In Defense of Dr. Seuss

Over the last few weeks, church librarians across America have become the unwitting curators of untold treasures: vintage Dr. Seussiana. Specifically, six of Theodor Geisel’s ‘25 beloved children’s titles, including his first, And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street. Prices for Mulberry Street and its counterparts have reached thousands of dollars on auction sites as a result of the Geisel estate’s decision to stop printing and selling the books. 

They “portray people in ways that are hurtful and wrong,” Dr. Seuss Enterprises said in a statement, “Ceasing sales of these books is only part of our commitment and our broader plan to ensure Dr. Seuss Enterprises’ catalog represents and supports all communities and families.” In short, the books contain drawings that could offend so horribly that they must never be sold or published again.

Dr. Seuss Enterprises announced the cancellation following a typhoon of social media personalities [taking] aim at the author’s political cartoons, specifically those drawn for the liberal PM newspaper before and during the Second World War. 

The reasoning behind the decision, apart from “hurtful” depictions, remains murky. However, Dr. Seuss Enterprises announced the cancellation following a typhoon of less-than-positive coverage of the Seuss catalog. In the weeks before the ban, social media personalities took aim at the author’s political cartoons, specifically those drawn for the liberal PM newspaper before and during the Second World War. 

One panel features legions of buck-toothed, slant-eyed Japanese-American caricatures marching down the West Coast, holding “TNT” and “waiting for the signal from home.” A sign in the picture christens the army an “Honorable 5th (sic.) Column.” Another depicts a Japanese diplomat with eldritch claw appendages and werewolf-like feet, decrying “American barbarism and inhumanity” during the Doolittle Raid. Many more of Geisel’s war cartoons contain similar tropes aimed at Japanese and Japanese-Americans alike.

Studies and ‘critical’ analyses of the author’s work added fuel to the hungry fire. “BIPOC characters are basically excluded from Dr. Seuss’s books, and his few inclusions of these characters promote racism and white supremacy,” remarked one writer from Teach For Change. A study which found that only 45 of the 2,240 human characters identified in his works surely contributed to the criticism as well. 

Evidently, Dr. Seuss Enterprises, aware of this growing ‘reconsideration’ of the Seuss legacy, decided to preempt greater public outrage at the portrayals of Chinese people, Africans, and other ethnic groups present in books like Mulberry Street. By removing the books from the market and printing press, the estate might have genuinely acted in defense of the author’s declining stock. After all, the Biden administration and National Education Association removed mention of Seuss from Read Across America Day, traditionally celebrated on March 2, the author’s birthday.

The recasting of Dr. Seuss as a racist author whose memory and legacy must now be condemned ignores his crusades against ideologies of racism and bigotry, the very same that his critics claim they fight against.

However, I question not whether Geisel’s estate had the right intentions in their announcement, but whether it should have canceled part of its namesake’s life’s work.

The recasting of Dr. Seuss as a racist author whose memory and legacy must now be condemned ignores his crusades against ideologies of racism and bigotry, the very same that his critics claim they fight against. At the same time Geisel drew regrettable panels accusing Japanese-Americans of “waiting for the signal from home,” he attacked fascism, nationalism, and its apologists when few others dared. In a cartoon referencing the America First Committee—an isolationist political organization led by Charles Lindbergh—Geisel mocks the movement and its cold-blooded apathy towards Hitler’s atrocities. One cartoon features a matryoshka of kangaroos in each other’s pouches. While many public figures hesitated to criticize isolationism, which was only increasing in popularity, the panel declared openly that Nazis, fascists, and communists all slept in the pouch of America First.

He extended his political liberalism to his children’s books. With its evisceration of corporate greed and resource exploitation, The Lorax inculcated environmentalism into generations of American children. The Butter Battle Book excoriated policies of mutually assured destruction and nuclear weapons stockpiling. In fact, Dr. Seuss may have shared many of the views of those who seek to cancel him. Writer Philip Nel has even called him “America’s first anti-Fascist children’s writer.”

Nevertheless, the cancellation of Dr. Seuss should not horrify because it defenestrates a man who happened to hold some ‘correct’ views along with more insensitive attitudes during the Second World War. It should horrify because those who have canceled Geisel seem to have no ability to accept the author’s contrition for his war cartoons.

