And to think that I saw it in And To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street

Yesterday Dr. Seuss Enterprises announced it will no longer publish six Dr. Seuss books, including And To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street and If I Ran The Zoo, because of perceived racist imagery.

Mulberry Street contains an illustration of an Asian man wearing a conical hat and using chopsticks, while If I Ran The Zoo contains an illustration of two barefoot African men in grass skirts. I couldn’t expeditiously locate the subject content in the other titles, though I assume it is similar.

Really?

Everyone’s got a line. I recognize that. I think this is over mine, though that I am a white man invites the righteous hordes to set upon me ridiculing my line, or even declaring that I have no right to a line at all. I recognize that too.

There is an intriguing answer to the question in The Washington Post today. Sonny Bunch opines that when older art hasn’t aged well, pitting well-meaning advocates against defenders of beloved culture, an ideal answer is for the copyright holder to release the work into the public domain.

That enables everyone to make their own calls, though I wonder how readily Dr. Seuss Enterprises might relinquish so juicy an opportunity to virtue-signal.

What do you think? Legitimate and justified removal of offensive material reflective of a less enlightened time? Baby-out-with-the-bathwater overreaction? Or something in between?

You might also like:

Leave a Comment

CAPTCHA


This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

BoWilliams.com