Paper
Was Dr. Seuss Racist?
Dr. Seuss is an American icon. My own children have celebrated his birthday every year since kindergarten at their school. We have read many of his books at home and I have used Yertle the Turtle and The Bread and Butter Battle in my classes to illustrate Hitler’s land grab before World War II and the nuclear arms race after World War II, respectively. This spring, however, there has been a big stink about the decision of the estate of Theodore Geisel (a.k.a. Dr. Seuss) to stop publishing six of his lesser-known works due to racist imagery in the books (you can read a short article here: https://apnews.com/article/dr-seuss-books-racist-images-d8ed18335c03319d72f443594c174513#:~:text=BOSTON%20(AP)%20%E2%80%94%20Six%20Dr,the%20author's%20legacy%20said%20Tuesday.&text=%E2%80%93%20Dr.%20Seuss%20museum%20replaces%20mural%20some%20found%20insensitive)
I had already planned this assignment, but I feel that it dovetails nicely with the events transpiring in the news today. We will not be focusing on those particular works that are currently in question, but rather with his political cartoons during World War II.
Many people are unaware that before Geisel became a famous children’s book author, he was a political cartoonist. You will note some of his cartoons in the voice over assignments that I have given you for World War II. “The Appeaser in the Middle” is another one:
He spoke out in favor of U.S. involvement in the war, among other things. However, after Pearl Harbor, many of his cartoons depicted Japanese people in a very racist and stereotyped way.
So who was Dr. Seuss? Was he the artist who was criticizing the American isolationist group, "America First"(you may recognize that phrase used today, in fact) and their inability to question Hitler's xenophobic attitudes in Germany or was he the propagandist who used racial slurs and Asian stereotypes to depict Japanese-Americans at the time of Japanese internment? Was he both? Or was there more to the story?
As historians, it is our job to get as much of the story as we can. It is also our job to distinguish between what people today might call “fake news” and what really went on. As we find when we work on primary source assignments, it is important for historians to consider as many views as possible. Was the article on the Boston Massacre written by a Loyalist or a Patriot? Things like that matter. It doesn’t make the article less valuable or even inaccurate, but it is something that we use to evaluate our sources.
For this assignment, we will read a series of articles and look at many of Seuss’s political cartoons. You will write a short essay detailing what you found out, and answering the question of whether Dr. Seuss was racist. Please follow the directions exactly in order, so that your paper is written properly. You will not be penalized for your opinion either way, but must support your opinion to get full credit.
The paper is due by Sunday night, May 16th at midnight to the drop box. It should be Times New Roman or something similar, 12 font, and 1 ½ or double spaced. DO NOT number the paragraphs – write it like a regular essay, including a title.
DIRECTIONS:
1. Go to the following website (Angry Asian Man blog) and read the article entitled “These Kids Made Flyers to Protest ‘Dr. Seuss Week’ at School.” Use the document called “A Guide to Reading and Interpreting Documents” that is posted with your primary source info in Important Documents to help you think about this site and article critically. Remember, you are thinking not only about who wrote the blog, but about the children and parents in the article. What were their motivations for doing what they did? What was their background? Etc. If you had read just this article and seen only what the flyer portrayed of his art, what would you say about Dr. Seuss? Write an introductory paragraph that puts Dr. Seuss into context…it can include general info about his famous children’s books, you can bring in today’s issue over his estate choosing to stop publication of a couple of his books, or whatever. Introduce the controversy. Write your second paragraph – summarize the events that the Angry Asian Man blog discusses. You can feel free to put in how you feel about that, having only read the article in #1 of the directions.
2. Look at the following political cartoon that was published on October 1, 1941 (just 2 months prior to Pearl Harbor). It criticizes Americans for not caring about the deaths of foreign children:
After studying this political cartoon and thinking about what Dr. Seuss was trying to imply, does that change your view about him? Write your 3rd paragraph describing the above cartoon and what it meant, discussing whether that affects your view on Dr. Seuss and the racism issue.
3. Go to the following website and peruse some of Seuss’s cartoons. You do not have to look at them all, but look over them enough to get an idea about what he was standing for. It might be good to go to “Issues” and click on some of the specific things you want to know about, like “America First” or something.
https://library.ucsd.edu/speccoll/dswenttowar/index.html
Once you are done looking over political cartoons, read the following article called “When Dr. Seuss Took On Adolf Hitler:”
https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/01/when-dr-seuss-took-on-adolf-hitler/267151/
Paragraph 4 should summarize this article.
4. Now read the following articles:
“Can We Forgive Dr. Seuss?” https://freshwriting.nd.edu/volumes/2015/essays/can-we-forgive-dr-seuss
“Ten Facts About Horton Hears A Who” https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/66671/10-facts-about-horton-hears-who
“Kids Use ‘Dr. Seuss Week’ To Teach Classmates About His Racist Cartoons”
Paragraph 5 should briefly discuss each of these 3 articles, including what they are generally about, whether they are trustworthy sources, and whether they can help us answer our big question.
5. NOW – put it all together!! Your last paragraph (paragraph 6) should give me your opinion. After all the documents, we can clearly glean the subtext to what he was saying about the enemy, which illustrated the prevailing mood in the United States during World War II. We can also clearly use examples to explain how we know what we think and know about Dr. Seuss. So, was he a racist, or not a racist? Or are his work and his life much more complicated than that? Were some parts of his work racist? If so, why do you think they were? What was going on during the time he was drawing them that might have affected his feelings? Is the allegation that “Dr. Seuss was racist” legitimate, “fake news,” or is it something much more complicated that needs analysis to gain a fuller understanding?