Virginia School District Cancels Dr. Seuss Ahead of Read Across America Day
“As we become more culturally responsive and racially conscious, all building leaders should know that in recent years there has been research revealing radical undertones in the books written and the illustrations drawn by Dr. Seuss.”
The Loudon County Virginia school district has decided to distance their Read Across America Day activities from what has traditionally also been a celebration of world-famous children’s author Dr. Seuss’s birthday because of “racial undertones,” according to an article at The Daily Wire.
Theodor “Ted” Seuss Geisel, or Dr. Seuss to most of the word, was born on March 2, 1904. In 1998, the National Education Association designated the day as “Read Across America Day,” in an effort to young children excited about reading. The day was, for more than two decades, marked with activities that centered on the beloved children’s author.
The memo obtained by The Daily Wire, regarding the Loudon County school district’s decision, reads:
“Realizing that many schools continue to celebrate ‘Read Across America Day’ in partial recognition of Dr. Seuss’ birthday, it is important for us to be cognizant of research that may challenge our practice in this regard.”
“As we become more culturally responsive and racially conscious, all building leaders should know that in recent years there has been research revealing radical undertones in the books written and the illustrations drawn by Dr. Seuss.”
The left-leaning group, Learning for Justice, citing a 2019 study of more then 50 books penned and illustrated by Dr. Seuss claims that “of the 2,240 (identified) human characters, there are forty-five characters of color representing 2% of the total number of human characters.” Of the 45 characters, 43 exhibited behaviors and appearances that align with harmful and stereotypical Orientalist tropes. The remaining two human characters “are identified in the text as ‘African’ and both align with the theme of anti-Blackness.”
In 2020, the National Education Association rebranded Read Across America’s mission to “Celebrate a Nation of Diverse Readers.”
If Dr. Seuss could comment on the changes to his birthday celebration, he might say: “They say I’m old-fashioned, and live in the past, but sometimes I think progress progresses too fast!”
[Featured image via YouTube]
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From colored people (i.e. low-information attributes) to “people of color (i.e. color blocs, identity defined by skin color, affirmative racism). Diversity dogma (i.e. color judgments), not limited to racism, is a progressive condition.
I never like Seuss, but my children sure did. The repetition sure appealed to those tiny developing brains. It is our duty to do whatever we can to help our child achieve the best outcome. It is a damn shame that so many parents either don’t understand or do not care. So many lives raised to fail, a bad outcome for both the children and the rest of society.
Translation: No one is virtuous enough for us. Even the dead, such as Mr. Geisel, must learn to bow to our (constantly changing) morality.
Isn’t it amazing how when you begin your every day vowing to oppose witchcraft, you begin noticing signs of Satan everywhere?
The Founders are dead. Churchill is dead. Shakespeare is dead. Aristotle is dead.
“Good news, everybody” — cancellation transcends death.
bu and large, those demanding virtue for sham reasons, lack any.
For more appropriate reading in a Leftist Seminary I would suggest Mao’s Little Red Book.
That’s the goal.
When you’re too lazy to try and make it in the private sector, support the left and try to join in the stealing from the masses:
The Elite and Their Privileges in the Soviet Union:
https://communistcrimes.org/en/elite-and-their-privileges-soviet-union
We’re like idiots watching the nation collapse around us. Elections won’t help us for YEARS.
We have to start the talks on secession, and cut off the gangreneous limb trying to kill us all.
Nice read, knew it was done but not how. Thanks for link.
FineReport. It is reaching a point of a schism where a separate identity is established. We need a unity of people with a common purpose to protect liberty and the cultural norms of what we all came to know as “America” and has been perverted by identity-driven politics.
Secession is a last resort. Also, it’s not realistic right now. Legal preparations would have to be made over many months in order for it to be a viable option. I think those preparatory steps have to be taken – hopefully will not be necessary. But unless there is a viable alterative that is ready – the threat of secession will ring hollow and will only be used by radical left to justify a further crackdown on rights.
Stay tuned. More coming in this regard.
