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Comment by newacct583 | Hacker News Reader

To be genuinely fair, the six books we're actually talking about are minor works that no one reads to kids anymore. We're not talking about Green Eggs or the Lorax here.

Even absent any controversy about racially insensitive artwork (I mean seriously: there are africans drawn as half-monkeys and a chinese man whose eyes are slanted lines! This is not stuff modern kids should be presented with), these definitely aren't "classics".

But as far as a place to find them for adults who want to read them, that will curate them for posterity: have you tried the library?

View on HN

In the East Asian country where my family came from and many of my family still live, and in the neighboring East Asian countries where I've lived for so many years, drawing their own eyes as "slanted lines!" is commonplace. (gasp! look at me! Can everyone see how much this offends me? Oh, the humanity! I'm having the vapors! can all you fashionable westerners whose opinions are actually the only ones that matter to me see how sensitive I am?) East Asians don't have any problem presenting themselves to their own children this way, nor do they shy away from drawing big, exaggerated noses on westerners. Western cartoonists often caricature western noses likewise, which doesn't seem to trigger these sensitive westerners at all. It's almost as if they're not actually bothered by it--just like their East Asian counterparts. It's almost as if their outrage depends less on actual hurt feelings and more on how much of a payoff they calculate they might earn from Those in Charge Whose Opinions Actually Matter.

It's also common for East Asianers to get plastic surgery to "westernize" their eyes, as generations of Western imperialism has warped their idea of beauty about their own eye shape. They may not be notably offended by such slit eye drawings, but they are still damaging.

That line of thinking is incredibly patronizing and paternalistic. When white people do something because they think it looks good, it’s free choice. When non-white people do something because they think it looks good, it’s the “damaging” consequence of “western imperialism.”

It’s like how white people think they invented colorism, even though the preference for fairer skin in women exists throughout the pre-colonial historical record in India, Africa, and Asia. (As a dark skinned person whose half white daughter came out darker than him, I applaud the trend away from fairer skin as a beauty standard! But white people thinking they invented the beauty standard to begin with is self-centered and paternalistic: https://quillette.com/2019/02/13/the-origins-of-colourism/ We had colorism in India long before white people.)

It doesn’t make sense. Whites can tan or not tan at will to their detriment (melanoma).

Japanese used to have a stigma related to being tanned as it represented manual labor. Not being tanned meant you didn’t work like a peasant. In western society oddly being tanned was associated with having leisure time to tan. All in all ‘not tanning’ was all around better than foot binding as a status marker.

Now, in Japan you see two situations people who want to look untanned and others who want to look ultra tanned (really dark make up).

I’m sure this will make these ultra sensitive types go into a tailspin.

Now in South Asia there is a tendency for middle class women to lighten their skin tone. Is that good, bad? I dunno. That should be up to them. To me it’s no different from other make up or getting hair transplants or nosejobs or other cosmetic surgery. But some people want to jam their preconception on other people’s freedoms.

>When white people do something because they think it looks good, it’s free choice. When non-white people do something because they think it looks good, it’s the “damaging” consequence of “western imperialism.

White people engage in other forms of plastic surgery because various media has told them a certain form is the most beautiful. The difference here is that Western media has clearly spent over a century villianizing certain with Asian traits.

It’s interesting that you mention colorism in India. The British were not the first group of people to rule India. There has been a history of thousands of years of migration from Central Asia to both India and Europe. These people had light skin. They became part of the ruling class of the places they migrated to.

In India that meant dark skinned Dravidian natives were ruled by the light skinned upper classes or castes. As a result of minimal intermarriage, these Central Asian genes are found mostly in “groups of priestly status”, ie, Brahmins. This led to the standard of beauty becoming ingrained.

There’s other factors as well, in that it’s a status symbol for some families to make their women stay at home rather than work. Not having to work in the fields means you don’t get tanned, making such people appear more beautiful by this standard.

Side note, I’d like to apologise to the Indians who believe that they’re the original inhabitants of the country and that “others” (ie, Muslims) are “invaders”. However, notwithstanding your hurt feelings, you still gotta face facts.

