Dr. Suess was a German-American. In his youth, through college, he did exhibit racism and antisemitism in his writings. By the time WWII arrived, he was writing political cartoons, and they expressed strong condemnation of racism and antisemitism. On the other hand, they were virulently anti-Asian. This was the prevailing sentiment at the time, given that the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. A decade later, he expressed remorse for this, and wrote “Horton Hears a Who” – not only dedicated to a Japanese friend after a trip to Japan, but with content that delivered a message of inclusiveness of all people – to make amends for his earlier views.
Not so incidentally, the “Mulberry Street” book is being banned due to a line that refers to a “Chinaman eating a bowl of rice with sticks”. The accompanying illustration depicts said Chinaman eating said bowl with chopsticks and – horrors! – slanted lines for eyes. This is clearly hurtful to all people of Chinese descent who, true, have epicanthic folds and eat rice with stucks, but this is due to no fault of their own.
Anyway, the original version referred to a “Yellow-faced Chinaman” – with a picture of a yellow-faced Chinaman – which is clearly not a compliment. A few years later the yellow face was edited out of both text and color. But we are now wiser and realize that Dr. Suess was still an insensitive soul.