The Lorax inculcated environmentalism into generations of American children. The Butter Battle Book excoriated policies of mutually assured destruction and nuclear weapons stockpiling…Writer Philip Nel has even called [Seuss] “America’s first anti-Fascist children’s writer.”

His great-nephew, Ted Owens, told The New York Times that the anti-Japanese panels upset the author in his later years. 

“I remember talking to him about it at least once and him saying that things were done a certain way back then,” Owens recalled, “I know later in his life he was not proud of those [cartoons] at all.”

In a 1976 interview with the College, Seuss admitted that he had drawn the cartoons impulsively. 

“When I look at them now they’re hurriedly and embarrassingly badly drawn, and they’re full of many snap judgements that every political cartoonist has to make,” he said.

Evidencing a changed attitude to the Japanese people in his middle age, he even dedicated Horton Hears a Who—the same book where he makes the humanist declaration that “a person is a person no matter how small”—to a Japanese friend.

To cancel him would be to cancel any American creative who has surrendered to the passions of war and done what every group has done when engaging in a life-or-death struggle with another: stereotyped them.

Critics of one cartoon point out a distinction between his representation of an arrogant Adolf Hitler as the German enemy while a crude Japanese distortion—in effect, the entire Japanese race—becomes the adversary in the Pacific. They see this as clear evidence of personal hatred for the Japanese people. Is such a depiction regrettable? Yes. But is it unusual for the time and circumstances or a sure sign of lifelong Asiaphobia? Surely not.

To cancel him would be to cancel any American creative who has surrendered to the passions of war and done what every group has done when engaging in a life-or-death struggle with another: stereotyped them

Less than three decades before the vast majority of Americans decried the Japanese as savage brutes, posters called the Kaiser’s soldiers “huns.” Americans renamed anything of German origin, calling hamburgers “liberty steaks” and dachshunds “liberty pups.” In some cases, German-Americans faced accusations of disloyalty and violence.

A mob in Collinsville, Illinois lynched one immigrant by the name of Robert Prager. Accusing him of believing in socialism and pilfering explosives, the vigilantes stripped him, forced him to walk on glass barefoot while waving American flags, and coerced him into signing an affirmation of loyal citizenship before hanging him.

Prager, like other victims of these loyalty tests, had white skin. In passing, he looked just like the men who kicked, spat on, and killed him for speaking German and seeming ‘disloyal.’ But he experienced the hatred of the mob, the consequence of caricature, anyway. 

I draw the comparison to show that fearful generalization is a feature of wartime. Like the people of Collinsville, Illinois and countless generations past, Geisel fell prey to the hysteria that his government and mass media encouraged.

Only six days after Geisel published his “5th column” cartoon, Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed Executive Order 0966 to relocate and intern Japanese-Americans as “possible protection against espionage and against sabotage.” When the cartoonist trafficked in anti-Japanese generalizations, he only repeated the lies of his President, the very same whom leftist figures like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez claim the mantle of with the “Green New Deal.” Unlike Roosevelt, however, Geisel eventually saw through the mist of hysteria, bringing joy to millions of children. His books were even a favorite in the home of my grandmother, born in the Empire of Japan, a survivor of the Second World War and the military effort Geisel supported with his artistic faculties.

As a country, we should welcome discussions of our past, of the nuances of our literary figures. But how can we have these discussions if the greater part of society, including the institutions that are supposed to stand above popular whim, decides to discard the past once an archaic term or old-fashioned drawing arises that might upset good taste?

Unlike Roosevelt, however, Geisel eventually saw through the mist of hysteria, bringing joy to millions of children. His books were even a favorite in the home of my grandmother, born in the Empire of Japan, a survivor of the Second World War and the military effort Geisel supported with his artistic faculties

Who benefits from the canceling of Dr. Seuss? Surely not the millions of children who have found supernal joy in his illustrations and the millions more who have learned to read through his unique rhyme schemes. It is only those who will sacrifice the joy of young readers and their freedom to choose what they read to an arbitrary ideology of non-offense. These people deserve nothing but our distrust, and indeed, our resistance.