Was Dr. Seuss racist? Should he be a victim of our cancel culture? – NJ.com

By Joseph Dwyer

Today we are challenged by two forces. On the one hand we seek to embrace our heroes, lauding their impressive accomplishments. On the other end of the spectrum “cancel culture” encourages us to strike down these figures for their transgressions, silencing them for actions that disgust us today.

Often, it is easiest to have this zero sum conversation on social media platforms. After all, to the victor goes the spoils – heaps of favorites, likes, or retweets. This culture has invaded our discourse and encouraged winning over understanding, extinguishing the importance of nuance and complexity. This can be repaired but it takes a commitment to civil discourse that begins in our schools.

There are countless historical figures who have earned public admiration while leaving us with concerns about their choices, conduct, and actions. Thomas Jefferson, as the principal author of the Declaration of Independence, helped to forge a nation and inspired generations to embrace a more inclusive future. Jefferson also owned hundreds of slaves and likely fathered six children with one of them, children he never acknowledged. For all the recent celebration of Alexander Hamilton’s triumphant immigrant success story, he practiced a divisive brand of politics that ultimately exposed his involvement in America’s first political sex scandal. For a contemporary example, look no further than the contentious conversation about Kobe Bryant’s legacy following his tragic death.

While we may have grown more comfortable with evaluating historical figures for the totality of their actions, it has been more recent that this lens has been applied to Theodor Geisel. The famed Dr. Seuss is best known for more than 60 children’s books that he wrote and illustrated. With whimsical rhymes and imaginative figures and worlds, his books have been embraced by millions of children around the world for decades. Despite deeper themes and meanings, Seuss’ work has been primarily embraced by an elementary school audience. In fact, so integral were the Seuss books believed to be to children’s literacy that the Read Across America initiative of the late 1990s begins annually on Geisel’s birthday.

However, Dr. Seuss’ work also incorporated overtly racist depictions of Blacks, Jews and Asians. Arguably, the nadir of such content was the many virulently anti-Japanese cartoons that Seuss turned out as World War II propaganda. A concerned public has taken notice.

USA Today asked in 2017, “Was Dr. Seuss a racist?” The conversation advanced after a February 2019 study published in Research on Diversity in Youth LIterature laid bare the treatment of non-white characters in Seuss’ workers. Within weeks, the BBC considered “The Radical Politics of Dr. Seuss” while NPR explored how the public could continue consuming such knowingly offensive content. A part of their answer came in the formal de-Seussification of “Read Across America.”

In August 2019, the National Education Association terminated their licensing agreement by which the Cat in the Hat appeared on the Read Across America Logo. This was followed by a September 2019 rebranding announcement promoting the new mission of Read Across America that would now span the school year instead of a single week – “Celebrating a Nation of Diverse Readers.”

This laudable, recalibrated goal comes at a time when public education is rightfully working to infuse more diverse literature into classrooms. Despite the official retreat, Seuss remains prominent in the public imagination, especially around the first week of March. A quick google search finds many local events still incorporating Seuss during the traditional “Read Across America” week — from cartooning workshops to birthday parties.

In preparation for the traditional Seuss-centered celebration, the publisher responsible for the iOS Seuss content is discounting a large collection of the books-as-apps. All of this on top of the late January announcement that a Broadway production of If I Ran the Circus is forthcoming. In fact, even the NEA in their aforementioned announcement noted, “children still love Dr. Seuss, and his birthday on March 2, also Read Across America Day is still an ideal time for a school-wide reading event when you can serve green eggs and ham.”

So, at what cost do we shelve Dr. Seuss? Is it best for students, many of whom have grown to associate Read Across America, and maybe reading in general, with Dr. Seuss to see him struck from the narrative without explanation? By doing so we miss an opportunity to prepare students to engage in civil discourse about contentious figures.

At this moment, it is critical to talk with students about how Seuss’ works reflect the best and the worst of the America in which he lived. As developmentally appropriate, students must be encouraged to confront his record and draw their own conclusions about the full measure of Dr. Seuss and his works. This process also needs to be the responsibility of schools. Guided by educators, students need to see the materials in question for themselves and engage in conversations about the material. Only by taking time to vet and discuss the good and the bad of Dr. Seuss can students appreciate nuance and have a complete conversation about what he should mean to us today.

Like Jefferson, Hamilton, and Kobe, Dr. Seuss is too ubiquitous and too much a part of our fabric to be silenced. We can and should make room for authors who allow us to celebrate and embrace our diversity. But the fraught path we traveled to get to a more inclusive moment is paved with content like Dr. Seuss’. He needs to be part of the conversation if we are to understand who we’ve been, who we are, and where we’d like to go.

Joseph Dwyer serves as a K-12 social studies coordinator in Essex County and a part-time lecturer in history at Rutgers University-Newark.

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