FGS, no one supports secession. Well, I guess TheFineReport does, but so what? He’s been banging the crazy drum for at least a decade. He’s one of us, though, nutso ideas and all. You, however, are new and keep shilling, linking, and pushing crazy “citizen unions” in one form or another. Stop it. There is “no more coming” on any part, and you need to just stop spamming for dollars.
FGS, no one supports secession.
__________________________________________________________
here under the lone star we have some rather unique provisions in our state constitution–we were a republic before we joined the union–would not be quite so sure about “no one”
Fuzzy, I think your post is unfair and unnecessary. The previous post surely does not advocate secession. I advocate for unity to push back.
Furthermore, I have not added a link to any third-party in weeks. The main organization I did add a link to in a few prior posts (out of more than 100 posts since December) advocates for taxpayers and has a $0 membership option. Hard to see how that is spamming for dollars. There was a second organization that was linked to 2 weeks ago – but that post was taken down in about 3 minutes so I think it’s irrelevant. Just so you know, I will not link to any organization in future posts.
But there is already significant action in a sort of “Bartleby (the Scrivener) Secession.”
Red states have begin passing “I will not comply” laws on various right-wing issues, using the left’s own “sanctuary city” laws as moral armor against the left’s hypocritical outrage.
Most people are already aware of the numerous counties in the US that have passed resolutions or statutes declaring themselves “Second Amendment Sanctuaries” (including, I recently learned, roughly 125 of about 140 counties/equivalents in Virginia, the major holdouts being the ones which border DC).
My own state is now attempting to join four predecessor states in declaring itself a statewide Second Amendment Freedom Zone — “a policy of keeping state resources from enforcing any federal law or executive rule that runs contrary to the right to bear arms.”
The success of these resolutions and laws is entirely dependent on whether the state, county, or whatnot, backs up the talk with the walk. We’ve already seen an example where a state passed a law declaring firearms that were created, sold, and remained instate as exempt from federal regulation under the Commerce Clause… then when a citizen got hauled in by the feds for exercising his newfound rights, the state ambled away from the fray whistling. We’ve learned, and we’re ensuring that there will be none of that cowardice this time around.
Secession will happen if the Dems force it. Statehood for D.C., intentionally tilting the balance of power in both chambers of Congress, ignoring law and precedent, will provide very strong motivation to some states. I don’t expect violence. The peculiar forces at work that started the Civil War, and the circumstances that brought those forces to a head, will be missing from secession this time around. Violence will not be an unavoidable consequence of a modern realization of secession.
D.C. statehood is but one of a handful of potential triggers. Imagine what will happen if two or more triggers are activated during a short period of time (say, over the course of one or two presidential terms).
Nope- I’m all about the country getting a giant divorce.
Peaceful.
But the ones leaving ought to stiff the majority on the debt.
I prefer rounding up all the Marxists and relocating them, maybe to one of the failed Marxist countries, maybe to shark infested waters or the center of a desert. Why give up valuable real estate? 🙂
Sam I Am isn’t any longer.
Dr, Seuss was writing for a national demographic which was 90% white, about 8-9% black, and about 1% other. Hispanic, a grouping based upon a language which a person or his ancestors spoke, and having NO relationship to race at all, largely did not exist, at the time. So, it is not unusual that his human characters would be predominately white and English speaking. Duhhh.
Yet, through it all, he managed to send a very strong message that people were people, whether they had a star on their belly or not. His books taught the values of kindness, compassion, tolerance, duty, community and facing the world without fear. So, it is only natural that those people opposed to those things would want to ban his books. Who is the danger to our society? Dr. Seuss or the racist hatemongers who see racism behind every bush?
You mean because he wrote in generally good English, with no ‘hos nor other demeaning language that he was writing “white”?
I guess I missed the Ebonics writer who could tell good children stories.
