I haven't seen a good summary of what parts of the withdrawn books were considered inappropriate, but my understanding is that the stronger objection has been to political cartoons that Theodor Seuss Geisel created.
I've not seen any assertions (never mind evidence) that the children's books contained "severe racist overtones". To be clear, I'm pushing back on the "severe" adjective. There clearly have been assertions about racist overtones in the children's books, just not "severe" racist overtones -- at least that is my understanding.
Unfortunately I guess it would be inappropriate to actually post the objectionable material for discussion since it has been made clear lately that there is no "use-mention" distinction permitted on these matters.
We are therefore rapidly finding ourselves in a situation where the most easily offended person wields immense power to shutdown speech and commerce by simply asserting that something offends them and there is no recourse to challenge their opinion, it must be accepted without discussion.
I find this situation appalling and rapidly approaching frightening.
> I haven't seen a good summary of what parts of the withdrawn books were considered inappropriate, but my understanding is that the stronger objection has been to political cartoons that Theodor Seuss Geisel created.
Two of the books have traditional racist caricatures of Chinese people, and another one has something that seems like a caricature of an Arabian.
However, the other three are kind of a stretch, IMHO. One has "Eskimo fish" with parka-like manes. Another has a group of people in a boat at the North pole, which are being interpreted as being Inuit, but the text doesn't say so and they just look like people in parkas to me. And the last just has a Japanese person in traditional garb next to the nonsense question "How old do you have to be a Japanese?." I guess the sin is just referencing any non-Western ethnicity in any context, which is kinda nuts.
Am chinese, am not offended by this. I think it's cute in fact. Yes, N=1 but in general there's a valid point here. It is insane how often people are getting offended on behalf of others nowadays.
> Am chinese, am not offended by this. I think it's cute in fact. Yes, N=1 but in general there's a valid point here. It is insane how often people are getting offended on behalf of others nowadays.
Chinese-born or American-born? My guess is that American-born Chinese would be more likely to be offended, because they've been acculturated to the American culture around this kind of offense, and a lot of it is reasoning by analogy to the black experience (e.g. if similar caricatures of blacks are offensive to them due to centuries of pervasive racism, then other groups should be able to claim offense at caricatures of them)
I remember reading something years ago about an Asian-American frat (I think some pledge died during a hazing ritual). Part of the pledge process was to read a bunch of stuff about anti-Asian racism in order to build a shared identity.
I've banned this account for using HN primarily for ideological battle and also for the trollish username. We've asked you many times to stop the former, and you seem to have ignored my question about the latter (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25362566).
I am tempted to find these books, since it is many years since I've seen them, just to figure out what the actual offensive images are. It's irritating to think that my disposable income should be used that way, because otherwise I would not be able to see what is under discussion.
I get what you're trying to say, but would you rather make them sit there and watch everyone else eat? There's a big difference between being easily offended and having a very literal gut reaction.
Setting aside that out of the 25 acquaintances that claimed gluten intolerance, 1 had diagnoses ceiliac, 1 had self diagnosed ceiliac, and 3 had an alternative medicine diagnosis.
So while literal gut reaction is serious and exists, people claiming gluten intolerance are much more likely to be confusing something else.
But no, I don’t expect them to sit there and watch. Most restaurants have some gluten-free items so there is something to eat.
But I would expect there to be some fair rotation where every once in a while we go to a special gluten restaurant, and also the bbq guy’s favorite, etc etc
What happened was the veto power of allowing a single person who thinks they are gluten intolerant to have an undue power in selecting the restaurant.
It seems similar here as it’s really someone’s feeling but the response is not proportional. The response to some people feeling gluten intolerant shouldn’t be to never eat at pizza restaurants. Similar to some people feeling sad from reading a Dr Seuss book shouldn’t result in banning Dr Seuss books from ever being bought or sold.
The argument is “well it’s not that bad to avoid gluten” and that’s true. Skipping gluten isn’t the end of the world. It’s not a major problem. Just like missing out on a few Dr Seuss books doesn’t directly ruin ones life.
But it lessons it a little bit and the act of accommodating all these little changes puts culture in a downward spiral where very small groups limit experiences.
The challenge I have is that there are serious social justice needs that must be fought and worked on to make society better. Systemic racism, bias against the poor, systemic poverty, etc.
These kinds of things are thematically similar to this Dr Seuss stuff, but while Dr Seuss isn’t important, systemic injustice is important.
It’s like how health inspections for restaurants are important, but unrelated to gluten in the restaurant. I can be for restaurant hygiene but against banning gluten.
I was reading my old Dr. Seuss books to my son a few months ago and came across those depictions, so the announcement to stop publishing the book made sense to me. I had been debating about censoring my copy to skip the worst pages.
I'm not sure if we'll ever come back to that book (it's part of an anthology) but if we do it'll be when he's old enough to understand a conversation about why it's not okay. And then we'll skip the pages, because the book is better off without them anyway.
Related: loved the Narnia books when I was a kid. Had a hard time not being put off by "A Horse And His Boy" when I re-read it as an adult (one of my favorites as a kid, BTW).
Perhaps that is why they sloughed off making the films.
We don't, but that's another conversation altogether. We've been trying to avoid screen time because he's only nine months old.
When he does get old enough to watch movies, I can't reasonably expect to keep him from watching or reading things. If he doesn't see them with us, he'll see it at friends' or grandparents' houses, but either way we'll have to talk with him about what he's seeing.
Disney movies are a great example of something a lot of people seem to remember as harmless and fun, but they pretty much all contain at least some problematic and/or scary elements to varying degrees.
>It's depressing to me that some people think that we should keep teaching this stuff to kids.
The concern is not that people want to continue using I ran the Zoo as a educational tool.
The concern is ebay is weighing in to say they know better than parents how to educate their children. OR that eBay is weighing in that they know better than collectors what books are suitable for purchase.
Some people find it presumptuous, patronizing, and concerning that eBay wants to make these decisions for individuals.
Wikipedia wasn't of much use. It was secondary details and not primary details. I personally wasn't able to see the controversial content and able to make up my own mind and without primary material to judge, I can't in good conscience judge the content. To do otherwise is prejudicial.
Moreover, consider the appalling anti-Japanese political cartoons that Dr. Seuss made during WWII. Is there no merit in seeing the flaws of someone we otherwise hold in such high regard? And to understand that maybe something broke in the minds of otherwise nice people when a little incident at Pearl Harbor happened? We're worried about the traumas that words might inflict, but we seem to be discarding the trauma of war and history to do it. These are important discussions we need to have, but people are too scared to have them. It's easier to ban books.
I haven't seen a good summary of what parts of the withdrawn books were considered inappropriate, but my understanding is that the stronger objection has been to political cartoons that Theodor Seuss Geisel created.
I've not seen any assertions (never mind evidence) that the children's books contained "severe racist overtones". To be clear, I'm pushing back on the "severe" adjective. There clearly have been assertions about racist overtones in the children's books, just not "severe" racist overtones -- at least that is my understanding.
Unfortunately I guess it would be inappropriate to actually post the objectionable material for discussion since it has been made clear lately that there is no "use-mention" distinction permitted on these matters.
We are therefore rapidly finding ourselves in a situation where the most easily offended person wields immense power to shutdown speech and commerce by simply asserting that something offends them and there is no recourse to challenge their opinion, it must be accepted without discussion.
I find this situation appalling and rapidly approaching frightening.