Source - A new study squelches a treasured theory about Indians’ origins. The Aryans did not come from India; they conquered it (https://www.economist.com/asia/2018/04/05/a-new-study-squelc...)

> Side note, I’d like to apologise to the Indians who believe that they’re the original inhabitants of the country and that “others” (ie, Muslims) are “invaders”. However, notwithstanding your hurt feelings, you still gotta face facts.

People act like Indians had this authentic indigenous culture before British colonization, overlooking that it’s the synthesis of wave after wave of colonization over millennium. I spoke English, even before coming to America, because of British colonialism. But I’ve got a Hebrew last name because Muslims colonized India before the British and brought it over from the Middle East. The food I grew up eating is a product of those same Muslim invaders, plus ingredients (chili peppers) sourced from Europeans who got them from the Americas. If you removed the layers of colonization from the culture I’m not sure what you’d have left.

The British, of course, are themselves the result of wave after wave of colonization to the British isles. If you peeled away the influences of the Norman colonizers, the Saxons, the Romans, the Vikings, etc., what would be left?

people also look down on plastic surgery influenced by cultural beauty standards

Those eye representations are evident in many kinds of East Asian art, including wood prints and paintings centuries old, before exposure to the West.

Wonder if Classical Japanese art like this[1] will get banned?

Interestingly lots of Manga and Anime go the other way and give people vertical eye shapes (buggs bunny eyes).

[1] https://spokenvision.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Utamaro-...

It's not their use alone that is damaging, it's their use to make them into stereotypical evil characters.

I don’t see Seuss making them into evil characters.

I do see woodcuts using the same eye rendering for demons and other underworld characters, but I hope those don’t get banned by a foreign culture because it thinks it misrepresents its own people.

At this point people are on a veritable ‘witch-hunt’ looking for their witches and waiting for Bradburys Firemen to come burn them.

>I don’t see Seuss making them into evil characters

He was making anti-Japan propaganda, there's no doubt he made them into evil characters.

Proof

http://keyeventsofworldwar2.weebly.com/uploads/1/9/6/4/19640...

Do you have a problem with anti Japan war propaganda?

Much of it is extremely racist?

Isn't that what war propaganda is about? To highlight differences and paint an enemy in the worst possible light as a way to rally against a fanatical enemy who doesn't consider you human.

Though I find issue with how you view dehumanizing the enemy as acceptable as you say they don't consider us human, and I'd argue that such dehumanization always causes more harm then benefit, neither of those points matter here.

If that's how you view war propaganda, clearly nearly a century after the war things influenced by such propaganda should not be exposed to young children.

Evil, maybe not explicitly... but over-emphasizing asian-ness in order to portray them as a one-dimensional "other" is not a culturally sensitive way to handle it. I don't even think there's anything wrong with them being asian, it's the caricature aspect of it where it emphasizes race above all else.

Those woodcuts you are referring to have a much different context. There's a big difference between a white man caracituring based on race and an asian culture using this depiction on their own terms.

I disagree here. I don’t see him putting people in there as one dimensional characters.

And I don’t think things can only be described by people on their own terms. If it were the case then only descendants of imperialists (Japanese in Asia, Britons in India and America, etc) could talk about the aftermath. And only Africans can talk about things Africans and only Mexicans about Mexico, etc. That’s untenable.

> I don’t see him putting people in there as one dimensional characters.

How are you just ignoring his WWII career as a propaganda artist? I linked you one of the tamer examples, but he was creating cartoons depicting both Japanese and Germans as the evil enemy.

we are talking about the book that just got banned for no reason not his other obviously racist work.

Right, obviously we should ignore his clearly racist work when judging whether his other work employs harmful racist stereotypes.

Both the Germans and Japanese were categorically bad enemies we had the absolute right and duty to fight at all costs.

Ignoring whether that's true, this doesn't make the propaganda not racist.

> I disagree here. I don’t see him putting people in there as one dimensional characters.

I respect your difference in opinion. I'm interested in how asian / black people feel about these Dr. Seuss books.

> And only Africans can talk about things Africans and only Mexicans about Mexico, etc. That’s untenable

I really don't think anybody is suggesting that

> I respect your difference in opinion. I'm interested in how asian / black people feel about these Dr. Seuss books.

Which Asian and Black people? Inevitably, it seems like it’s some professor of ethnic studies that are consulted about these questions. (That’s actually exactly what happened here to decide on what Dr. Seuss books were racist.) But think about that for a moment. Do you think the opinions of a random white Columbia University social sciences professor are a fair gauge of “how white people feel” about some issue? Obviously not. Then why would you assume the same is true as to people of color?

As a person of color I am vigorously opposed to this trend of putting professors and activists in charge of speaking for people of color. It’s totally distorting the conversation we are having with the rest of America, and also amongst ourselves. My mom and aunts, immigrants from Muslim countries, fret over their kids being exposed to western moral values (divorce, premarital sex, disrespect for elders, aggressive individualism, etc.) I have never heard them complain about some depiction in some book or movie. Meanwhile, professors and activists are making a huge deal about pictures and depictions in our name. But they are simultaneously working with white social progressives to undermine things that typical people in these communities care a lot more about. It’s perverse.

This is a slippery-slope and it's already played out in other contexts e.g. black-sploitation.

Even "bad guys" can be good characters [0], the most complex/nuanced characters are also complex. Start dictating that <x> characters can't have negative attributes, and you end up with boring, simplistic caricatures of <x> thrown in as tokens, but never managing the highlight (because why would you want boring, restricted characters to be in central roles?).

[0]: Is Gregory House a good character? Is "Dexter"? What about characters from the shield, or breaking bad?

how did Dr Seuss make them stereotypical evil characters in his book ?

And western people often get nose jobs.

Can you support this claim about imperialism (also, "common" is a rather huge exaggeration)? I hear it made all the time in a hand wavy way with no substantive demonstration. Frankly, it sounds rather condescending, as in: East Asians couldn't possibly find the kinds of eye shapes more common among European stock more beautiful unless they were conditioned into believing that in some way! Seems rather dismissive.

Western imperialism is an obvious factor in the East Asian countries this is popular in, such as South Korea and Taiwan. There's no concrete proof this is a result of imperialism, but the differences between the counterparts North Korea and China provide limited evidence it's the cause.

As for common, the estimates I can find show between 1/5th and 1/3rd of South Korean woman receive double eyelid surgery.

> In the East Asian country where my family came from and many of my family still live, and in the neighboring East Asian countries where I've lived for so many years, drawing their own eyes as "slanted lines!" is commonplace.

Yeah, and black people commonly use the N-word among themselves too. That doesn't mean it isn't offensive for me to use it.

What? Now only a kind of person can draw in that style? This is beyond ridiculous.

What if the character is laughing and their eyes are virtually shut? Sorry, Ray, you need to draw the eyes, I can’t. Ok, now I can draw the hair.

How do you feel about blackface? It's not a thing you can do anymore in theater or movies. It's not like no one is allowed to ever wear black paint on their face or anything, it's a matter of portraying a specific kind of person in an offensively stereotypical manner.

https://www.google.com/search?q=robert+downey+jr+blackface

In "Tropic Thunder" (2008) Robert Downey Jr. famously wore blackface. Of course I doubt he could do it today, but is that because it would be genuinely offensive, too controversial or both?

When Robert Downey Jr. did it, the context mattered a lot. It was a commentary race. There was an actual black actor along side him that was basically spelling it all out for the audience.

They were using blackface as a way to talk about race issues rather than the offensive way it has been used in other contexts.

Whether or not that kind of thing would fly today is a different question. I certainly hope that people could look at things holistically and not just have a knee-jerk reaction to something like this. I'm also interested in what black people think about this, because ultimately that's what matters most.

I found it hilarious, but then am I "black enough"? Do I "act white"? I'm not sure I care what people on either side think about it.

Although it is a bit ironic to see so many saviors valiantly offended. The entire SJW thing is more alienating than run of the mill, day to day racism. The gymnastics people pull off are astounding. Next they claim they're doing it on my behalf. Perhaps they'll call me a racist for disagreeing online. Those looking to be offended will always find a way. At a certain point we have to stop indulging them.

Dr. Seuss had some offensive cartoons in his early days, but I don't see that as illustrative of his entire character. I don't recall being offended as a child.

One important point to me is that culture changes. We should accept it without banishing where we came from.

A lot of music is misogynistic and violent, same as old movies, books and so on. Sure, don’t frivolously add to it to cause pain, but don’t ban things that are today anachronistic but when produced were uncontroversial.

Let’s say hypothetically the Great Wall of China was built by prisoners of war, slaves and other spoils of war. Do we then not visit them? Are they denounced?

I think what he's saying is that context matters. Nobody is saying that you need to hire an asian artist to draw the eyes and suddenly that makes it okay.

You have to take into consideration history and changing sentiments when looking at these things.

For example, a white man overly emphasizing asian-ness to an extent that it caricatures them and makes them a one-dimensional "other" is MUCH different than an asian culture portraying themselves this way in a better context.

Same with words like the b-word... a man using this word towards a woman is (usually) incredibly offensive. A woman using this word towards another woman CAN be endearing in the right context, or used to cut her down.

Words and depictions of people are HIGHLY context sensitive!

Hmmm let’s see when blonde jokes are verba non grata. Of maybe ‘fragility’ becomes an unacceptable dog whistle.

Man, this is literally the stereotype playing out here of "American lectures x about why something should be offensive to them"

I'm going to challenge this. Anecdata may be what it is, but I've never seen any popular artwork from any east asian culture that embraces the slanted eye representation. It just doesn't happen. Asian cultures draw asian people as... people.

The kind of ridiculous physical caricature we see in this kind of artwork (slanted eyes and buck teeth on asians, long arms, huge lips and a completely non-representative chimpanzee circle around the mouth on africans, etc...) only makes sense when viewed from outside, in the "look at these strange and alien people" sense. No one drawing themself reaches for tropes like this.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukiyo-e

Among other genres.

Maybe your mental model of people drawing themselves with "slanted eye representation" is more specific in nature?

I haven't seen the other tropes you've mentioned though.

> I haven't seen the other tropes you've mentioned though.

It doesn't strike you as odd that in this whole enormous controversy which has consumed right wing media all week and driven this thousand+ comment thread to the top of HN...

... that no one thought to show you the actual artwork in question, and that you never looked it up for yourself?

Seriously, it's pretty bad. Go look.

> I'm going to challenge this. Anecdata may be what it is, but I've never seen any popular artwork from any east asian culture that embraces the slanted eye representation. It just doesn't happen. Asian cultures draw asian people as... people

My prior comment was in response to this gap.

With regards to the controversy stirred up by right-wing propaganda, Aesop's fable of the bull and the gnat applies for me.

Peace.

Here's some anecdata on East Asian websites:

Chinese: https://www.aliexpress.com/wholesale?catId=0&initiative_id=S...

Korean: https://www.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2007/05/25/2007052...

Japanese: https://www.irasutoya.com/2018/06/blog-post_724.html

Context might matter here. Seuss made lots of propaganda for the us military during wwii, specifically with the intent to dehumanize Japanese people. Which, if you’ll recall, eventually led to an environment where the us government thought it was a good idea to murder hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians in nuclear holocaust. So when he was drawing these slant eyes, he was drawing on that experience and mindset. I don’t believe it was as innocent as you imply.

One source among many: https://www.history.com/news/when-dr-seuss-went-to-war

Yeah they also dehumanized nazis (and Germans in general too, or did you forget?)

It’s not like they were known for being chivalrous (Bataan).

Im not sure what the relevance is here? Trying to deflect with a whataboutism argument doesn’t undermine the position I espoused.

It kind of does undermine your position. It shows that you don't really care about the process of dehumanization for purposes of encouraging warlike action, but rather the inherent offensiveness of specific types of images.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_America...

