eBay cancels 6 Dr. Seuss books, keeps 'Mein Kampf'
Comedian Michael Loftus calls on the 'absurd' censorship to stop.
President Biden raised eyebrows earlier this month by erasing Dr. Seuss from "Read Across America Day," the annual celebration of reading – but the Conscious Kid Social Justice Library got the ball rolling on canceling the legendary children's author back in 2017.
That year, Katie Ishizuka penned a 43-page study titled, "Rethinking Dr. Seuss for NEA’s Read Across America Day: Racism Within Dr. Seuss’s Children’s Books & The Case for Centering Diverse Books" in which the content of 50 of Seuss’s most popular books were analyzed.
Ishizuka co-founded the Conscious Kid Social Justice Library, a subscription service which sends its subscribers monthly shipments of titles featuring multicultural characters, and her report was an early indicator that progressives would seek to remove the beloved children's author from widespread circulation.
Ishizuka wrote that Black children may feel uncomfortable going to school on Read Across America Day because of its ties to Dr. Seuss. She explained that because that the famed children’s author had a history of "drawing anti-Black, anti-Japanese political cartoons and advertisements" that most people were unaware of, she wanted to dive into his books and see if they were problematic as well.
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Ishizuka found 98% of characters in Dr. Seuss books are White, while only 45 of 2,240 human characters are non-White. All 45, she claimed, "are depicted in a racist manner."
"Of the 45 characters of color, 2 are ‘African,’ 14 are ‘Asian,’ and 29 are ‘turban-wearing’ characters who are sometimes attributed an ethnicity, but are generally of unknown country or race," Ishizuka wrote, adding that the two African characters are "depicted as monkeys."
Of the 14 "Asian" characters in Seuss books, Ishizuka found "11 ... are wearing stereotypical, conical ‘rice paddy hats’".
"The three (and only) ‘Asian’ characters who are not seen wearing ‘rice paddy hats,’ are carrying an animal in a large cage on top of their heads. There is a white [sic] male child holding a gun, standing on top of the animal cage that is being balanced on top of their heads," she wrote.
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Ishizuka also noted that many of the characters wearing turbans are also "riding exotic animals" and typically wear curled-toe slippers.
"These findings categorically refute the argument that Dr. Seuss’s children’s books themselves are not racist. Beyond centering and upholding whiteness [sic], they present subservient, dehumanizing, exotifying and stereotypical caricatures of people of color," Ishizuka wrote.
Ishizuka declared that "exposing children to books that center whiteness [sic] and depict people of color in racist, dehumanizing, exotifying, subservient and stereotypical caricatures, has the capacity" to make kids think "whiteness [sic] is central and dominant," "people of color are peripheral and subordinate," "people of color are only relevant only as a ‘prop’ to, or ‘exoticized other’ of, the white [sic] narrative" and "people of color are subhuman and have the same status and/or appearance as animals."
She singled out Seuss's most famous book, "The Cat in the Hat," writing that the cat "mimics the role of blackface performers in minstrel shows" because its "purpose is to entertain and perform ‘tricks’ for the white [sic] children."
Ishizuka went on to analyze several other books by Dr. Seuss and concluded that it was "time to reconsider" if the author should be celebrated.
In 2019, Ihsikuza and Ramón Stephens co-authored an article titled, The Cat is Out of the Bag: Orientalism, Anti-Blackness, and White Supremacy in Dr. Seuss's Children's Books."
The follow-up study was published in Research on Diversity in Youth Literature and concluded, "Each time someone dresses up as ‘The Cat in the Hat,’ anti-Black racism and cultural appropriation is reinforced, and the legacy of blackface and minstrelsy lives on."
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Dr. Seuss Enterprises, the company that preserves and protects the author's legacy, announced this month that it would stop the publication of six Seuss books that "portray people in ways that are hurtful and wrong".
The company said copies of "And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street," "If I Ran the Zoo," "McElligot's Pool," "On Beyond Zebra!," "Scrambled Eggs Super!," and "The Cat's Quizzer" will no longer be published as of March 2, which was Seuss' birthday and National Read Across America Day.
Fox News’ Rémy Numa and Audrey Conklin contributed to this report.