‘Today, on Dr. Seuss’s Birthday, Dr. Seuss Enterprises celebrates reading and also our mission of supporting all children and families with messages of hope, inspiration, inclusion, and friendship.
We are committed to action.’
Dr. Seuss Enterprises, March 2 2021
Earlier this year, Dr. Seuss Enterprises publicly announced that they would cease the publication and licensing of six titles authored by Dr Seuss (the pen name of Theodor Seuss Geisel) due to them ‘portray[ing] people in ways that are hurtful and wrong’. In their statement, they acknowledged that the books no longer reflected their commitment to ensuring their ‘catalog [sic] represents and supports all communities and families’. The six books, which include 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, contain hurtful, racist stereotypes that reflect the era they were written and published in.
It seems respectful and a reflection of the current zeitgeist on the part of Dr. Seuss’s estate to cease the print production of these books; however, their decision has sparked reactive discourse that centres on issues of book censorship and the problematic nature of ‘cancel culture’. Without nuance, there exists this argument that if something offensive—in this case, racist literature—ceases its production, it will be erased from societal discourse. Once this happens, the potential for the same kind of hurt these books inflicted becomes more likely.
As the philosopher George Santayana’s aphorism originally stated: ‘those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.’ Throughout the history of books, racist content has been challenged on whether it holds cultural value to society anymore, and if it should be printed in its original form. From the redaction and expurgation of texts to the application of strict pedagogical practices in the case of them being taught in secondary schools, it has been demonstrated that there are a multitude of possible responses to handling the issue of racism in historic literature.
The key issue in the case of Dr. Seuss’s six books going out of print is that their target demographic is young children whose critical literacy is limited. One of the most frequently cited arguments for defending censorship derives from the cultural model of childhood innocence in which ‘children are perceived to proceed through a biologically predetermined set of linear cognitive developments, which correlate with chronological age’ (Davies and Robinson), when it should be acknowledged that our current understanding of childhood in the West has only really been somewhat consistent over the last 200 years and largely has its roots in white, middle-class structures.
In her article ‘Censorship and Children’s Literature’, Anne Scott Macleod states:
‘The rise of the middle class [sic], dating, roughly, from the end of the sixteenth century, brought about fundamental changes in attitudes toward family life in general and toward childhood in particular… Increasingly, middle-class people came to regard childhood as a period of preparation for adult life, and, increasingly, preparation became identified with education.’
In the West, our governments and legislation work to cultivate and reflect democratic societies that allow for freedom of speech and an apparently cautious relationship with the concept of censorship. But to practice true democracy, children also need to be taught about the necessity of fundamental human rights for all. In the American Library Association’s (ALA) 2017 list of ‘Top 10 Challenged Books’, two of the ten were deemed controversial and worthy of review in their place on library bookshelves due to their inclusion of transgender child protagonists (H. Leland and E. Bangert).
In 2011, human rights lawyer, David Enright, fought to have Tintin in the Congo (written by Belgian cartoonist, Hergé), removed from bookstores in the UK as it contained racist stereotypes of Congolese people. It was not banned, and it continues to be in print, but its accessibility to children was made limited through its categorisation in bookstores and libraries. Instead of making it readily available to younger audiences by placing it in the children’s section, in many countries it is now classified within ‘Adult Graphic Novels’. The crucial difference between these two cases is that the two texts which feature transgender children in the ALA’s list promote an ethical standard based in the fundamental human right to self-identify versus Hergé’s hateful message that ultimately dehumanises a group who has historically been oppressed and enslaved by white people. There is irrefutably a difference between freedom of speech and hate speech. It is worth questioning why Tintin in the Congo remains in print, as its racist content continues to generate profit.
There are undeniably racist texts that continue to be in publication simply because their ‘cultural value is deemed to outweigh the potential harm’ that they may cause to those who they degrade (Wilkinson). This notion alone is loaded with the question of who deems that content to be of value to society, especially when historically it has been white cultural gatekeepers reinforcing the significance and apparent genius of white authors. In the specific context of children’s publishing, this kind of argument exists on even shakier grounds. Not only does the target demographic have a limited capacity to challenge the political matter being presented, but children are also not guaranteed to always be reading in an environment that encourages reflective and critical thought. The idea of ‘cultural value’ is moot when the audience is young children.
