Please Don’t Drag Dr. Seuss Into Your Culture War

Clarence Page, Tribune Content Agency on Mar 8, 2021

Ah, say it ain’t so, I thought. I was a mere first grader when I spotted the book in the “second grade” shelves of our school library. I was immediately smitten by its amusing artwork, the allure of the mysterious “It” in its title and the way the book’s narrative captures the sense of mystery, curiosity and imagination that later evolved into an attraction to journalism.

The story follows Marco, a young boy on a walk home who, page after page, dreams up an increasingly elaborate account of the people and vehicles that he supposedly sees on his way home. He wants an impressive story to tell his father when he gets home. However — spoiler alert! — when he gets home he decides instead to tell his father what he actually saw: a simple everyday horse and wagon.

Why did the kid change his mind? That little mystery haunted me throughout grade school. I made an annual ritual out of returning to “Mulberry Street,” where I kept noticing something new in its colorful pages and hearing my own father’s voice when Marco’s dad admonishes him like one of my journalism professors to “Stop telling such outlandish tales./ Stop turning minnows into whales.”

But now, I wonder, has “Mulberry Street” reached the end of the road? I now know that Geisel, who died in 1991 at age 87, heard numerous complaints about one of the book’s many characters, described as “a Chinaman who eats with sticks.” Seuss responded. He changed the text to “Chinese man,” edited out the man’s long pigtail and whitened his yellow skin color.

Elsewhere — and closer to home to me as an African American — are objections to another discontinued book, “If I Ran the Zoo,” which was published in 1950 and includes caricatures of big-lipped “Africans” who are drawn shirtless and shoeless and wearing grass skirts. I won’t miss it.

But as one who grew up in an America emerging from Jim Crow segregation and now collects racist memorabilia in recognition of how far we have come as a society, I try to judge Geisel not only by the standards of his times but also by how much he tried to improve our standards.

Inside “The Sneetches,” “The Zax,” “Too Many Daves” and “What Was I Scared Of?,” among other stories, you can find messages of tolerance, acceptance, respect and other virtues that have won international praise from educators.

So I don’t only fault Seuss for reflecting the racist standards of his times. I also give him credit for trying to improve them.

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(E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@chicagotribune.com.)