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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

#351

Post by TameAntelope »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #341
djoldman wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not trying to be snarky but there are I believe more than enough stores happy to sell you whatever you want, even though eBay won't allow these books to be listed. I'm confused as to how eBay banning the listing of these books materially impacts people from getting them.

It's not about the impact. It's about what's socially acceptable behavior. It's the same reason we get angry at people for saying racist crap even though we believe in freedom of speech.

What’s the alternative, that eBay is forced to sell things they don’t believe are in their best interests to list?

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

#353

Post by ttt0 »

Azeralthefallen wrote: post #316
chroem- wrote: post #75

My work sent out a memo today regarding what pronouns I'm allowed to use. We're in the middle of a cultural revolution, and the current trend seems to be for rapid acceleration rather than moderation.

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 trouble.

I'm not even going to comment on "see" and "visible".

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

#354

Post by [deleted] »

tomdell wrote: post #16

Surprised by the majority of comments here. How many of you have actually looked at these pictures? A private entity decided to stop publishing certain things. Another private entity is declining to sell old copies of said things. This is not “cancel culture” like conservative commentators want to make it out to be - and I think the publisher and now eBay are making the right call - children are impressionable, and p…

[deleted]

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

#356

Post by djoldman »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #341
djoldman wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not trying to be snarky but there are I believe more than enough stores happy to sell you whatever you want, even though eBay won't allow these books to be listed. I'm confused as to how eBay banning the listing of these books materially impacts people from getting them.

It's not about the impact. It's about what's socially acceptable behavior. It's the same reason we get angry at people for saying racist crap even though we believe in freedom of speech.

I might get angry but I'm fine with the laws that allow them to say it. I'm also fine with the laws that say that eBay can ban whatever products they want from their platform.

People are free to be mad at eBay for removing the books from their platform and eBay will take some hit for it. I suspect that they think the pros outweigh the cons with this decision, however it was calculated. This is just business as usual.

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

#357

Post by runako »

gwright wrote: post #290
breakfastduck wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. I err on the side of not censoring. However, if they're gonna stop printing a couple of books because of severe racist overtones then whatever. But if they're banning the sale , which then leads to ownership , that's too far. We have to draw a line somewhere. As a heavily left leaning person who feels unnerved about the state of politics at the moment, this decision is extremely discomforting.

> severe racist overtones I haven't seen a good summary of what parts of the withdrawn books were considered inappropriate, but my understanding is that the stronger objection has been to political cartoons that Theodor Seuss Geisel created. I've not seen any assertions (never mind evidence) that the children's books contained "severe racist overtones". To be clear, I'm pushing back on the "severe" adjective. There c…

Wikipedia has it:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If_I_Ran_the_Zoo#Criticism

I've owned copies with these pages. It's depressing to me that some people think that we should keep teaching this stuff to kids.

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

#358

Post by neartheplain »

jfengel wrote: post #17
tim333 wrote: post #6

The thing seems a bit silly. Curious what was offensive I found the books are on youtube and I'm guessing it's drawing Chinese https://youtu.be/Vl6wD6EGOVk?t=228 and tribal Africans https://youtu.be/Vl6wD6EGOVk?t=519 looking like cartoon versions of those. Does this means cartoon caricatures are only acceptable if they are of white westerners? I mean I can understand the publishers thinking they may get in trouble an…

They're not just cartoons. They're caricatures associated with racist tropes, which have been used in conjunction with discrimination and even violence. The African pictures in particular look like minstrel shows, which were deliberately intended to demean black people in America. It's not that the publishers were afraid of getting in trouble. It's that they were ashamed of their own book -- with good reason.

The African pictures also look like African people, such as the traditional dress of the Tharaka people of Kenya:

https://www.gaiafoundation.org/app/uploads/2019/05/DSC_0150....

The book is explicitly depicting people from abroad, not African-Americans. As Dr. Seuss’s surviving family has attested to his character and wordliness, and his other books like “Horton Hears a Who” promote tolerance and the acceptance of minorities, I’m inclined to go with a simpler, more innocent explanation for these images.

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

#359

Post by aaron695 »

DanBC wrote: post #27
BitwiseFool wrote: post #2

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…

> lazy, racist, stereotypes.

Exactly how is Roald Dahl, Dr Seuss or Wilbert Awdry lazy?

Looking at newspaper archives, "as black as niggers" was a used term, interestingly often around WW1 but also coal trains, which is Thomas the Tank Engines premise.

Mads Brügger's documentary "The Ambassador" has him getting Pygmy 'assistants', in a complex commentary of sorts.

Dr Seuss changed the Chinaman in On Mulberry Street once already.

The only laziness is people try to Just World these book burnings. How about we put them in the adult section of libraries, that would require effort to think about I guess. When will Facebook Marketplace ban this, will people reading them on Youtube be banned. How long before newspaper archives ban people searching on "as black as niggers". How long before they delete those articles.

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

#360

Post by throwaway803453 »

nullserver wrote: post #145
refurb wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. The adults in the room should have nipped this crap in the bud but instead they entertained it. Now it’s a much bigger problem to solve. Check out SFUSD renaming racists schools like “Lincoln High”. Eventually parents had start a recall effort to end it.

It’s dangerous to complain about this stuff. Was at one place that routinely trashed white males, of which I happened to be. Caught hell when I tried to push back. Sadly this seems like it’s becoming the norm.

"It’s dangerous to complain about this stuff." Yep, I'm Latino but when NYC's law was going to make it a crime to call someone an "illegal immigrant" with a $250K fine I didn't even feel safe speaking out against this bad idea. Because I am in tech and high-income so "what do I know". Despite being slurred this way many years ago by a cop and despite assisting some cousins enter the country illegally and being held by a border agent.

All this "privilege checking" makes it difficult to speak out. The least privileged people have existential concerns more significant than our culture war so they don't speak out either. The Woke movement has been hijacked by narcissists. There is no resistance so this will only accelerate in the near term.

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