Hacker News Reader

Comment by SilverRed | Hacker News Reader

I had a flick through one of the banned books I have and I was unable to fault anything in it. I had to look up what the problem was and then check back and I felt it was a really big stretch to call it offensive.

View on HN

It makes me wonder: I've seen several people here comment that they didn't think the content was "that offensive" or that it's a "stretch" to call it so. Perhaps the takeaway is not that these things are, therefore, not offensive, but that children exposed to these things internalize them as normal and struggle to acknowledge their offensiveness later in life.

Exactly! Children are very vulnerable to unsound ideas - this thread is full of proof of that fact. Allowing them to be exposed to just any content while they're still developing their own perspective is simply inhumane.

The stuff I found in the books were stereotypes, but they weren't negative stereotypes and they weren't untrue either. One book had a picture of a man in traditional Chinese clothing but the text and context was not mocking or insulting. At what point does simply representing an image of someone from another culture become offensive?

And after all this, if one of the books did contain something truly bad, why not do something like Disney and add a disclaimer or edit the content? The material in question in these books is less than 1% and isn't core to the story or images.

Also on the page: a man with a 10 foot beard, a magician, and a Chinese man. Only one is identified with his race, and is dressed up as a stereotype that was already out of date in 1950. It's also not the only racial stereotype in the book. We'll sidestep for now Seuss's use of racial caricatures during wartime propaganda. Listen, I'm not Chinese, and I can't tell you to be offended, but I can certainly look at it and empathize with the people who do find it offensive.

As for the second question, that's a question for Dr. Seuss Enterprises; they made this decision about the works in their custody.

You may think you are helping by supporting these moves and empathizing with those who are offended, but I truly believe it has the opposite effect. Is it really worth saving some thin skinned people from offense if it pisses off enough people that the entire system becomes destabilized? Because that's exactly what's happening.

Yes, because pissing off racists is a good thing.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com