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 ?