Sometimes the people and things we love from our childhood turn out to have a disturbing side to them. This is the case with Dr. Seuss, an author whose books I loved as a kid and later as a new parent. (My little guy’s first birthday had an elaborate Cat in the Hat theme, as you can see in a picture in this post.) By reading the excellent work of both Pragmatic Mom and The Conscious Kid, I found out a couple of years ago about Dr. Seuss’ racist past and how that racism influenced some of his most popular books.

While the conversation about racism in Dr. Seuss’ books was swirling among school librarians recently during Read Across America Week, I’ve found that most parents and teachers have no idea this is an issue. In this post, I’ve gathered some of the most informative resources about racism and Dr. Seuss, as well as different ways we can respond as caregivers.

If this information is new to you and you’re a fan of Dr. Seuss, you might feel defensive. That’s understandable (I felt defensive at first too), but I hope you will use this information to learn and reflect.

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Research reveals patterns of racism in Dr. Seuss children’s books and political cartoons

In February 2019, Katie Ishizuka and Ramón Stephens published a study titled “The Cat Is Out of the Bag: Orientalism, Anti-Blackness, and White Supremacy in Dr. Seuss’ Children’s Books.” They examined every children’s book that Seuss published, and found that “every character of color is male. Males of color are only presented in subservient, exotified, or dehumanized roles.”

The authors and others who’ve studied Dr. Seuss’ work offer many specific examples of racism, including:

• A white male character holds a gun and is carried by Asian male characters in If I Ran the Zoo. A caption beneath the picture describes the Asian characters as “helpers who all wear their eyes at a slant” from “countries no one can spell.”
• 98% of the human characters in Seuss’ children’s books are white. None of the characters of color have speaking roles, and they are all portrayed in subservient conditions and/or in stereotypical ways.
• Asian characters are frequently shown in stereotypical clothing such as “rice paddy hats,” with bright yellow skin and slanted eyes. A mural from And To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street that included such a character was taken down at the Dr. Seuss museum after prominent children’s authors including Mo Willems protested the image.
• Blackface images in The Cat In The Hat (which I talk about in more detail below)
• The only two “African” characters in Seuss’ books appear in If I Ran the Zoo. They are shoeless and wear grass skirts, and are shown subserviently carrying an animal to a zoo owned by a white male child.

Related  Post: How I Failed to Be an Anti-Racist Parent in the Grocery Store Parking Lot

Was Dr. Seuss just a man of his time?

Some have argued that Dr. Seuss was simply a “man of his time” and wasn’t intentionally expressing racism through these images. That line of thinking reflects our confusion about what racism actually is, in my opinion. Also as a recent viral Facebook post said, “excusing someone’s past bigotry as ‘a product of their time’ erases everyone who fought against that bigotry while also living in that day.”

Dr. Seuss was also a political cartoonist, and his cartoons were blatantly racist against Japanese, Black, and Native American people. He regularly depicted Black people as monkeys, and often showed Japanese people with pig snouts and other animalistic imagery. During World War II he made anti-Japanese statements including “we’ve got to kill the Japs.”  (Trigger warning: disturbing racist images. You can see some of those cartoons in this post from Pragmatic Mom.)

Other people have said that some of Dr. Seuss’ later works, including Horton Hears a Who! show that Seuss was sorry about the role that he played in stirring up anti-Japanese sentiment.  The Conscious Kid pokes holes in this argument, and also debunks the idea that The Sneetches shows children how to be anti-racist.

Related Post: What does the word racism actually mean?

The Cat in the Hat and Blackface

Because of our family’s attachment to The Cat in the Hat (and how popular the book is throughout libraries, classrooms, and homes), the discovery about Dr. Seuss’ racism that disturbed me the most is the origin of the Cat character.

In his thoroughly researched book Was the Cat in the Hat Black? The Hidden Racism of Children’s Literature, and the Need for Diverse Books, Philip Nel explains the origins of the character.

When Dr. Seuss was at the office of publisher Houghton Mifflin, he encountered a Black elevator operator named Annie Williams. Later, he recalled her “leather half glove and secret smile.” He gave the Cat character her white gloves, her “secret smile” and her color, according to Nel.

Blackface and minstrel show characters also influenced the Cat. (Seuss was quite familiar with the genre, writing and performing in a minstrel show for his high school.) The Cat’s red floppy tie, his umbrella used as a cane, and his red and white striped hat all bear distinct similarities to specific blackface characters from the time.

Similar to how blackface characters in minstrel shows entertained white audiences, the Cat’s role is to entertain the white children and perform tricks for them.

In The Cat in the Hat Comes Back, the Cat leaves a ring of ink around the tub after he bathes. In the 1920’s there were frequent cartoons and ads that portrayed Black people as dirty and their blackness coming from ink.

Related Post: 7 inspiring ways that kid activists are challenging racism

How should we talk with kids about the racism in Dr. Seuss’ books?

If you’re a parent or teacher of young children, there’s a good chance that you’ve read Dr. Seuss books with your kids, and probably have at least one in your home or classroom. So what should we do about these books? Should we quietly remove them?