Dr. Seuss grew up in a predominantly white America. At that time, the national culture stressed the attributes that I mentioned. It wasn’t until the 1960s that we see the encroachment of the Me Culture, where personal desires were more important than self sacrifice. Most people do not remember that far back or were not alive then. They have been raised to believe that their desires are more important than anything else. Don’t want to be a mother? Abort the child. Don’t want to make a marriage work? Divorce is easy. Don’t want to work for 20 years to become a financial success? Sell drugs or engage in another line of criminal activity. Keep your promises? Only a fool does that. Then, a shadow began to fall over the nation.
The human characters, Seuss portrayed, reflected people with whom he was familiar and with whom he could identify. Given the times, that was white people. Now today, the climate is different. We are inundated with minorities, in media, far beyond their representation in society. Now, in marketing, appealing to racial demographics is important. And, in the case of some entertainment shows, it may not matter what race the players are, as long as the audience can relate to the characters being portrayed. After all, look how successful a show starring singing pussycats in garbage cans turned out to be. But, when casting is done based largely on the native racial characteristics of the actor, when such are not necessary or desirable for the character being portrayed, is demeaning to the actor.
A color blind society is actually the epitome of civilization.
Mac45, you nailed it. I remember, but as you say, most people now are too young. In my little world, a dead end street of maybe 20 houses in a “good school district”, there are 5 muslim families that I know of, at least two chinese, one India (immigrants), and 8 ordinary Americans, non-immigrants, including me. If there are others I don’t know, they are probably at least half in the immigrant category. Ten year old girls with rags on their heads. Women dressed in rags telling me “they respect the prophets of other religions–ie Jesus–“. I didn’t tell her I believed her prophet was a pedo, but never spoke to her again.
Most of the muslims are Drs at a nearby hospital, with degrees from WhoKnowsWhat U. My experience with one of these was so galling I will never ever go to one of these again. Another gave my dying husband an anti-psychotic without so much as telling me. As the old drinking song goes, “Damn them all”.
Why do we need to import Drs? Why don’t we have enough of our own? I don’t know. Why do we need a whole lot of Chinese elderly who don’t speak English and look at Americans as zoo animals on our welfare systems?
Yes, I’ll remember. For about ten more years, then there’ll be no one to remember.
A chinese church I visited with my neighbors had at least 50 old Chinese people in it, spoke no English, stared at me as if I was a white tiger in a zoo, and not with friendly eyes. Parents of immigrants. Most getting “help” from the “government” , ie ME (my property taxes > $600/month), according to the immigrant offspring.
My other question–honestly, it devils me: how come all these immigrants can afford to live on this street but ordinary Americans can’t?
Ebonics is a sign of extreme ignorance, as is rap.
If there was something like Seuss, it would be about being raped, the joy of getting their own welfare check, guys beating their adversaries, getting a gun and killing, selling drugs and banging women rather they want to or not.
Ok, I know that there are decent blacks, I have known a handful. I grew up in Flint, saw it turn into a ghetto, to the point that the whole city is a ghetto, varying only in degree of ghettoness.
I resent this, the idea of raising blacks up from ignorance and poverty sounded great, the reality was an unmitigated disaster. It cost hard working middle class people 15-20 years of lost equity, which blacks then inherited.
It has destroyed cities all over America, and it failed to improve the condition for most blacks.
What I resent is that the lieberals have spent $22 Trillion dollars of Federal money on “The Great Society” and other wastrel programs, and won’t look at the fine mess they made. Or if they do, they then claim it is because they didn’t spend enough. Poverty in the US was over 25% coming out of the FDR years, but fell rapidly until the Great Society. Since then it has stayed around 13%. So we are not lifting anyone out of poverty with the Great Society and the other lieberal lies. We are instead ruining countless lives that could have been productive citizens rather than third and fourth generation welfare recipients.
No, he was writing for CHILDREN and when children read it exposes them to proper use of the English language, good sentence structure, vocabulary and quite a lot of other things that it is good for them to be exposed to. Does the color of those children’s skin matter? Not at all, all children benefit from reading.
