Finally, comrades we have lived long enough to see the Cat in the Hat denounced for the white supremacist that he truly is.
The denunciation comes from Liz Phipps Soeiro, a librarian (sorry, library media specialist) at the Cambridgeport School in Cambridge, in response to Melania Trump sending some Dr. Seuss books over.
You might think that it's the Trump name that's the problem. Yes and no. It's also Dr. Seuss.
You see Liz Phipps Soeiro is, by her account, working hard to "dismantle the systemic white supremacy in our institution". And Dr. Seuss really isn't helping.
I'll let Liz take it away.
"You may not be aware of this, but Dr. Seuss is a bit of a cliché, a tired and worn ambassador for children’s literature... Another fact that many people are unaware of is that Dr. Seuss’s illustrations are steeped in racist propaganda, caricatures, and harmful stereotypes. Open one of his books (If I Ran a Zoo or And to Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street, for example), and you’ll see the racist mockery in his art. Grace Hwang Lynch’s School Library Journal article, “Is the Cat in the Hat Racist? Read Across America Shifts Away from Dr. Seuss and Toward Diverse Books,” reports on Katie Ishizuka’s work analyzing the minstrel characteristics and trope nature of Seuss’s characters. Scholar Philip Nel’s new book, Was the Cat in the Hat Black? The Hidden Racism of Children’s Literature, and the Need for Diverse Books, further explores and shines a spotlight on the systemic racism and oppression in education and literature."
If you're wondering, this was not a Portlandia skit. Probably.
And you can't dismantle white supremacy without burning The Cat in the Hat. Or denouncing the lack of diversity in Dr. Seuss books.
conducted a critical race analysis of 50 children’s books by Seuss and found that 98 percent of the human characters were white, and only two percent were people of color.
And let's not forget his bigotry against green eggs.