GREEN EGGS & PANNED

‘Racist’ Seuss nix

They will not fete him here or there. They will not fete him anywhere.

A Virginia school district refuses to tout Dr. Seuss’s birthday on Read Across America Day on Tuesday — claiming the famed children’s author’s work contains “racial undertones” that are not suitable for “culturally responsive” learning, according to the Daily Wire.

Loudoun County Public Schools ordered its teachers to avoid “connecting Read Across America Day with Dr. Seuss,” after a study said the author’s work is filled with “orientalism, anti-Blackness and White supremacy,” the outlet reported, quoting the announcement it said the district sent out with the directive.

The under-fire district later said on Facebook, “Dr. Seuss books have not been banned in Loudoun County Public Schools” — although it did add, “Research in recent years has revealed strong racial undertones in many books written/illustrated by Dr. Seuss.

“Given this research, and LCPS’ focus on equity and culturally responsive instruction, LCPS provided this guidance to schools during the past couple of years to not connect Read Across America Day exclusively with Dr. Seuss’ birthday,” the school district said.

“We continue to encourage our young readers to read all types of books that are inclusive, diverse and reflective of our student community, not simply celebrate Dr. Seuss.”

Read Across America Day, founded by the National Educational Association in 1998, is celebrated on the March 2 birthday of the late author, whose 60 children’s books have sold more than 600 million copies.

The Grinchy move by the suburban Washington, DC, district, one of the nation’s wealthiest, comes in response to an article in Learning for Justice, the educational arm of the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Daily Wire said.

The article, entitled “It’s Time to Talk About Dr. Seuss,” cited a St. Catherine University study that found that only 2 percent of Seuss’s human characters were people of color and most of them “exhibited behaviors and appearances that align with harmful and stereotypical Orientalist tropes.”

Seuss, whose real name was Theodor Seuss Geisel, was a political cartoonist during World War II. Much of his wartime work promoted racial unity amid the Holocaust, but other cartoons, including crude depictions of interned Japanese-Americans, have been panned as stereotypical and insensitive.