Reply to I’m a liberal democrat horrified by the current Dr Seuss drama and normalization of censorship

Forum Index » Political Discussion

Reply to "I’m a liberal democrat horrified by the current Dr Seuss drama and normalization of censorship "

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I came to the US in the mid 80s, from communist China. People in the modern day have no conception of what it's like to experience the western culture for the first time, coming from a nearly perfect state of vacuum. Everything was new, vibrant, and amazing, including sliced bread and bologna.

Now throw on top of this, Dr Seuss books. It's like adding Mentos to a bottle of soda. I remember vividly pulling those books off the shelf at the local public library, which was mind blowing in and of itself. An air-conditioned building where everyone is polite and quiet, filled with books! A children's section, my gawd! What are these books, with cats, funny hats, strange words, what does it all mean?

Of all the books I read during those first few months of being in the US, the only ones I remember is my English text book, and Dr Seuss books. Maybe Dr Seuss books contain racially insensitive content, but to stop printing a volume because it talks about Chinese people using chopsticks? I imagine the 11-year-old me would have giggled at understanding that one reference, a moment of familiarity on and otherwise wild mental ride. [/quote]
That’s wonderful that the books gave you so much joy. Dr. Seuss had a very wide catalogue of other books that will still be published. My personal favorite is the 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins. Also his fine art is available as puzzles from Liberty Puzzle. https://www.libertypuzzles.com/store/products/search?term=Seuss&category_id=&size=#results

Here are some of the images being referenced: https://library.nashville.org/blog/2019/08/tackling-racism-childrens-books-conversations-seussland[/quote]

PP here. Thanks for sharing the article. People like to complain about racism, but then turn around and magnify race to their kids, relying on their own ill-conceived understandings of other cultures and what's important to them. Look at how this parent is leading with her questions to promote thoughts about race and stereotypes to her daughter, who is innocent and not at all interested in going on a guilt trip for thought crimes that she will only have committed because her mom put them there.

What's ironic is her description of the Chinese man image is so inaccurate as to show that she has no understanding of what Chinese people wear and how they eat. Yet she feels like she is in some position of authority to not only critique the book but also to influence her daughter with her own misinformed stereotypes. The image in the Dr. Seuss book is very clearly based loosely on a Qing Dynasty government/soldier uniform, as is indicated by the red hat covered in red tassels, red robe with an insignia in the front, and blue pants. The red "Muji" shoes are wrong because male officials/soldiers in the Qing dynasty wore boots or cloth shoes - which speaks to the artist's incorrect understanding, yet the blog author did not recognize this and saw it as stereotypical of what a Chinese wore. She also used the Japanese name for this shoe style, which is an odd thing to do. Similarly, the robe is just a government-issued robe, is not a Kasaya, which is the Japanese name for "Jiasha", a ceremonial robe wore by Buddhist monks. In terms of eating habits, people during Qing Dynasty only used spoons for cooking and drinking soup, but chopsticks for eating rice, exclusively. The bowl in the image is clearly a rice bowl, and not a soup bowl. They did not use spoons and certainly not forks for eating rice. To suggest that Chinese people commonly used spoons or even fo forks to eat in the Qing Dynasty is laughable.

Yet out of this abundantly displayed ignorance, the author feels like she is in an elevated moral position to pass judgment on the artwork of others, poison the mind of her kids, and to publish her self-righteous thoughts to the world. [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics