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Comment by SiVal | Hacker News Reader

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.

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> 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.

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!

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

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

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?

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).

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

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

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?

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.

>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.

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’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?

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.

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.

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 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.

> 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.

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.

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.

>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.

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 ?

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.

And western people often get nose jobs.

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.

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

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.

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