Thread by @CathyYoung63

This piece is a good example of how crazy, paranoid & potentially authoritarian social justice discourse about "embedded" or subtly "inscribed" racist images/tropes can be.

washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sh…

Let's say that the Cat in the Hat really was partly based on images from black minstrelsy. (Dr. Seuss, apparently, said he was based partly on a real-life, black elevator operator, Annie, who wore gloves & had a mischievous smile.)
So what? How does this make the book "harmful"?

1. It's very unlikely that anyone would associate the Cat in the Hat with black people.
2. Even if they did, the Cat is a *positive* figure. (He's only there to entertain/inspire two white kids? Yeah, so are a lot of other magical figures in kid lit who are clearly white.)

Like .... the chances that anyone would acquire insidious racist stereotypes from The Cat in the Hat are basically ZERO. If the link exists, it's historically interesting, but "problematic"? why?

I'm totally fine with saying that kids, especially, shouldn't be exposed to hateful/degrading racist material. But what's the point of combing through old (& new) texts looking for something that seems innocuous but could have a potentially racist origin?

This is very typical of "social justice" thinking -- anything with origins tainted by oppression or bigotry somehow perpetuates oppression & bigotry. It's a totally evidence-free, irrational, conspiratorial theory.
/End of Rant

P.S. There's a pretty plausible theory that the greedy, evil, crafty dwarves in Wagner's Ring Cycle were actually *meant* to represent Jews (in contrast to the noble Germanic Siegfried). Honestly? even there, I don't think this should cause the work to be "canceled."

No one is going to learn anti-Semitism from the Ring Cycle. The only way you'd look at the dwarves and think "Jews!" is if you're already an anti-Semite.

Should we acknowledge that Wagner was a nasty bigot (& generally an awful person)? Sure. But judge the work on its merit.