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At a very young age, children can begin to internalize harmful racial stereotypes based on the environment and media they’re exposed to, with a number of studies showing children as young as three can harbor racial bias.īut the problem isn’t just the presence of stereotypes in children’s literature. They are crucial to early vocabulary development, offer morals and lessons, and shape how children understand the world around them. Shouldn’t we be just as committed to making sure that the next generation of kids don’t learn those ideas in the first place? (“Oh, The Time You’ll Save!”)Ĭhildren’s books have a profound impact on young, developing minds. So much effort is put into teaching adults to unlearn the deep-seated racism they picked up at a young age. It’s not just Seuss we see these same issues come up again and again with beloved books and movies like “The Jungle Book,” “Babar,” “Curious George,” and much of the Disney canon. When you grow up in a world that has harmful messages and images that are constantly, and in many ways unconsciously, communicated through so many staples of our childhoods, it communicates an exclusionary message. Raising kids in a multicultural society requires ensuring that they don’t carry the same biases that we do. So I took this news as a small but significant milestone for the millions of other parents of color who have struggled with the same challenges I have.īut instead of sparking a public discussion about what the future of representation in children’s literature can and should look like, this decision has led to a tiresome dialogue about so-called “cancel culture.” Fox News dedicated much of its broadcast Tuesday to the claim that leftists were trying to erase Seuss’s entire legacy, connecting it to a broader paranoia on the right about the renaming of schools and tearing down of Confederate statues. Often, I was forced to improvise on the fly - changing pronouns from “he” to “she” or “they,” and sometimes even resorting to coloring a white character’s skin with a brown marker. As a new parent, I was surprised and frustrated by how hard it was to find those books. I have two young daughters, and I’ve spent countless hours looking for books that would reflect their experiences and encourage their ambitions. Seuss’s books because, in the company’s words, they “portray people in ways that are hurtful and wrong.”

Seuss Enterprises announced it would no longer be publishing six of Dr. By Meena Harris / Special To The Washington Post

And to think i saw it on mulberry street value