That line of thinking is incredibly patronizing and paternalistic. When white people do something because they think it looks good, it’s free choice. When non-white people do something because they think it looks good, it’s the “damaging” consequence of “western imperialism.”

It’s like how white people think they invented colorism, even though the preference for fairer skin in women exists throughout the pre-colonial historical record in India, Africa, and Asia. (As a dark skinned person whose half white daughter came out darker than him, I applaud the trend away from fairer skin as a beauty standard! But white people thinking they invented the beauty standard to begin with is self-centered and paternalistic: https://quillette.com/2019/02/13/the-origins-of-colourism/ We had colorism in India long before white people.)

It’s interesting that you mention colorism in India. The British were not the first group of people to rule India. There has been a history of thousands of years of migration from Central Asia to both India and Europe. These people had light skin. They became part of the ruling class of the places they migrated to.

In India that meant dark skinned Dravidian natives were ruled by the light skinned upper classes or castes. As a result of minimal intermarriage, these Central Asian genes are found mostly in “groups of priestly status”, ie, Brahmins. This led to the standard of beauty becoming ingrained.

There’s other factors as well, in that it’s a status symbol for some families to make their women stay at home rather than work. Not having to work in the fields means you don’t get tanned, making such people appear more beautiful by this standard.

Side note, I’d like to apologise to the Indians who believe that they’re the original inhabitants of the country and that “others” (ie, Muslims) are “invaders”. However, notwithstanding your hurt feelings, you still gotta face facts.

Source - A new study squelches a treasured theory about Indians’ origins. The Aryans did not come from India; they conquered it (https://www.economist.com/asia/2018/04/05/a-new-study-squelc...)

> Side note, I’d like to apologise to the Indians who believe that they’re the original inhabitants of the country and that “others” (ie, Muslims) are “invaders”. However, notwithstanding your hurt feelings, you still gotta face facts.

People act like Indians had this authentic indigenous culture before British colonization, overlooking that it’s the synthesis of wave after wave of colonization over millennium. I spoke English, even before coming to America, because of British colonialism. But I’ve got a Hebrew last name because Muslims colonized India before the British and brought it over from the Middle East. The food I grew up eating is a product of those same Muslim invaders, plus ingredients (chili peppers) sourced from Europeans who got them from the Americas. If you removed the layers of colonization from the culture I’m not sure what you’d have left.

The British, of course, are themselves the result of wave after wave of colonization to the British isles. If you peeled away the influences of the Norman colonizers, the Saxons, the Romans, the Vikings, etc., what would be left?

It doesn’t make sense. Whites can tan or not tan at will to their detriment (melanoma).

Japanese used to have a stigma related to being tanned as it represented manual labor. Not being tanned meant you didn’t work like a peasant. In western society oddly being tanned was associated with having leisure time to tan. All in all ‘not tanning’ was all around better than foot binding as a status marker.

Now, in Japan you see two situations people who want to look untanned and others who want to look ultra tanned (really dark make up).

I’m sure this will make these ultra sensitive types go into a tailspin.

Now in South Asia there is a tendency for middle class women to lighten their skin tone. Is that good, bad? I dunno. That should be up to them. To me it’s no different from other make up or getting hair transplants or nosejobs or other cosmetic surgery. But some people want to jam their preconception on other people’s freedoms.

>When white people do something because they think it looks good, it’s free choice. When non-white people do something because they think it looks good, it’s the “damaging” consequence of “western imperialism.

White people engage in other forms of plastic surgery because various media has told them a certain form is the most beautiful. The difference here is that Western media has clearly spent over a century villianizing certain with Asian traits.

people also look down on plastic surgery influenced by cultural beauty standards

Those eye representations are evident in many kinds of East Asian art, including wood prints and paintings centuries old, before exposure to the West.

Wonder if Classical Japanese art like this[1] will get banned?

Interestingly lots of Manga and Anime go the other way and give people vertical eye shapes (buggs bunny eyes).

[1] https://spokenvision.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Utamaro-...

It's not their use alone that is damaging, it's their use to make them into stereotypical evil characters.

I don’t see Seuss making them into evil characters.

I do see woodcuts using the same eye rendering for demons and other underworld characters, but I hope those don’t get banned by a foreign culture because it thinks it misrepresents its own people.

At this point people are on a veritable ‘witch-hunt’ looking for their witches and waiting for Bradburys Firemen to come burn them.

