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Dr. Seuss books deemed offensive will be delisted from eBay

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Re: Dr. Seuss books deemed offensive will be delisted from eBay

#431
Burning books, the next evolution of our enlightened approach to the past.

Because racial justice will be solved by policing language and imagery, even in the past, and not via economic means, class power dynamics being examined, analyzing the political system, or anything else a postmodernist approach embraced by corporate America would find uncomfortable.

Re: Dr. Seuss books deemed offensive will be delisted from eBay

#432

I think a lot of commenters are missing a crucial piece of information about this. These books are being removed from publishing by the owner of the IP , don't blame ebay for this. I would argue that this isn't really censorship, although it is muddied by the original author being dead, and this being a company set up to manage his IP by his wife. (I would also argue that ebay removing them in general isn't something…

Ceasing to publish new copies is different than disallowing the exchange of existing copies. The owner of the IP chose to do the former, eBay chose to do the latter.

Re: Dr. Seuss books deemed offensive will be delisted from eBay

#433

Now this part is getting a little too carried away. It is one thing for libraries and bookstores to decide not to offer for borrowing or sale things that they disagree with. It is another (and overstepping imo) for Ebay to restrict individual people from selling to others goods that are not illegal or in violation of their other practical rules (no selling jewelry, monetary equivalents, etc). This falls into the cate…

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Re: Dr. Seuss books deemed offensive will be delisted from eBay

#434
post #140
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…

It's 6 of Dr. Seuss's books, and ones that most people haven't heard of. If you actually look at the content of the books, they are clearly racist and demeaning to those they make caricatures of. And in any case, it was not a sudden "canceling" or anything approaching that. Seuss's estate, managed by his family, made the decision after much deliberation to cease the publication of only six books due to the content. Y…

The problem is that you call it "clearly racist". If that is so clear why it took months to decide? In reality it's not that clear and you know it. You just moved a goalpost a little to include something that yesterday nobody complained about to become "clearly racist". And tomorrow will be something else.

Re: Dr. Seuss books deemed offensive will be delisted from eBay

#435
post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To answer my own question about the Dr. Seuss books, it appears to be controversial images of Asian & African people.

I think that's only for 2 or 3 of the books. One of them was pulled for using what I guess we should call the E-word now

Sorry I don’t follow, is the e-word ‘evolution’? :)

Yeah I found a picture of the Africans question. This might be the worst one. I see why folks would take it the wrong way.

They are potbellied, dressed in ‘tribal’ garb. Stereotypical I suppose, but I don’t see why that’s necessarily a racist ‘statement’ of all black people. Within the context of the text, it’s about going to an African island and bringing back an exotic bird.

And I found one of the ‘oriental’ pictures, and honesty it is pretty benign. Maybe the other is worse I don’t know didn’t find it.

Also, there is a very benign picture of an Arab gentleman riding a camel. Very innocent, nothing in particular offensive in my opinion.

Re: Dr. Seuss books deemed offensive will be delisted from eBay

#436
post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The company I work for did something similar at the end of last year. We had consultants who went over everything, and made a massive document of all sorts of things they deemed "problematic". Along with a week long of seminars/training/workshops on sensitivity/inclusion/etc. - Everyone had to list what pronouns they wanted people to use. In slack / our email footers everything. This was not optional. We were also to…

> Words such as "master", "owner", among some other ones were deemed problematic and needed to be changed. This is slippery slope happening right before your eyes. For those who claimed that slippery slope is just a fallacy and never ever can be true. When did Github change the default branch name from "master" to "main"? Few months ago? Now it's "owner" too, and using this word probably could get you in some real tr…

Every time I see a project on GitHub being pressured to change a term because of PC a little of me die inside. I still remember the PR where someone changed the term master to primary in Swift and Chris Lattner wrote a comment to object, only to delete it shortly after likely due to pressure.

It's a shame we can't stand up against bullshits like that because there's too much to lose.

Re: Dr. Seuss books deemed offensive will be delisted from eBay

#437
post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately your only choices today are this or overt neo-Naziism. You have to stake out the most extreme, divisive, fanatical position possible. If you try to be nuanced and rational you get attacked by both sides. I think social media has a lot to do with it. We created a global communication medium and then programmed it to prioritize the most "engaging" content, which is of course the most triggering and contro…

The saddest part is boring but popular ideas like universal healthcare continually get thrown to the wayside by loud idiots who want to demand nonsense like "latinx"

Good observation, I've felt the same since I encountered this new generation of humans who demand changing speech, and use esoteric terminology and demand other people say and not say things. I don't care if someone believes in social constructivism, that we're born blank slates, that words influence perception more than biology, so on and so forth, but I care very much when people who believe these things believe that anyone who questions - who dares question - them is a villain and an enemy who must be stopped.

A focus on symbolisms like statues and children books and language on Twitter or git repos is being embraced by the powerful corporate interests. Something that actually does an enormous positive for racial justice, universal healthcare, takes a back seat.

Can we agree this is a feature, not a bug?

Re: Dr. Seuss books deemed offensive will be delisted from eBay

#438
post #23
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?

I'm of Chinese descent. I'm much, more more offended by progressives clamoring to take away educational and job opportunities away from Asians because we're "overrepresented minorities" (as if we hadn't earned our place through hard work and education) and then making a mountain out of a molehill like this to pretend that they are actually concerned about Asians as minorities. Compared to two-facedness of that degree, Dr. Seuss's little cartoon doesn't register at all.

Re: Dr. Seuss books deemed offensive will be delisted from eBay

#439
post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately your only choices today are this or overt neo-Naziism. You have to stake out the most extreme, divisive, fanatical position possible. If you try to be nuanced and rational you get attacked by both sides. I think social media has a lot to do with it. We created a global communication medium and then programmed it to prioritize the most "engaging" content, which is of course the most triggering and contro…

The saddest part is boring but popular ideas like universal healthcare continually get thrown to the wayside by loud idiots who want to demand nonsense like "latinx"

I see some people say they'd like to be called Latinx. I see no one demand it. I see many more people complain it's used at all.

100% of people who say Latinx support universal health care in my experience. But they have more control over what they say than what their government does.

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