Why Dr Seuss escaped anti-Asian racism for so long

One illustration shows an Asian man with bright yellow skin, slanted eyes, a pigtail and a conical hat, holding chopsticks and a bowl of rice over the words “a Chinese who eats with sticks”. Another depicts three Asian men in wooden sandals carrying a bamboo cage on their heads with a white boy armed with a rifle perched on top, next to the rhyme: “I will hunt in the mountains of Zomba-ma-Tant.” / With helpers who all put their eyes at an angle.

The designs are from “And Thinking I Saw It On Mulberry Street” and “If I Ran the Zoo,” two of Dr. Seuss’ six books announced last week by the company in charge of the works of the author will no longer be published due to their racist images, some of which include stereotypical depictions of Asia.

Although Seuss’ art has been around for decades – “Mulberry Street,” his first children’s book, was published over 80 years ago – widespread criticism of his work is relatively recent. Karen Ishizuka, chief curator of the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles, said Dr Seuss’ books had been able to cope with this racism for so long, in part because of the persistence of anti-racism. Asian in the United States since the 1800s.

“There is no doubt that the long-standing prevalence of Asian racist imagery in widespread anti-Asian sentiment in the United States has added to Dr. Seuss’ delay in responding to racism,” Ishizuka told NBC Asian America . “Generations of Americans have grown up with representations of Asians ranging from the grotesque to the comical. Especially when stamped into Seuss’ rhyming verse, his racist representations, already normalized in American society, are jokingly presented as if they were harmless.

Dr Seuss finally edited the image of “Mulberry Street” in 1978, more than 40 years after it was first published, removing the yellow pigment from Asian male skin as well as pigtail, and changing “Chinese” in “Chinese”. But the character’s slanted eyes remained.

His racism was not limited to children’s books. Dr Seuss, the pseudonym of Theodor Seuss Geisel (died 1991, aged 87), also perpetuated harmful Asian stereotypes in a series of political cartoons. From 1941 to 1943, he published over 400 cartoons for the New York newspaper “PM”, many of which displayed anti-Japanese racism during World War II.

One of his most infamous political cartoons suggested that Japanese Americans were a threat to the United States after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Entitled “Waiting for the Signal Home …”, the cartoon features countless characters with the same tilted eyes and glasses – who are believed to be Japanese Americans – walking along the West Coast and waiting to recuperate. TNT in a store labeled “Honorable 5th Column.” The cartoon was published on February 13, 1942 – just six days before President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, which led to the incarceration of over 110 000 people of Japanese origin.

Some of Dr. Seuss’ other political cartoons around this time use the insult “Jap”, portray the Japanese as animals, and include captions that replace the letter R with the letter L to mock the way the Japanese speak.

Ishizuka is working on the development of a new main exhibit for the museum which she hopes will draw more attention to Dr. Seuss’ political cartoons by showcasing original drawings from the library at the University of California at San Diego – including “Waiting for the Signal From Home …”

“It’s important to draw attention to the racist images in Dr. Seuss cartoons and children’s books because they are almost insidious,” she said. “The harm they cause is harder to identify than when someone calls you a ‘Jap’ to your face. It is more difficult to fight.

Philip Nel, a children’s literature researcher and English professor at Kansas State University, said another reason Dr Seuss’ calculation took so long is that people have excused his racism, especially the propaganda. anti-Japanese that he created during WWII, as a reflection of the times he lived. But Nel, the author of several books, including “Was the Cat in the Hat Black? The hidden racism of children’s literature and the need for various books, ”said this explanation does not hold water.

“The ‘man of his time’ account is not a great argument because making this claim is deeply anhistoric,” said Nel. “Not all people at all times are thinking the same thing. There were a lot of white Americans around this time who didn’t broadcast the rhetoric that he was.

Nel said Dr Seuss Enterprises’ decision to stop publishing the books – which, in addition to “Mulberry Street” and “If I Ran the Zoo,” also include “McElligot’s Pool,” “On Beyond Zebra!”, ” Scrambled Eggs Super! And “The Cat’s Quizzer” – is due to long-standing pressure for book diversity in the United States, as well as recent movements for racial and social justice.

“This is the culmination of decades of working for diverse works and against books that caricature people of color,” Nel said. “The Black Lives Matter movement, I think, has also highlighted the need for diverse books for young readers. People are reminded that one of the places where justice is served is performance – recognizing positive examples and speaking out against negative examples.

Dr Seuss’ image as a children’s literary icon has also delayed recognition of his racism. “It’s a symbol of American childhood,” said Leslie Ito, a mother of two from southern California.

In 2017, Ito’s children, Rockett and Zoe, who were 11 and 10 at the time, created and distributed flyers in their classrooms during Read Across America Day – which was founded by the National Education Association to coincide with Dr Seuss birthday – to educate their peers about the racist work of Dr Seuss.

“Ever since the kids started elementary school, my husband and I decided it was important that we teach them about the dark side of Dr Seuss,” Ito said of his children, who are Chinese and Japanese Americans. . “We did this every year on Read Across America Day, and one year the kids had the idea to create a flyer, without an invitation.”

The children came home that day to tell their parents that they were in trouble and that their flyers had been confiscated, and that evening Ito and her husband received an email from the school. saying the flyers were inappropriate.

In recent years, Read Across America Day has made an effort to distance itself from Dr Seuss.

While Ito has said she understands the reluctance to criticize Dr Seuss, she is proud that her children have contributed to today’s recognition of Seuss’ past.

“When I used to Google ‘Dr. Seuss and racism, “our story would first appear for a few years, but now it’s completely buried under countless stories,” Ito said. “This excites me because it shows that more people than Rockett and Zoe care about this problem.”