The issue of profit continuing to be made from the printing of children’s books containing offensive content is problematic. In Western capitalist societies, the accumulation of monetary wealth fosters opportunities for individuals, organisations and corporations to affect cultural change, especially in the case of publishing. Under the structure of capitalism, financial success equates to a positive status within society and reinforces the toxic ideal that it is the ultimate victory. Dangerously, the identification of profit with success—in the context of a financially lucrative book—can grant a text immunity from intellectual criticism and moral, ethical and legal consequence. In comparing the different strategies that were employed in the cases of Dr Seuss’s six titles not being printed anymore versus Hergé’s Tintin in the Congo being reconceptualised as an adult graphic novel—no longer immediately available to children but nevertheless, still in print—it seems Dr Seuss’s estate has perhaps been more successful in covering all bases, including the fraught issue of profiting off racist subject matter.
Anne Scott Macleod discusses the paradox inherent in liberal values of intellectual freedom alongside censorship on children’s media in her detailing of the history of radical changes that occurred throughout the 1960s and 1970s in publishing:
‘… by the latter 1960s, the children's book profession found itself confronting two quite contradictory sets of demands. On the one hand, there was enormous pressure to liberalize children's books, to open them and the collections that housed them to every aspect of reality, so that they might better reflect the pluralism of contemporary American society. At the same time, from the other side of a curious equation came an equally strong pressure on writers, publishers, reviewers, and selectors of children's books to rid the literature of racism and sexism.’
Therein lies the assumption that the audience of children’s literature is white—how else will children learn about racism if they are not exposed to media that shows it in all its ugliness? The belief that they will otherwise be ignorant implies that racism is not an inherent part of their lived experience, which it undeniably is for children of colour. We do not want to fall into the trap of having our own opinions echoed back to us , nor do we want to see history repeat itself as a result of the oppression and discrimination being completely erased from society’s psyche. But this attitude doesn’t take into account the triggers that racist literature can have for people of colour. Lessons on racism can still be taught to children through positive messages about not just acceptance or tolerance but celebration of diversity.
Additionally, in 2021, and in the age of the Internet, complete censorship does not even seem attainable. A book going out of print does not equate to censorship. It is still accessible to those who seek it out and many copies are still readily available to anyone purposely seeking them out (especially because of the affordances of technology to make copies and to distribute them on all matter of platforms). As Mark Davis states in his piece ‘Australian Literary Culture and Its Post-Digital Anxieties’:
‘Traditional ‘gatekeepers’ of ideas and culture are being disintermediated as we transition away from hierarchical forms of cultural organization to a system that is in some ways more open, where old approaches are in crisis and under siege … so far as literary culture is concerned, to talk meaningfully about this transition requires the use of two languages: the language of literary criticism and that of digital media studies. It’s no longer possible to talk about literary culture without engaging with digital media theory.’
Online, information can be proliferated to such an extent that it refuses hierarchical structures and, in a sense, flattens the content being made available. Those that may argue that Dr Seuss’s six titles going out of print is an example of censorship need only search one of them online to discover just how easily attainable copies of them are. Ceasing print production is a statement about morals and human kindness, compassion and sensitivity. It is the responsibility of publishers of children’s literature to ensure that discriminatory content and messages are not being perpetuated and profited off. Children’s literature will forever have to navigate the intersections of cultural value, profit, moral instruction and education and whilst there is still much work that needs to be done to diversify and decolonise the industry, there has been progress and we can only keep working to disrupt and dismantle what remains of the colonialist values embedded within children’s publishing.
References
Davies, Cristyn and Kerry Robinson. "Hatching Babies and Stork Deliveries: Risk and Regulation in the Construction of Children's Sexual Knowledge." Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood 1 January 2010: 249-260.
Davis, Mark. "Who needs cultural gatekeepers anyway?" Sydney Review of Books 17 July 2018.
H. Leland, Christine and Sara E. Bangert. "Encouraging Activism Through Art: Preservice Teachers Challenge Censorship." Literacy Research: Theory, Method and Practice 68 (2019): 163.
Helmore, Edward. "It's a moral decision': Dr Seuss books are being 'recalled' not cancelled, expert says." The Guardian (2021). 11 April 2021.
Robinson, Kerry. "In the Name of 'Childhood Innocence': A Discursive Exploration of the Moral Panic Associated with Childhood and Sexuality." Cultural Studies Review 2008: 113-129.
Scott Macleod, Anne. "Censorship and Children's Literature." The Library Quarterly: Information, Community, Policy 53.1 (1983): 28.
Statement from Dr. Seuss Enterprises. 2 March 2021. April 2021. <https://www.seussville.com/statement-from-dr-seuss-enterprises/>.
Wilkinson, Lili. "Dr Seuss's legacy of kindness has only been bolstered by his estate's decision." The Guardian (2021). 10 April 2021.
Ana Jacobsen is an emerging writer and editor based in Naarm. She is currently completing her Master of Publishing and Communications and is interested in art and literary theory, culture, people and feminism.