whether it's to impress us or to use us to gain things like money or fame or political power.
So the question about this part of the story is, why did the Republicans decide to make it a political story, lie about it, and make so much noise about it? I leave that to you.
