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Racist Dr. Seuss drawing up for auction upsets fans

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R

rhandino

Banned
Valhelm said:
seuss1.jpg


Wasn't the Sneetches basically about black people, too?
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Amazing isn't, this looks like something that could appear in tomorrow paper and would be as valid today as was then...
 
D

DoktorEvil

Banned
I don't know what I expected, but it wasn't fucking that.

It's about how I felt when I heard the horrors of how Walt Disney was to certain people.

Dishwalla said:
Oh no, a guy known for children's entertainment turns out to have made racially insensitive materials/cartoons several decades ago. Better not let people know about Walt Disney, the guys at Warner responsible for the Looney Tunes(Chuck Jones, Bob Clampett, Friz Freleng, etc), William Hanna and Joseph Barbera aka the guys behind Tom and Jerry, Tex Avery(both at WB and MGM), Walter Lanz aka the guy who did Woody Woodpecker amongst others(including what is quite possibly the most racist cartoon ever put out by a major studio), and so on.
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One day you'll be able to add Seth Macfarlane, Matt Groaning, and the South Park guys.
 
I

Ikael

Member
Why are people surprised? Racism was an extremely widespread belief. Same as sexism or eugenics. The inmorality of these beliefs is evident to us due to our historical context, but it indicate little about his personal character. We don't like to acknowdegle it, but we have more moral clarity than our ancestors due to the fact that we are standing in the shoulders of giants, so to speak. We've been born inside a society that considered racism an evil thing, and that has the hilariously naive notion that equality is a "self evident" truth.

Would we have been born on a previous era, we would hold very different beliefs, and these notions would be far from being "self evident". Mainly because people who dared to question the racist paradigm in the past and proclaming yourself to be as a proud anti-racist was not a ticket for redditt patting and accolades, but rather an extremely dangerous posture that posed a very real deadly risk.

a Master Ninja said:
I'd say this is actually worse, as this is blatantly saying that all the Japanese-Americans are traitors who will harm fellow Americans. It's not only offensive, it's dangerous.

The woodpile comic's gag is just literally illustrating common (at the time) expressions, even though the origin of that one expression is racist propaganda from the Civil War.


So basically at the time Seuss's woodpile comic was made, it was casual racism. When that Japanese comic was made, it was promoting a current program that imprisoned over 100,000 US citizens unjustly.
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Stop putting this into its historic context. Enough with this level-headness and reason-ability!
 
T

tearsintherain

Member
Go through all your tweets, forum posts, facebook posts, photos, etc and I can guarantee 100 years from now there will be people who will be horrified at things you were proud about or believed in.

I'm sure my great great grandkids will look at pics of me grilling steaks and throw up in disgust or me driving a car and wonder what kind of monster I was for supporting the fossil fuels industry.

No, not saying his stuff wasn't hella racist but as far as I understand that was pretty mainstream thinking in the 1920s, and he did seem to reverse a lot of those views later in life based on his work.
 
S

Soi-Fong

Member
E

excelsiorlef

Member
tearsintherain said:
Go through all your tweets, forum posts, facebook posts, photos, etc and I can guarantee 100 years from now there will be people who will be horrified at things you were proud about or believed in.

I'm sure my great great grandkids will look at pics of me grilling steaks and throw up in disgust or me driving a car and wonder what kind of monster I was for supporting the fossil fuels industry.

No, not saying his stuff wasn't hella racist but as far as I understand that was pretty mainstream thinking in the 1920s, and he did seem to reverse a lot of those views later in life based on his work.
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Eating meat and being racist, ehhh same thing.

Look let's not go down the Avenue Q route

Soi-Fong said:
How the fuck did I not know this...?
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She had good PR.
 
R

rhandino

Banned
waiT, people know that most of his most beloved and famous work was after his messy first years right? and that was considered by a lot of people as a kind of apology for his early years?

I'm kind of naive but I actually think that people can and do change with time...
 
Hexa

Hexa

Member
People's attitudes are shaped by society and the default was being racist. So I don't really hold it against people from back then for it.
Plus his later works are the opposite, so he clearly saw reason before it was the norm so overall I'd say his record on racism is still pretty positive.
 
M

Man Called Aerodynamics

Member
Northeastmonk said:
Are libraries going to stop carrying his books? Will schools throw them away? Will they stop airing the TV shows? Will you throw his books away?
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Please tell me you're not serious about any of this.

