Calm down. It is OK to retire some books.

"I'll hunt in the mountains of Zomba-ma-Tant
With helpers who all wear their eyes at a slant."

       "Dr. Seuss" If I ran the Zoo

Penguin Random House, publisher of the Dr. Seuss books, is retiring six books, at the request of the estate of the author.  

Fox went crazy. Cancel culture! Political correctness run amok!

Click: 60 seconds

The author of the Dr. Seuss books, Theodore Seuss Geisel, is a product of his own era. In younger days he drew advertisements and cartoons of African cannibals, images that would not get published today. During World War Two he characterized the Japanese in ways we would call racist. Later he drew cartoons that were themed against prejudice. He changed with his times. His books have a recurring theme of affirmation. It is OK to be you. You belong, he wrote.

His estate is reflecting Geisel's values and evolution by pulling six books out of the catalog. In their statement they said they realized that the books portrayed people and groups in ways that were "hurtful and wrong." They said the intent of the Dr. Seuss books is to provide "all children and families with messages of hope, inspiration, inclusion, and friendship." 

People old enough to be great-grandparents remember The Cat in the Hat from their own childhoods. Generations of people had the books read to them. Children love them. In the video above my father is reading to his granddaughter. It is delightful.

Some Dr. Seuss books have troubling images that could imprint negative stereotypes of other people and cultures. The Geisel estate is handling it gracefully; they are pulling those books.

Geisel cartoon

The outrage-oriented media is furious at that, and their response gets traction for the very reason that it makes sense for the books to stop being published. 

They say they had the books read to them as children, and they read them aloud to their children. They don't see anything troubling. Of course not. That is the point. Young children are impressionable, and stereotypes of "otherness" and weirdness get imprinted at a time of innocence. Children accept as normal what they get from authority sources: Parents, grandparents, teachers, and books.

Geisel himself attempted to teach against prejudice and racism. His books have images and words that perpetuate attitudes that reflect White America observing otherness. That was Geisel and the world he published into in the 1950s. But now with a much more diverse America experiencing the stories, and a mind-set better attuned to the dangers of perpetuating stereotypes, the Geisel estate is moving on. 

There were troubling images of Asians, characterized by eye slits, carrying a satisfied little White boy with a gun:

And this: 

Africans in grass skirts:

Or this man in a turban, said to be right to added to a zoo along with the camel-like beast:

Dr. Seuss books are whimsical, with talking animals and imagined furry animals with fluffy feet--not sharp claws. There is a case to be made that Dr. Seuss critics are humorless. After all, it is all in fun. Children understand silliness. Put the guy in a turban in a zoo? Well, a turban is a little bit unusual in America, as are the Japanese-style traditional shoes on the feet of the Chinese people, or eating rice with chopsticks instead of a fork, or near-naked Africans with strange hair. How silly!

The troubling part is the exaggerated "otherness" in those stereotypes of those people, as if people drawn with slit eyes and unfamiliar clothes are weird, while a satisfied young child in Western clothes holding a gun and being carried by them is the normal course of filling a fantastical zoo.

A 2019 academic study noted the elements of us-them orientation of some of the books. Click: Orientalism, Anti-Blackness, and White Supremacy  

Children’s books provide impressions and messages that can last a lifetime, and shape how children see and understand themselves, their homes, communities, and world. . .. When children’s books center Whiteness, erase people of color and other oppressed groups, or present people of color in stereotypical, dehumanizing, or subordinate ways, they both ingrain and reinforce internalized racism and White supremacy.

Geisel's estate did not want to "center Whiteness." The culture war taking place in America is about that centering. Are Blacks, East Asians, South Asians, people from Latin America part of America--us--or are they the other in America and laughable?  Are immigrants part of the American story, or an invasion that dilutes it? The outrage over withdrawal of six Dr. Seuss books is another iteration of right-populism, which is resisting the slow erosion of Whites at the center of American life as the legitimate and true owners of America. White working-class Americans feel pressured and displaced on multiple fronts—culturally, demographically, religiously,  economically. They are being told that something they took for granted along with American greatness, in this case a Dr. Seuss story they experienced at age four, is maybe not OK. It is another kick in the pants, just like factory competition from China of all places, where people have slit eyes and eat rice with sticks.

Imprinting is subtle and it happens at one's grandparent's kitchen table. The Geisel estate understands that. They aren't fighting about it. The people fighting are the people who don't see anything at all troubling about the images.