Evil, maybe not explicitly... but over-emphasizing asian-ness in order to portray them as a one-dimensional "other" is not a culturally sensitive way to handle it. I don't even think there's anything wrong with them being asian, it's the caricature aspect of it where it emphasizes race above all else.

Those woodcuts you are referring to have a much different context. There's a big difference between a white man caracituring based on race and an asian culture using this depiction on their own terms.

I disagree here. I don’t see him putting people in there as one dimensional characters.

And I don’t think things can only be described by people on their own terms. If it were the case then only descendants of imperialists (Japanese in Asia, Britons in India and America, etc) could talk about the aftermath. And only Africans can talk about things Africans and only Mexicans about Mexico, etc. That’s untenable.

> I disagree here. I don’t see him putting people in there as one dimensional characters.

I respect your difference in opinion. I'm interested in how asian / black people feel about these Dr. Seuss books.

> And only Africans can talk about things Africans and only Mexicans about Mexico, etc. That’s untenable

I really don't think anybody is suggesting that

> I respect your difference in opinion. I'm interested in how asian / black people feel about these Dr. Seuss books.

Which Asian and Black people? Inevitably, it seems like it’s some professor of ethnic studies that are consulted about these questions. (That’s actually exactly what happened here to decide on what Dr. Seuss books were racist.) But think about that for a moment. Do you think the opinions of a random white Columbia University social sciences professor are a fair gauge of “how white people feel” about some issue? Obviously not. Then why would you assume the same is true as to people of color?

As a person of color I am vigorously opposed to this trend of putting professors and activists in charge of speaking for people of color. It’s totally distorting the conversation we are having with the rest of America, and also amongst ourselves. My mom and aunts, immigrants from Muslim countries, fret over their kids being exposed to western moral values (divorce, premarital sex, disrespect for elders, aggressive individualism, etc.) I have never heard them complain about some depiction in some book or movie. Meanwhile, professors and activists are making a huge deal about pictures and depictions in our name. But they are simultaneously working with white social progressives to undermine things that typical people in these communities care a lot more about. It’s perverse.

> I don’t see him putting people in there as one dimensional characters.

How are you just ignoring his WWII career as a propaganda artist? I linked you one of the tamer examples, but he was creating cartoons depicting both Japanese and Germans as the evil enemy.

Both the Germans and Japanese were categorically bad enemies we had the absolute right and duty to fight at all costs.

Ignoring whether that's true, this doesn't make the propaganda not racist.

we are talking about the book that just got banned for no reason not his other obviously racist work.

Right, obviously we should ignore his clearly racist work when judging whether his other work employs harmful racist stereotypes.

>I don’t see Seuss making them into evil characters

He was making anti-Japan propaganda, there's no doubt he made them into evil characters.

Proof

http://keyeventsofworldwar2.weebly.com/uploads/1/9/6/4/19640...

Do you have a problem with anti Japan war propaganda?

Much of it is extremely racist?

Isn't that what war propaganda is about? To highlight differences and paint an enemy in the worst possible light as a way to rally against a fanatical enemy who doesn't consider you human.

Though I find issue with how you view dehumanizing the enemy as acceptable as you say they don't consider us human, and I'd argue that such dehumanization always causes more harm then benefit, neither of those points matter here.

If that's how you view war propaganda, clearly nearly a century after the war things influenced by such propaganda should not be exposed to young children.

This is a slippery-slope and it's already played out in other contexts e.g. black-sploitation.

Even "bad guys" can be good characters [0], the most complex/nuanced characters are also complex. Start dictating that <x> characters can't have negative attributes, and you end up with boring, simplistic caricatures of <x> thrown in as tokens, but never managing the highlight (because why would you want boring, restricted characters to be in central roles?).

[0]: Is Gregory House a good character? Is "Dexter"? What about characters from the shield, or breaking bad?

how did Dr Seuss make them stereotypical evil characters in his book ?

Can you support this claim about imperialism (also, "common" is a rather huge exaggeration)? I hear it made all the time in a hand wavy way with no substantive demonstration. Frankly, it sounds rather condescending, as in: East Asians couldn't possibly find the kinds of eye shapes more common among European stock more beautiful unless they were conditioned into believing that in some way! Seems rather dismissive.

Western imperialism is an obvious factor in the East Asian countries this is popular in, such as South Korea and Taiwan. There's no concrete proof this is a result of imperialism, but the differences between the counterparts North Korea and China provide limited evidence it's the cause.

As for common, the estimates I can find show between 1/5th and 1/3rd of South Korean woman receive double eyelid surgery.

And western people often get nose jobs.