6 Dr. Seuss books won’t be published for racist images
Supremacists are threats of ‘domestic terrorism’
BOSTON – Six Dr. Seuss books — including “And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street” and “If I Ran the Zoo” — will stop being published because of racist and insensitive imagery, the business that preserves and protects the author’s legacy said Tuesday.
“These books portray people in ways that are hurtful and wrong,” Dr. Seuss Enterprises told The Associated Press in a statement that coincided with the late author and illustrator’s birthday.
“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,” it said.
The other books affected are “Mcelligot’s Pool,” “On Beyond Zebra!,” “Scrambled Eggs Super!,” and “The Cat’s Quizzer.”
The decision to cease publication and sales of the books was made last year after months of discussion, the company told AP.
“Dr. Seuss Enterprises listened and took feedback from our audiences including teachers, academics and specialists in the field as part of our review process. We then worked with a panel of experts, including educators, to review our catalog of titles,” it said.
Books by Dr. Seuss — who was born Theodor Seuss Geisel in Springfield, Massachusetts, on March 2, 1904 — have been translated into dozens of languages as well as in braille and are sold in more than 100 countries. He died in 1991.
He remains popular, earning an estimated $33 million before taxes in 2020, up from just $9.5 million five years ago, the company said. Forbes listed him No. 2 on its highest-paid dead celebrities of 2020, behind only the late pop star Michael
Jackson.
As adored as Dr. Seuss is by millions around the world for the positive values in many of his works, including environmentalism and tolerance, there has been increasing criticism in recent years over the way Blacks, Asians and others are drawn in some of his most beloved children’s books, as well as in his earlier advertising and propaganda illustrations.
The National Education Association, which founded Read Across America Day in 1998 and deliberately aligned it with Geisel’s birthday, has for several years deemphasized Seuss and encouraged a more diverse reading list for children.
School districts across the country have also moved away from Dr. Seuss, prompting Loudoun County, Virginia, schools just outside Washington, D.C., to douse rumors last month that they were banning the books entirely.
“Research in recent years has revealed strong racial undertones in many books written/illustrated by Dr. Seuss,” the school district said in a statement.
In 2017, a school librarian in Cambridge, Massachusetts, criticized a gift of 10 Seuss books from first lady Melania Trump, saying many of his works were “steeped in racist propaganda, caricatures, and harmful stereotypes.”
In 2018, a Dr. Seuss museum in his hometown of Springfield removed a mural that included an Asian stereotype.
“The Cat in the Hat,” one of Seuss’ most popular books, has received criticism, too, but will continue to be published for now.
Dr. Seuss Enterprises, however, said it is “committed to listening and learning and will continue to review our entire portfolio.”
Numerous other popular children’s series have been criticized in recent years for alleged racism.
In the 2007 book, “Should We Burn Babar?,” the author and educator Herbert R. Kohl contended that the “Babar the Elephant” books were celebrations of colonialism because of how the title character leaves the jungle and later returns to “civilize” his fellow animals.
One of the books, “Babar’s Travels,” was removed from the shelves of a British library in 2012 because of its alleged stereotypes of Africans. Critics also have faulted the “Curious George” books for their premise of a white man bringing home a monkey from Africa.
And Laura Ingalls Wilder’s portrayals of Native Americans in her “Little House On the Prairie” novels have been faulted so often that the American Library Association removed her name in 2018 from a lifetime achievement award it gives out each year.
FBI Director Christopher Wray on Tuesday described an ominous warning the night before the Capitol riots about the prospect for extreme violence as “raw, unverified, uncorroborated information” – but claimed that the bureau’s report was shared extensively with Capitol Police and other authorities.
Wray said the report, which concluded that extremists were “preparing for war,” was provided to authorities at the command level, distributed to its local Joint Terrorism Task network and also posted on a national electronic portal for review by law enforcement authorities across the country.
The FBI director’s testimony before a
Senate panel comes nearly a week after former U.S. Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund told a separate Senate investigating committee that the intelligence never made it to him and others before the attack that left five dead, including Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick.
Sund acknowledged that the bulletin landed at the Capitol police agency’s intelligence unit but said it was never forwarded.
Wray’s testimony comes six months after he offered a now-prescient warning of the threat posed by domestic extremists.
“Trends may shift, but the underlying drivers for domestic violent extremism – such as perceptions of government or law enforcement overreach, sociopolitical conditions, racism, antisemitism, Islamophobia, misogyny, and reactions to legislative actions – remain constant,” Wray said.
The director returned to the Senate Tuesday where he described that the Capitol assault involved some of the very classes of extremists he warned about in September.
In opening Tuesday’s hearing, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Richard Durbin, D-ill., declared that the “federal government has failed to address the growing terrorist menace in
“Trends may shift, but the underlying drivers for domestic violent extremism – such as perceptions of government or law enforcement overreach, sociopolitical conditions, racism, anti-semitism, Islamophobia, misogyny, and reactions to legislative actions – remain constant.”
Christopher Wray FBI director
our own backyard.”
He took sharp aim at the Trump administration, saying that officials “spent four years downplaying the threat posed by white supremacists.”
“It was only after Black Lives Matter activists protested last summer against police misconduct that the (Trump) administration found the need to establish a task force to address anti-government extremists,” Durbin said.
“We need to be abundantly clear that white supremacists and other far-right extremists are the most significant domestic terrorism threat facing the United States today,” Durbin said. “I hope that everyone in this room can look at the facts and acknowledge this, and that we can come together on a bipartisan basis to defeat this threat.”
Domestic right-wing extremists were responsible for almost 70% of terrorist attacks and plots in the U.S. in 2020, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a
Washington-based think tank.
Last week, federal officials said the threat to the Biden administration persists, saying that authorities are “very closely” monitoring the run-up to the president’s address to a joint session of Congress.
The assessment, provided in a domestic terror briefing, followed a separate warning by acting U.S. Capitol Police Chief Yogananda Pittman, who told lawmakers that “militia groups” that took part in the Jan. 6 attack are seeking to “blow up the Capitol,” possibly targeting President Joe Biden’s address.
In the coming weeks, Biden is expected to give his first formal address to Congress – similar to a State of the Union address.
The date of the speech has not yet been scheduled.
“We have been worried that domestic violent extremists would react, not only to the results of an election that they may not see as favorable but the transition of a government that they may question,” a senior federal official said.
Wray’s testimony comes as a separate joint committee of the Senate continues its investigation of the Jan. 6 attack and law enforcement’s failed effort to anticipate it and repel the riots.
Since the Jan. 6 attack, the FBI has been leading a far-reaching criminal investigation that so far has resulted in charges against more than 300 suspects and the arrests of at least 280 others.
Under Wray’s direction, the bureau has been examining tens of thousands of digital images leading to the identification of suspected rioters while appealing for the public’s help to identify suspects who were involved in planting pipe bombs at the headquarters of both the Republican and Democratic national committees.
Investigators believe the live explosives were delivered to the locations between 7:30 and 8:30 p.m. the evening before the attack.
In January, the FBI released images of a unidentified suspect dressed in a gray hoodie and carrying a backpack. Prominently featured in the FBI’S appeal was the suspect’s footwear, described as Nike Air Max Speed Turf shoes in yellow, black and gray.