Most Americans grew up on Dr Seuss. But the iconic author has now be deemed rrrrrraaaacist by the Left.
A really super smart study published this month by self-described "critical race scholar-activists" Katie Ishizuka of The Conscious Kid Library and University of California PhD student Ramón Stephens puts a spotlight on allegedly "problematic" and "racist" elements of classic Dr Seuss stories.
The study is titled, "The Cat is Out of the Bag: Orientalism, Anti- Blackness, and White Supremacy in Dr. Seuss's Children's Books."
The two interpreted the late author’s works as “dehumanizing and degrading” to “Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC), and people from other marginalized groups (including Jewish people and Muslims),” largely because non-white characters were illustrated in stereotypical fashions, they argued.
They also claimed the books included “white savior” heroes as well as dehumanized characters of color. The study found Seuss (whose real name was Theodore Seuss Geisel) published “anti-Black and anti-Semitic cartoons” and “sexist depictions of women.”
Seuss, who died in 1991 at the age of 87, also controversially showed support for the internment of Japanese citizens during World War II.
The study addresses that by noting:
Horton Hears a Who! is one of Dr. Seuss’ books widely cited as promoting tolerance. Several Seuss scholars infer that the Whos symbolize the Japanese and that the book is an apology for his anti-Japanese WWII propaganda. Dartmouth professor and Seuss biographer Donald Pease calls Horton Hears A Who! ‘an explicit act of recantation of the caricatures of the Japanese that he had constructed’… However, Seuss never issued an actual, explicit, or direct apology or recantation of his anti-Japanese propaganda or the calls he made to ‘kill Japs!’
The study also found that Seuss’s work on children’s stories was problematic because he did not sufficiently represent people of color. Only 2 percent of Seuss’s characters were people of color, it states, continuing:
White supremacy is seen through the centering of Whiteness and White characters, who comprise 98% (2,195 characters) of all characters. Notably, every character of color is male. Males of color are only presented in subservient, exotified, or dehumanized roles. This also remains true in their relation to White characters. Most startling is the complete invisibility and absence of women and girls of color across Seuss’ entire children’s book collection.
I hate to state the obvious, but if Leftists in academia gets their way that means reading Dr Seuss books to young people could become a thing of the past.
HOLLYWOOD - MARCH 11: Children read from 'The Cat in the Hat' book at a ceremony honoring the late children's book author Dr. Seuss (Theodore Geisel) with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on March 11, 2004 in Hollywood , California. (Photo by Vince Bucci/Getty Images)