There's a distinction here between demonizing the enemy you're fighting against and demonizing the citizens of your own country for having a particular national origin. The cartoon here implies that Japanese-Americans (depicted the same way as the Japanese emperor in other cartoons) are traitors. And Dr. Seuss was German-American himself and did not try to imply through his cartoons that German-Americans or Italian-Americans are traitors.

There were German internments[1] (true not to the same degree and extent) and while Seuss may not have contributed to anti-German propaganda himself (imagine the converse situation of a person of Japanese descent volunteering anti-Japanese caricatures), I assure you we had very good anti-German propaganda as well[2].

As it regards “murder”. I think people get overly excited about nuclear bombs. We Capet bombed Germany and Japan. Japan carpet bombed China. Germany sent over their V1 & V2s. Many more of your ‘civilians’ died in the carpet bombing campaigns. You also forget that in Japan the Emperor was a cult-like hero. The majority would have walked over a cliff for him. It wasn’t a bunch of innocents we were fighting in either theater.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_German_America...

[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-German_sentiment

The program that led to a very small percentage of German nationals in the US and an even smaller percentage of German Americans in the internment camps was for German nationals that were considered to be pro-Axis. They did not mass intern German nationals, let alone German Americans. German Americans that ended up in these camps generally went voluntarily to avoid family separation. There were a lot of Nazi sympathizers in the US at the time and it's not surprising that a small percentage of German nationals may have been supportive of the Nazis in ways that were considered problematic.

Japanese internment isn't considered problematic because it led to Japanese nationals that were supporting the Japanese war efforts being interned. It's problematic because it was indiscriminate and race-based - nearly all Japanese Americans in the continental US ended in internment camps. There's no comparison here - Japanese Americans were treated substantially worse than even German nationals, actual citizens of the country the US was at war with.

> You also forget that in Japan the Emperor was a cult-like hero. The majority would have walked over a cliff for him.

I'm struggling to find a charitable interpretation for this. Could you elaborate? Are you saying that it's okay to consider Americans of national origin X traitors if the US is at war with X and the country X happens to be led by a cult-like hero?

Also, what is "your 'civilians'" supposed to mean?

>It's almost as if their outrage depends less on actual hurt feelings and more on how much of a payoff they calculate they might earn from Those in Charge Whose Opinions Actually Matter

I wonder if _some_ may feel guilt for their own past actions or a historical burden unfairly hefted upon them. Instead of approaching that, it _may_ be easier to externalize and blame others. This _could_ explain the rampant accusations of racism. It is easy to see how this could become a self-perpetuating feedback loop.

Do you think they won’t be pulled from libraries?

I’m looking forward to Banned Book Week this year. It’s always interesting to see what small percentage of people are serious about their principles.

Cite for anyone anywhere asking that these books be removed from libraries?

this wasn't very hard https://www.wavy.com/news/local-news/local-libraries-begin-r...

https://www.ctvnews.ca/entertainment/canadian-libraries-reas...

https://www.indystar.com/story/news/local/2021/03/02/indiana...

https://www.newsday.com/long-island/dr-seuss-books-publicati...

Noone asked them to remove them. The library decided on their own after the publisher decided to remove them. From it's catalog.

So, the librarians in these cases are so averse to controversial material that they remove it without even being asked?

I don't see what the problem is here? If I open a book store I'm sure as hell not going to sell Mien Kampf or white supremacist manifestos. Am I being unreasonable by standing by my values and not stocking these books? I don't think they should be banned but I also don't think I should be required to sell them.

I'm sure there are plenty of Christian book stores / libraries out there who are unwilling to stock The God Delusion. And why would a LGBTQ bookstore sell LGBTQ hate propaganda?

I guess this could be taken to an extreme. Maybe a library in a highly conservative town chooses to not stock anything that has a hint of left-wing ideology, and maybe they have internet filters to block any left-wing web sites, and they only put front-and-center highly right-wing books.

I don't know, it's complicated.

Why would a christian bakery sell gay wedding cakes?

The truth is, there is already plenty interference is private business, but it (seems) to not be evenly applied. If I request a library stock (or borrow) a book that I'd like to read, I don't consider political aesthetics to be a valid reason to refuse.

