I am pretty sure it’s the opposite considering how the concept of racism has morphed in recent years.
> my meaning was that this "cancellation" (which is really just people acknowledging that something is bad) is not applied by some power structure
This is oxymoronic. Perhaps you misunderstand what power structure means. It doesn’t have to be a legal institution or centralized in any way.
I'm pretty sure most people are in agreement that wiping out history and culture is bad.
The question is what is the appropriate tradeoff. Should new editions of these books be published, targeted to children? Probably not. Should they be effectively banned from being sold (used)? At least not without due consideration to the alternatives, like marking them.
Else, few, and only fringe usually crazy people would not agree that e.g. slavery, seggregation, jim crow, redlining, etc, were and are bad.
But a certain modern "anti-racism" is not used against the establishment or the white privileged class, and is not even driven by blacks themselves demanding justice.
It's driven by upper middle class whites and their wanabees in-preparation (e.g. higher end college students), against lower class whites.
And as such, it's not just classist, but also blind to the injustices working class whites and "white trash", blacks, latinos, etc, face because of poverty and inequality - it serves as a class signal to perpetuate 'woke white supremacy' (and as a career to some).
Then again, what I know? I'm not American, and we have been actual slaves ourselves in my country...
This is kind of like: should you be advertising cigarettes to minors? (Should you be advertising those at all?)
I do think it's quite painful to be cutting out culturally important artifacts like this, but I also understand the argument to do so, and it has pretty much nothing to do with upper-class vs. lower-class.
Most of the issues with these books seems fairly minor; it sounds like it should be feasible to release a new edition avoiding the negative stereotypes while retaining pretty much all of the cultural value. Not sure why the publisher didn't try to do that... or maybe they are, and this is just the way they're doing that so as to also hype up the new edition for sales. Who knows. (Yes, I realize eBay's decision is technically distinct from the publishers, but clearly they're trying to avoid negative PR here, i.e. being risk-averse by just following somebody else's lead - I doubt any of these dominos would have fallen without the publishers choices).
Either that or caricatures like "my opponents don't think racism is bad" are unhelpful straw-man arguments.
I would love to believe that, but there's been too much evidence lately that some people love racist caricatures.
That include anybody that cares to point me to HN guidelines. Have a nice weekend, but fuck off in the mean time
Do you feel threatened? Fuck off.
Do you feel like an idiot? Fuck off.
Do you feel I'm having a bad day? Fuck off.
For the record. This post on Dr. Seuss has no place on HN. If it is allowed on HN but dissent ideas are not, then fuck off together with your woke HN points. I'm sick of idiots turned social warriors. Fuck off
I'm pretty sure most people are in agreement that racist caricatures are bad.
> Yeah, no "power structure", just the mainstream media, the corporate world, ad agencies, governments, government agencies, web-mobs, FAANG - the biggest tech companies in the world plus Clouldflare and others, payment processors, the "good society" class wise and so on, with an increasing number of BS laws on their side too...
My wording could have been better, but my meaning was that this "cancellation" (which is really just people acknowledging that something is bad) is not applied by some power structure, and is certainly not a weapon that can be aimed at arbitrary concepts at will. I agree that free speech is important, but hate speech is not.