If you burn every book by authors that we find out are assholes, or could be judged to be an asshole by the standards of a different time, the library's gonna empty out pretty quick.
 
U

Uhyve

Member
Not said:
K so uh he changed his mind? Kinda still pissed. Those early ones aren't very redeemable
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I mean, he was only 25 at the time, maybe he had crappy racist parents and eventually saw the error of their/his ways.

Growth as a person is a good thing, especially if someone changes from an awful human being to something better than that. We can only hope for more people to do the same... assuming he did actually mend his ways, he might have just been latching onto a popular topic with his anti-segregation comics, but that could just be me thinking that because he was apparently an awful person at some point.
 
T

TheFurizzlyBear

Member
Uhyve said:
I mean, he was only 25 at the time, maybe he had crappy racist parents and eventually saw the error of their/his ways.

Growth as a person is a good thing, especially if someone changes from an awful human being to something better than that. We can only hope for more people to do the same... assuming he did actually mend his ways, he might have just been latching onto a popular topic with his anti-segregation comics, but that could just be me thinking that because he was apparently an awful person at some point.
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While the early stuff is shitty and we don't know what was truly in his heart all his life. I'm gonna go with he was a man that was a product of his times and with wisdom grew to see the error of his past and attempted to make amends. People change, some for the better and some for the worse.
 
M

Marky Mark

Member
I get it, it's racist. But it was something drawn in the 20's when that was prevalent and it's a piece of seussian history so I don't see what the big deal is that it's up for auction. It's not going to be printed and handed out a libraries so let it rest in a collection somewhere and who cares who buys it. Shit, I'd buy it if I had $20k to blow.
 
D

DontBeThatGuy

Member
Sure, he became more progressive the older he got, and that's great (albeit he was still shitty in other other ways), but i'm seeing a whole lot of excuses for shitty behavior being thrown around in this thread, as if far more progressive thought didn't exist during that time, or long before it.

Hell, considering the environment grew up in, i should be a religious asshole bigot that loves to talk shit about minorities(and if I had listened to the garbage coming out of one of older brothers mouth, wow, you have no idea), but I put the kibosh on that shit real quick.

Marky Mark said:
I get it, it's racist. But it was something drawn in the 20's when that was prevalent and it's a piece of seussian history so I don't see what the big deal is that it's up for auction. It's not going to be printed and handed out a libraries so let it rest in a collection somewhere and who cares who buys it. Shit, I'd buy it if I had $20k to blow.
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What's wrong with you?
 
M

Massive Duck. C.M.

Banned
a Master Ninja said:
I'd say this is actually worse, as this is blatantly saying that all the Japanese-Americans are traitors who will harm fellow Americans. It's not only offensive, it's dangerous.

The woodpile comic's gag is just literally illustrating common (at the time) expressions, even though the origin of that one expression is racist propaganda from the Civil War.


So basically at the time Seuss's woodpile comic was made, it was casual racism. When that Japanese comic was made, it was promoting a current program that imprisoned over 100,000 US citizens unjustly.
Click to expand...

There's not really a need to downplay
 
J

jhmtehgamr20xx

Banned
I knew there was a reason I never gave a shit about his work, even when I was a little kid. Just got that good intuition like that.

Marky Mark said:
I get it, it's racist. But it was something drawn in the 20's when that was prevalent and it's a piece of seussian history so I don't see what the big deal is that it's up for auction. It's not going to be printed and handed out a libraries so let it rest in a collection somewhere and who cares who buys it. Shit, I'd buy it if I had $20k to blow.
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Go back to your mediocre movies, "Marky Mark"

Ikael said:
Why are people surprised? Racism was an extremely widespread belief. Same as sexism or eugenics. The inmorality of these beliefs is evident to us due to our historical context, but it indicate little about his personal character. We don't like to acknowdegle it, but we have more moral clarity than our ancestors due to the fact that we are standing in the shoulders of giants, so to speak. We've been born inside a society that considered racism an evil thing, and that has the hilariously naive notion that equality is a "self evident" truth.

Would we have been born on a previous era, we would hold very different beliefs, and these notions would be far from being "self evident". Mainly because people who dared to question the racist paradigm in the past and proclaming yourself to be as a proud anti-racist was not a ticket for redditt patting and accolades, but rather an extremely dangerous posture that posed a very real deadly risk.



