I love Seuss' style of writing and drawing, BUT you learn something every day. I'm sure I saw it earlier, but I didn't see it. I'm sure I noticed something in "If I Ran the Zoo", and yesterday I was directed to an Instagram post all about how Dr. Seuss was Anti-Black.
Yes. A man who wished to educate children also had his prejudices. Is this a case of loving the art but hating the artist? Can we separate them? Not really. All I can positively take from this is my first sentence (see above). Was he racist? Yeah. Was he a White supremacist? Well, yeah. The Cat in the Hat was published in 1957, a time which wasn't so progressively thinking in the USA. Was Seuss a 'victim' of his times, the culture he was in? Yes, BUT he should have known BETTER, as an educator.
Here are a collection of some of those drawings (numbers are from the Instagram post (@theconsciouskid).
"Seuss consistently drew Africans and African Americans as monkeys and apes, in subservient positions to white men"
"The Cat in the Hat was based on blackface performance, racist images in popular colour and actual African Americans"
And here's a book which can tell you more, from Dr. Philip Nel...
"Was the Cat in the Hat Black: The Hidden Racism of Children's Literature, and the Need for Diverse Books"
https://www.amazon.com/Was-Cat-Hat-Black-Literature/dp/019063507X
Instagram Dr. Philip Nel (@thephilnel)
Website: https://philnel.com/
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