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I’m going to be in the minority here, and say Mr. Pritchett’s cartoon is way off the mark. The removal of 8 Dr. Seuss books by the Dr. Seuss Enterprises is not cancel culture, it's about stopping the harmful affects of racial stereotyping in 8 books. Please consider the damaging affects on the children who see and read racially stereotyped images and words in educational books.  As a 3rd generation Japanese American, raised in a white suburban neighborhood in CA, I was frequently targeted by my own grade school classmates of having slant eyes, being yellow, and other racial bullying words.  These kids weren’t born with racial bias; they learned it from their parents, other kids, and children’s books. I’m not saying cancel Dr. Seuss and all his books. If the Dr. Seuss Enterprises would replace racially harmful images and words from those 8 identified books, I’d be totally okay with keeping them published.  What I am saying is let’s stop normalizing the racial bigotry in the books we read to our kids. Let’s remove racially insulting images and words in kids’ media. Otherwise we’re just continuing to propagate racial bias in the next generations.

bananarama · 3 years ago

Long live Dr. Seuss who paved the way for diversity and tolerance in ALL his books. I think most local folks don't buy into this 'cancel culture' nonsense. It's a cancer on our freedom of speech and being able to share great literary works with our keiki and next gen.

KokoKai_Boi · 3 years ago

A friend of mine has a rather complete collection of Dr. Seuss books, including 5 of the 6 that just fell victim to the cancel zealots. So, earlier today I had a chance to see for myself what the fuss is all about... and, I am sorry to admit that through my backward immigrant eyes I fail to see what the problem with those books is. Where they cry racism, I see DIVERSITY. Yes, the way I see it, the author merely tried his best to introduce his little readers to the beautiful diversity of the world's peoples and cultures, the different ways in which they look and dress, what animals they had domesticated, etc. Our diversity is one of our greatest treasures. Being equal does not require being identical. Our differences make us stronger as a species. Don't let the cancel zealots turn humanity into some kind of a Borg hive.

Chiquita · 3 years ago