Stop putting this into its historic context. Enough with this level-headness and reason-ability!
Click to expand...
Heh, yeah, speak for yourself. Not everyone was like Dr. Seuss back in his day (that is, assuming they were racist. It's just as possible they were trying to make a political point here but without documentation notes from themselves or someone who knew them very well, that's just a guessing game), and if today's people were transported to live back in that time we wouldn't all end up as racists, either. Some people actually base their sense of self around values they define for themselves, not what society tries to dictate to them.

You underestimate the spirit of the individual in people (well, a significant amount of people, anyway).
 
L

leadbelly

Banned
I was curious as to when the word nigger became a pejorative term. According to wikipedia it was around the 1900s. Exactly when I am not sure, but I guess it was viewed as pejorative around the time of the comic.

The book, Nigger Heaven, written in 1926, had mixed reception when it was first released and was even banned in Boston partly due to the term

The book, due in part to the inclusion of the pejorative "nigger" in its title, was met with mixed reception. It was initially banned in Boston.[4] Van Vechten's own father was said to have written his son two letters imploring that he change the title to something less offensive.[5]
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigger_Heaven

Of course the word was originally a neutral term, which for many years was not actually viewed as pejorative.
 
V

VaultBoy101

Member
It's an interesting thing, viewing "heroes" of the past through a modern lens. There's almost always bad that comes along with the good. I doubt we'd be able to fully revere any historical figure if we knew the entirety of their views.
 
V

VaultBoy101

Member
SenorArdilla said:
ITT: All your role models are terrible people.

PC_Warner_Bros_cartoons_zps93a10074.jpg
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Yup. I have those Looney Tunes Golden Collection sets, and some of the original cartoons are racist as fuck. I remember one that's basically an around-the-world tour of every possible racist caricature.

Not related to the above, but Agatha Christie's classic mystery novel Ten Little Indians (alternate title: And Then There Were None), which can be found on many high school reading lists, was originally titled Ten Little N-----s.
 
A

Avixph

Member
Dai101 said:
Nothing really, other than half truths and urban legends. There's no significant evidence that Walt was indeed an antisemetic person. Now Henry Ford...... damn, i love the man but his ideas against the jews......
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Weren't most of the cartoonist and animators that Walt Disney employed Jewish?
 
V

victreeb3l

Member
This honestly ruined my affection for Dr Seuss. I had no idea he was such a racist nor that he also made many others like this.
 
L

Lazyslob

Banned
i dont know why people are upset are even surprised. this was made in 1929 its not like that time was known for its tolerance or anything like that. and if all his later work had no other racist shit maybe he changed. i just take it as the time he grew up and did his work in or maybe im crazy
 
L

leadbelly

Banned
VaultBoy101 said:
It's an interesting thing, viewing "heroes" of the past through a modern lens. There's almost always bad that comes along with the good. I doubt we'd be able to fully revere any historical figure if we knew the entirety of their views.
Click to expand...

Well, it's quite complicated. Charles Dickens (who is another person that used the word nigger btw) was vigorously against slavery, but supported the British colonies, believing that the sooner black people were civilised the better. He viewed Europeans as culturally superior to the tribal communities in Africa at that period. There is no evidence to suggest he believed white people were biologically superior though, he never seemed to have any real concept of the idea of racial superiority.

I'm sure in his day he thought he wasn't racist at all.
 
J

J@hranimo

Banned
Lazyslob said:
i dont know why people are upset are even surprised. this was made in 1929 its not like that time was known for its tolerance or anything like that. and if all his later work had no other racist shit maybe he changed. i just take it as the time he grew up and did his work in or maybe im crazy
Click to expand...

Or maybe things like this no matter what time they are in can make a person upset to see, like myself currently.

I don't hate Dr. Seuss, but...for some reason this bothered me more than expected.
 
C

Currygan

at last, for christ's sake
these are '30 strips, of course racism was rampant at the time. Very few authors were ahead of their time in terms of being progressive... just pick a book and read Nero Wolfe's early stories for example. Archie Goodwin is a very vocal racist towards anyone who is not American or white, despite working for a Montenegrin immigrant
 
D

Dead Man

Member
Everyone was racist then. And the WW2 stuff was the same all over American and lots of allied media at the time. Do people not learn history?
 
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