> I'm sure there are plenty of Christian book stores / libraries out there who are unwilling to stock The God Delusion

Do you mean a normal bookstore owned by Christians, or a specialist bookstore that only stocks christian literature? If the store could refuse any non-christian material (e.g. a cookbook) as well as Dawkins books, I'm not sure if that's censorship - a greengrocer can also refuse to stock The God Delusion on similarly reasonable grounds.

> Why would a christian bakery sell gay wedding cakes?

I think we've decided as a society that sexual orientation is a protected group. You cannot discriminate based on sexual orientation. But I think you can still discriminate based on views of what is racist and what is not? If a white guy walks into black-owned barber shop and throws around racial slurs at the barbers, can the owners of that barber shop refuse him service and kick him out? I certainly hope so... but am I being hypocritical?

Honestly I'm out of my depth here. I have opinions but I don't think my opinions are necessarily as informed as I want them to be.

> If a white guy walks into black-owned barber shop..

What kind of example is this? Does it matter what the respective races are? How is this equivalent to the wedding-cake example?

As for "sexual orientation is a protected group"; religion is also protected.

This specific thread is about public libraries. I definitely don’t want public librarians to see their job as an avenue for expressing their views.

But for the rest of it, I get what you’re saying. I definitely want to live in a world where there are Christian booksellers selling their curated collections, and left wing revolutionary bookstores selling theirs. That only adds to diversity of expression. On the other hand, if I started to see large numbers of previously neutral purveyors of books saying they wouldn’t carry anything that offends the church I’d criticize that. I don’t want to live under a new puritanism, even if everybody forwarding it is entirely within their rights to do so.

> I definitely don’t want public librarians to see their job as an avenue for expressing their views.

Doesn't the fact that there are more books in existence than any library can possibly stock forces them to pick and choose what gets onto shelves? That filter process cannot be divorced from people's values and baises unless we went with some sort of random selection of all texts that have ever existed, which would result in complete nonsense. We pick winners and losers all the time and not everybody is going to agree with those choices.

I guess I don't see it as unreasonable for a library to not want to stock what they view as racially insensitive books, especially kids books. But of course, people are going to disagree with exactly what that means. Maybe somebody out there truly thinks Green Eggs & Ham shouldn't be stocked because it glorifies exploiting animals for their meat and eggs. There's just no pleasing everybody I guess

>> “ Maybe somebody out there truly thinks Green Eggs & Ham shouldn't be stocked because it glorifies exploiting animals for their meat and eggs.”

Maybe we’ll get there. In my lifetime censors have been mostly concerned with childrens’ books with supernatural themes and more recently lgbt stories. I’d guess that’s still where most of the library “book banning” is focused.

The news is full of articles about which libraries might be doing what with these books.

If you were a Librarian and the Washington Post called to ask you whether you were going to keep circulating the books that everybody-even-the-publisher has acknowledged are racist, don’t you think you might interpret that as pressure to pull them? How about if Karen comes in and holds one of them in front of your face from the shelf and starts loudly demanding that racism not be allowed in your community any longer. Do you honestly think that won’t/hasn’t happened?

https://news.yahoo.com/connecticut-librarians-praise-decisio...

>We're not talking about Green Eggs or the Lorax here.

Yet.

And it's tiresome and boring to hear people pretend that any reasonable line will be drawn. History is full of racially "insensitive" things. What, are we going to make sure "modern kids" don't see that stuff too? What a nullified and pretentious existence.

>have you tried the library?

I have, and it turns out that the same people who think banning books is fine also run the library. Oh the irony!

Honest question if "eyes with slanted lines" is racist. How should my 5 years old draw a Chinese face instead.

>this is not stuff modern kids should be presented with

Isn't that also true of violence in games and movies?

Or any morally repugnant behaviour, now that we mention it?

In fact, why let them read anything except the Bible?

The bible is full of rape, incest and murder. It's not family friendly.

> Even absent any controversy about racially insensitive artwork (I mean seriously: there are africans drawn as half-monkeys and a chinese man whose eyes are slanted lines! This is not stuff modern kids should be presented with), these definitely aren't "classics".

