I'm a little confused. Are you actually referring to the word "okay"? What is CNL?
He is. “Okay” is now considered racist. It’s super pernicious too, but effective bludgeon. Making “Okay” racist is obscure enough that most normal people (ie those not obsessed with wokeness) have never heard of it. Consider that you’ve never heard until now that “okay” is racist and you did the okay symbol in front of a political commissar (I mean a woke person, can’t keep up) that doesn’t like you. You’re done.
It's particularly irksome. There was never any history of "racism" behind the okay gesture and it was a very widely used gesture for decades. It was also a very versatile one - it could mean "everything's okay" in the traditional sense, "yeah, ok, whatever" in a dismissive sense, or turned upside down became the Circle Game where if you were tricked into looking at it you had to immediately break the circle with your index finger or accept a punch to the arm. Then some neckbeards on 4Chan decided to prank people by claiming it was a "white power symbol". Unfortunately, some alt right edgelords then started actually using it as such. Now we find ourselves in the situation you just described where not everyone is aware of this history and people who grew up with it as an innocent symbol use it and find themselves on the wrong end of a Twitter mob.
Am I not alone in thinking this Neo-puritanism is going too far?
Had you ever heard of these six books before today? Have you ever read them? How many were sold? We've been sanitising kids books for decades now. What version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory do you own? The original with actual African slaves and the colonialist rescue narrative, or the later version with Oompa Loompas and the colonialist rescue narrative? What version of Edward's Sneeze from the Thomas the Tan…
>The original with actual African slaves
They weren't slaves in the original story - they were Africans but were offered payment to come work at his factory and went voluntarily.
There's two kinds of freedom: freedom from and freedom to. These are some children's books that contain illustrations that some people find offensive and the publisher (and sellers) are deciding they no longer want to be associated with and sell to children. There are internet forums where the images are available and people can view them without the police knocking your door down, and I'm sure these are available in…
Freedom of speech is the most essential negative freedom (freedom from), it means you are not bound and limited by something external, while positive freedom is a right to something, like education or similar institutions. The freedom of a publisher to control what happens to sold books isn't at all part of negative freedom (freedom from). I'm basing my understanding on the Two Concepts of Liberty by Isaiah Berlin.
Why is this being downvoted? It's providing necessary clarification of a concept that was being misused in the parent.
I think nearly every reasonable person agrees: - Particular illustrations have not aged well - The content itself nor Dr. Seuss can be accused of malice - The offending content is not really a high risk of perpetrating future malice - It's completely within the right of the publisher to not want to profit from these books anymore But at no point did it seem like anyone made the point that you can't read or enjoy the…
I love reading the Zoo and McElligot's Pool to my kids. I'd love it even more without the offensive illustrations as they don't add anything to the stories. If they'd publish a version with some updated illustrations, I'd buy it immediately. Taking them off the market means I can either use the questionable version or none at all. Not sure this is the desired solution.
There's two kinds of freedom: freedom from and freedom to. These are some children's books that contain illustrations that some people find offensive and the publisher (and sellers) are deciding they no longer want to be associated with and sell to children. There are internet forums where the images are available and people can view them without the police knocking your door down, and I'm sure these are available in…
To be fair these books ought to live on Archive.org, because they are basically 'classics' at this point. Plenty of problematic and dated books live there. While it has some Dr. Seuss books, it doesn't have the problematic ones, but for at least historical reasons, it should. https://archive.org/details/texts?and%5B%5D=dr+seuss&sin=
Certainly. After all, it's only a matter of time until the other ones become "problematic" as well.
There's some interesting threads here. I do understand the conversation around free speech and censorship has been top of mind lately, but IMO a lot of the comments here are getting carried away and missing a point that is crucial in this instance: these are children's books. As much as I disagree with book-burning and support not only free speech, but also the healthy debate around what it constitutes, I think all o…
I absolutely agree that showing certain racist depictions to children can create biases. But is the solution really to ban the whole story? I said it in other comments but with similar cases, publishers just changed illustrations or words in a text instead of unpublishing it. Dr Seuss Enterprise holds the copyright and has every right to just update the books.
In none of those books the actual story is racist. In nearly all cases there's not even a single racist line in the text. Just the illustrations are.
Are kids actually learning racism is ok from these books or are they enjoying the art and simplistic ideas of the story? Do adults read these books and enthusiastically think.. This author gets it. No, thats just ridiculous. Why does every corporation feel the need to play out these stunts? More free press and discussions on social media. A part in the news cycle. They do it, Because it gets them more in return. If i…
As much as I'm against banning them, for kids who grow up without much contact to black people, showing the depictions in Seuss' books can create wrong associations (my opinion). I believe a change of some illustrations was overdue, I just don't get why they had to unpublish it.
As dis-heartening as this story is, compared to a couple of years ago, it is encouraging to see lots of comments from people beginning to wake up to what is going on with this craziness and not being modded here. Free speech is about protecting the right of the un-popular and views that some may find utterly repugnant. Why? because, as we are seeing with all of the woke craziness, when you don't stand up for everyone…
Thing is there is thin line between moderation/regulation and censorship.
In my opinion, changing offensive parts in new edition would've been moderation. Unpublishing them and banning the sale of the books on the largest used book platform is much closer to censorship.