Dr. Seuss could soon be canceled as an educational group in Virginia has claimed the iconic book series promotes “anti-blackness and white supremacy.”
The group behind the change, Learning for Justice, claims they want to create a framework for anti-bias education and has discouraged schools across the state from celebrating or reading Dr. Seuss.
And, according to the Daily Wire, it’s working.
“Loudoun County Public Schools, one of the nation’s most affluent school districts, announced that it will no longer recognize Dr. Seuss on his birthday. In an announcement obtained by The Daily Wire, the school district said that Dr. Suess’s children’s books contain ‘racial undertones’ that are not suitable for ‘culturally responsive’ learning,” the outlet reported.
The group’s suggestion comes just ahead of “Read Across America Day” on March 2 — which was made in 1998 in honor of Seuss’ birthday. The announcement went on to say the district would no longer correlate the day of reading with Dr. Seuss.
“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,” the announcement said. “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.”
BizPac Review adds:
Formerly known as “Teaching Tolerance,” Learning for Justice has been a strong proponent of teaching racial and social justice to children as young as five years-old. They are the educational arm of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).
The organization wrote a magazine piece entitled: “It’s Time to Talk About Dr. Seuss.” In the article, they quote a study issued by St. Catherine University which claims that Dr. Seuss’s books are chock-full of “orientalism, anti-blackness, and white supremacy.”
After reviewing more than 50 of Seuss’s books, they came to the conclusion that there just wasn’t enough diversity in them. Many of the stories were written in the 1950s.
“Of the 2,240 (identified) human characters, there are 45 of color representing two percent of the total number of human characters,” the study states. Concerning the 45 characters of color, 43 “exhibited behaviors and appearances that align with harmful and stereotypical Orientalist tropes.”