Dr. Seuss books deemed offensive will be delisted from eBay

Post by offby37years » Thu, Mar 04, 2021, 10:12 PM UTC

dTal wrote: post #23

jfengel wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you that it's a little weird that eBay has decided to draw the line there, but you might give a second thought to what constitutes "relatively mild offensiveness". These racist caricatures have a long and ugly history, and they persist. They may seem mild to you, but to people who have to deal with racist caricatures every day of their lives, it's unpleasant. Not just having to explain to your children w…

https://images.indianexpress.com/2021/03/dr-seuss.jpg Maybe I'm old fashioned but all I see is a smiling boy, in traditional Chinese dress, eating what appears to be rice out of a bowl with chopsticks. Are there actually Chinese people who find this offensive? Why?

Post by Udik » Thu, Mar 04, 2021, 10:18 PM UTC

Post by dragonwriter » Thu, Mar 04, 2021, 10:30 PM UTC

yellowapple wrote: post #4

It's weird that these books got pulled from circulation in the first place; the offensiveness is relatively mild (especially for the time), and quite a few of these have historical and literary significance (including the very first children's book published under the "Dr. Seuss" pen name). eBay deciding unilaterally that people can't buy or sell already-printed copies is just icing on the weirdness cake. This is the…

Post by retox » Thu, Mar 04, 2021, 10:43 PM UTC

nph5667 wrote: post #29

What bothers me is the speed with which this process - "accused -> convinced -> executed" happens. We are not discussing things anymore. Today, you could tweet any accusations, and, no matter how ridiculous they look at first, it will lead to a race of who is taking them most seriously. Something definitely is broken. Look at what happened to the "okay". 4chan forced that meme 5 years ago in what they thought is a mi…

Post by dTal » Thu, Mar 04, 2021, 10:46 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #35

yellowapple wrote: post #4

It's weird that these books got pulled from circulation in the first place; the offensiveness is relatively mild (especially for the time), and quite a few of these have historical and literary significance (including the very first children's book published under the "Dr. Seuss" pen name). eBay deciding unilaterally that people can't buy or sell already-printed copies is just icing on the weirdness cake. This is the…

> eBay deciding unilaterally that people can't buy or sell already-printed copies eBay isn't deciding that, it is deciding unilaterally that it will not participate in the buying or selling of those items. eBay probably has no interest and in any case has no power to make decisions about what can be bought and sold, only about what it will participate as a facilitator of buying and selling.