We all grew up with those bugs bunny cartoons with the same depictions, some even going so far as to depict them as cannibals, and I can't say either of those made our generation really think that of either of those ethnic groups. I think it was a realistic trope that 90s kids usually watched cartoons in groups after school with every ethnic group, that Sunny Delight commercial comes to mind [0], as does Dave Chapelle's joke about purple drink.

People need to realize that the World is messy, and racism and prejudice exits in all walks of life: none greater than in social class, which transcends ethnicity. And the sooner children realize that the sooner they will be able to acknowledge it and develop a sense of agency in the World to deal with an imperfect World.

Instead, all this re-enforces is a helicopter parents 'Karen' antics on to their children in which complaining to no end is the only way to get one's point of view, that ultimately drives to discord in Society: be it person or on social media--with the latter being critical to sustaining it's way over-valuations which mask their Black Mirroresque business models which that often provoke this type of behaviour and should really be the focus here and not canceling Dr. Suess books.

Sidenote: I'm sure their is some SJW interpretation for canceling Sunny Delight to be made about this as well as the kid was 'accosted only after a white aggressor perpetuated violence which provoked the black one to do the same' type narrative, but either way it's just best to ignore them.

0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1ddM-FpiMg

> People need to realize that the World is messy, and racism and prejudice exits in all walks of life

Yes, they do! I was explaining just this to my kids yesterday, in the context of this very controversy. I don't understand why you think I should have read them those particular books to them when they were toddlers. Seriously, that stuff is pretty vile.

If I ran the zoo? Ha. Nobody cares what you read your toddlers. Please do us the service of not caring what I read to mine.

its vile? omg. get a grip.

Maybe adults can rationalize this stuff, but a child absolutely cannot. Children are sponges and mirrors at the same time, they do not have the ability to think critically about the world they experience in the way you are suggesting. So in the context of a children’s book, this makes a difference

That depends on the child. I'm having deep and engaging conversations nightly about these recent events with my 13 and 9 year old who bring it up during dinner, my 4 year old follows along in her own way and keeps up with the understanding.

My wife and I help guide the convo and but they draw their own conclusions. Critical thinking is a muscle which must be exercised and grown.

13 and 9 (to a lesser extent) sure, they can start to understand some of this. But 4? The 4 year old isn’t at the same level at all.

I find as a parent that I sometimes lump in my younger one with my older one and unfairly (to the younger) compare them to each other, even though the older one is just so much more developed. This sometimes ends up with me putting too high of expectations on the younger one unintentionally, and she feels inadequate.

Not trying to get all advicey here, but I know I have a hard time addressing each child at their own age and level, and while maybe the 4 year old appears to be keeping up, a 4 year olds’ brain is just not as developed as a 13 year old.

Sure, we are careful to keep her included in all conversations regardless. Also there isn't much going over her head and she loves to change the subject with a joke which amuses me the most.

That's what you, the adult, is there for. They absolutely can critically think; they just need guidance and practice getting thete.

Don't outsource your tesponsibility to help guide the next generation. Don't shelter them from your idea of obcenity either. If you respect their capabilities; you let them set their boundaries on their own.

I swear this wokeness movement is getting so tone deaf they don't realize they're becoming the radical pearl clutchers that the actual Liberal's fought against the auspices of to make sure that knowledge was shared.

When you're in stark opposition to the cause of a bunch of Librarians, you're almost certainly in the wrong.

> child absolutely cannot rationalize slanted eyes

Some parents are totally clueless.

This is like expecting that children would develop phobia to birds after playing angry birds (have you seen this very obvious slanted eyebrows in the main character?).

A figure with slanted eyes pose the same danger currently as giving your son a tin toy with sharp angles. Could cut their skin if one single child in the planet would find that stuff remotely funny, or accept to play with it for money.

This old fart WWII bomb has been inactivated long time ago. Just can't compete the thousands of positive asian characters that are the bread and butter in the journey of the western child. Unlike 1945 farmers, the pokemon generation are very aware of anything remotely related with japanese culture. Can talk for hours about their favourite asian characters, specially the evil ones, that they absolutely adore.

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