I’ll bet you believe that all races benefit from algebra. But then you haven’t been exposed to the idiocy of the leftist education system that believes Algebra is being taught too “white”. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/teaching-maths-white-privilege-illinois-university-professor-rochelle-gutierrez-a8018521.html
I have two kids under five. I read a lot of Dr. Seuss. They’re great. Really proud one of my kids can read Hop on Pop without me helping.
How can pretend characters be racist? Most aren’t human.
The Leftists have a hammer – and that’s a nail, dammit! Cuz we say it is!
You mean radical ideas like “Green Eggs and Ham” and a “Cat in the Hat” that cleans up after himself?
Seuss was a poet. The only bigots are the people that read his books and think they find something.
These “researchers” remind me of the joke about the psychiatrist that gives an ink blot test to a man. Time after time, he comes up with a racy story in each of the inkblots.
The psychiatrist tells him he has sex on the brain. The man says “but it is YOU that is showing me the dirty pictures”.
That is exactly what is going on with these guys who read anything other than fun reading into Seuss.
Sorry Ohio Historian but Green Eggs and Ham is clearly an anti-Muslim book.
Anti-Semitic and Anti-7th Day Adventist also. Anti-vegan.
Heck, Bob Evans probably disliked the idea of Green Eggs!
Just another thought. Have you ever heard the song “Little Boxes, on the Hillside” and Harry Chapin’s “Flowers are Red”? Those were supposedly protests in favor of lieberalism when they were written, and could both be conservative theme songs today against the education system. I suspect both of those are banned by the left.
I actually had green eggs and ham one day. I was in the Army and one St. Patty’s day the mess hall put green food dye into every foodstuff that would take said dye. That morning, the scrambled eggs were dyed green, and I forewent my usual bacon for the ham, just so I could have green eggs and ham.
As luck would have it, I was able to take a seat at a table with Sgt. Bobby Fox. So I had green eggs and ham with a Fox, the only thing missing was the box!
On a train, in the rain….
Not antisemitic. The illustration is so vague that if not for the title there is no way anyone would have a clue what food it is that Sam-I-Am refuses to eat. The official Hebrew translation’s title is My-Name-Is-Shev, and the food he refuses to eat is never specified; it’s just “that”. Generations of Israeli kids have read the book without knowing or needing to know what “that” is.
Correction: Of course in the original English the food is specified in the text, over and over and over. But in the Hebrew translation it is not. So an Israeli kid can grow up loving that book and reading it over and over, without once knowing what it is that My-Name-Is-Shev refuses to eat.
Thanks for the knowledge of that book. So it could be rewritten to be Muslim and be green yogurt and baklava, so I guess if you judge the rewrite it is not anti-Semitic. It sounds like the Muslim kids need to read I-am-Shev (retitiled to be I-am-Mohammed obviously).
Well, something that rhymes well in Arabic. And like the Hebrew version, the food needn’t be specified at all. It can just be “that”.
The funny thing is that Dr. Seuss’s worst books are the preachy, didactic. liberal ones–one about bad nuclear weapons (“The Butter Battle Book”), another about the environment (“The Lorax”). His best book–“The Cat in the Hat”–left politics out of it and spoke directly to children about being a child. Not only that, Dr. Seuss gave tons of money to Dartmouth’s medical school, now named for him (Theodore Geisel) and his wife Audrey. Doesn’t that count for something? And what did these critics ever do for anyone?
The leftist of the 1960’s is a conservative today. You know, believing in free speech for example.
Other than burning out some buildings in Kenosha, Minneapolis, Detroit, Seattle, Portland, and numerous other places, knocking down statues of people who founded the country while ignoring those of people like Marx who are trying to destroy it, and trying to cancel your speech, they are doing nothing for this country.
The mantra back in the late ’60s was, “Never trust the MAN.” But as we learned only later from their subsequent behavior, it turns out that the lesson most of them took away was, “Never trust the Republi-CAN.” Even though the MAN responsible for sending the vast majority of those of draft age to die in a faraway jungle for nothing was one of the top three socialist Democrats in presidential history.
I resent the folly of many of my contemporaries for taking what was a proper, beneficial mindset and screwing it up with their prejudices.