Danielle Slaughter, who writes frequently about race and parenting on her blog Mamademics, wrote a provocative post recently titled “Dr. Seuss’ Racist Past Isn’t the Problem – Your Refusal to Have Hard Conversations Is.” She criticizes white parents who simply get rid of their Seuss books without talking to their children so that they don’t have to talk about the racism in those books.

I absolutely agree with Slaughter that parents shouldn’t make these books disappear without a conversation. (She also says some things about Seuss I disagree with, particularly that he appears to have learned his lesson at an older age.)

Children can’t learn to identify and stand up to racism if we never talk with them about it.

Related Post: What is white fragility, and how does it impact parenting? 

Children’s author Grace Lin suggests that we treat classic children’s books that are racist (such as Little House on the Prairie), like “out of touch relatives” who don’t think the way we do. You don’t have to cut that relative out of your child’s life, in Lin’s view, but you should keep our your eyes and ears open so that you can have a conversation with your child if the relative says something racist.

Saying goodbye to the Cat in our home 

A few months after I found out about the racist images that inform The Cat in the Hat, I decided this was not a book I wanted my then 5 year old reading anymore. It helped that we already talk about skin color and racism pretty regularly.

Since he was so young, I simply told him that Dr. Seuss was making fun of Black people with the Cat character, and that is racism. We talked briefly about why I was getting rid of the book.

Related Post: What to do about classic children’s books that are racist

Off and on for the past two years, he would still watch the PBS show The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That. I reasoned that since the focus of the show was different than the books and one of the two children on the show was Black that it wasn’t the same as the book. [EDIT: Thank you to reader Yvette for pointing out to me that in the cartoon, Nick’s mother appears to have a South Asian English accent. I was making assumptions about Nick’s ethnicity based on his skin color. I apologize for my assumption.]

While working on this post, I decided to talk to our son (who’s about to turn 7.) I reminded him about the Cat character making fun of Black people, and I also told him that Dr. Seuss had drawn mean pictures and said racist things about Japanese people. He’s very interested in Japan, so this new information upset him. We agreed together that he wouldn’t watch the show anymore.

Related Post: 17 Funny Multicultural Children’s Books

Dr. Seuss at School

One of the reasons that many school librarians have been debating Dr.  Seuss’ racism is that until recently, Read Across America Week, celebrated in most schools, was synonymous with Dr. Seuss. Some schools actually call the week Dr. Seuss Week.

In 2017, two siblings whose parents had talked to them about Dr. Seuss’ racist political cartoons decided they wanted to share this information during their school’s week celebrating Seuss’ books. The family had talked about the role that Seuss’ racist political cartoons had played in influencing American’s opinions about the internment of Japanses Americans.

Rockett and Zoe, ages 11 and 10, created informational flyers to pass out at school. The children said their goal was to show people that Dr. Seuss was not perfect, and that “everyone has a dark side.” At the instruction of the principal, teachers confiscated the children’s flyers.

When considering whether to read books like The Cat in the Hat and other books with racist stereotypes in the classroom, teachers of young children need to remember that kids begin forming racial stereotypes as young as age 3. While high school teachers can have critical conversations with teenagers about racist themes in books, this is much harder to do with a group of young children.

Related Post: 8 ideas to celebrate Read Across America that don’t involve Dr. Seuss

In 2017, school librarian Liz Phipps Soero wrote an open letter to Melania Trump, rejecting the First Lady’s donation of Dr. Seuss books to her Cambridge, MA school. She rejected the books both because she thought books should be sent to a school with fewer resources, and because “Dr. Seuss’s illustrations are steeped in racist propaganda, caricatures, and harmful stereotypes.”

If you’re a parent who knows your child’s teacher has The Cat in the Hat or other Seuss books with racist stereotypes in the classroom, you may be wondering what to do. I recommend starting a conversation by letting the teacher know that you recently learned new information about Dr. Seuss. Share this blog post or one of the articles I link to in the post. Ask if you can have more conversation, since you know that supporting diversity and challenging stereotypes is important to the teacher.

Related Post: 5 surprising ways white children learn racist ideas

Rethinking Read Across America Week

In 2019, the National Education Association, which sponsors Read Across America Week, removed all references to Dr. Seuss in their promotion of the event and suggested booklists.

I noticed on social media that many preschools and elementary schools, at least in my community, still had Seuss themed events during the week. They likely have not heard anything about the controversy, and were repeating popular events from previous years.

The Tutu Teacher provided these book themed ideas for each day of Read Across America week, which I love. (Teachers, follow her for all kind of good diverse book info!) Here are her themes, paired with book lists from my blog that match the daily theme:

Day 1: Read a book about immigration. Find books about immigrants and refugees here and here.

Day 2: Read a book about a famous American. Find books about famous Americans here and here.

Day 3: Read a silly story. Find silly and funny books here.

Day 4: Read a book about different cultures. Find multicultural books here and here

Day 5: Read a book you love. Want to see my favorite book? Go here.