Then: “Never trust anyone over 30” and “Question authority”
Now: “Shaddup, because Government!!”
Can’t agree, OH. I lived it. The leftists of 1970 are not the conservatives of today. Leftists in the 70’s blew themselves up building bombs, broke into and disrupted University classes, killed policemen. Kidnapped people. Murdered people.
The difference? Not as many, not as protected by the Media and by politicians, not as “justified”, not over blackness or lack of it.
Those that were parents gave birth to the leftists of today, taught them violence and subversion– the DA of San Francisco (or LA–I forget which) is the son of two of these 1970 murdering leftists who I believe were teaching in a University recently. Look it up.
Wasn’t totally trying to claim that the consevatives of today are the leftists of the 1960’s. What I was trying to convey is that the leftists built these supposed ideas, and now are espousing them. We all have to live in the same type of house made the same for “global climate catastrophe” reasons. We all must only see red flowers and green leaves because of “science”. I was not indicating that we have swapped spaces, but I will freely admit most conservatives have moved WAY left both socially and economically.
I meant “are NOT now espousing them”. Sorry I missed the NOT.
So there I was driving along in 1978 and heard on the radio that the Supreme Court had made a decision in a case involving a fella named Allan Bakke.
At that time I thought to myself, “Well that race preference crap is finally over.”
Oh well…..
Why would leftist want to cancel Dr. Seuss? It is a mystery!
I cannot have to do that he exposed their political modus operandi so even little kids can know that when a leftist tells the people they “want to fix things” they are just being so smart and so slick. A truth that leftist cannot let spread.
…would leftists want…
…It cannot be just because he exposed…
…when leftists tell the people…
sigh—I really need my coffee it would seem.
Even though Loudon county is in the deep suburbs in Virginia, leftist ideology has taken grasp. All those progressives who bad mouthed suburbs in their 20s, based on their leftist professors teachings, are now moving to the suburbs and destroying them with their brainwashing.
Loudoun County is considered a “bedroom community” to Washington DC. Many people commute to DC for their daily jobs. Northern Virginia, in general, is mostly leftist, and the schools have been duly infected. My children enjoyed reading Dr. Seuss’ books. hat is next on the commie “cancel list?” W
Leftist culture cancels you even 30 years after you pass. The Left can’t not destroy. They are not fulfilled until they destroy other peoples lives, work, and society.
Yet our first black President and first lady loved Dr. Seuss books. Does that mean the Obamas are stupid? Is that an indirect way of dissing them?
I like the way they say “research revealed” this racist info, as if it were given on Mt. Sinai in a mist of smoke. And many of us reject these false leftist beliefs and religion.
Virginia School District Cancels Dr. Seuss Ahead of Read Across America Day
That is incorrect. Loudoun County Public Schools provided guidance “to schools during the past couple of years to not connect Read Across America Day exclusively with Dr. Seuss’ birthday. We continue to encourage our young readers to read all types of books that are inclusive, diverse and reflective of our student community, not simply celebrate Dr. Seuss. Dr. Seuss books have not been banned and are available to students in our libraries and classrooms, however, Dr. Seuss and his books are no longer the emphasis of Read Across America Day in Loudoun County Public Schools.” {emphasis added}
https://library.nashville.org/sites/default/files/styles/max_650x650/public/images/embedded/racism-natives_if-i-ran-the-zoo.jpg
First, where above does either DW or this article say that the books are banned by anyone other than Learning for Justice calling for them?
If your comment is to a poster here, reply to them please. But don’t tell us in boldface that someone didn’t ban the book when the article does not say that anyone banned a book.
And the leftists accuse the right of polemics and fake news.
As far as the picture you posted, is there a problem with it? You can go to National Geographic and see native dress such as that in their pictures. Next you’ll ban National Geographic for their pictures of African history.
Ohio Historian: where above does either DW or this article say that the books are banned by anyone other than Learning for Justice calling for them?
The title of the blog post says Seuss was canceled by the school district. That is incorrect.