I Own All Six Racist Dr. Seuss Books!!!

I just realized that six books in my Dr. Seuss collection are considered racist. I’m sure everybody knows what I’m talking about. Even people who don’t read books know about the Dr. Seuss situation, but just in case you don’t know…

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Dr. Seuss Enterprises is addressing the racist and insensitive illustrations that pop up across the works of late children’s author Theodor Geisel, otherwise known as Dr. Seuss.

The company announced on Tuesday, which would’ve been Seuss’ 117th birthday, that six titles will be discontinued: And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street, If I Ran the Zoo, McElligot’s Pool, On Beyond Zebra!, Scrambled Eggs Super!, and The Cat’s Quizzer.

“These books portray people in ways that are hurtful and wrong,” a statement, published to the official Dr. Seuss website, reads. “Ceasing sales of these books is only part of our commitment and our broader plan to ensure Dr. Seuss Enterprises’ catalog represents and supports all communities and families.”

Read more at Six Dr. Seuss books won’t be published anymore due to racist and insensitive imagery.

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I didn’t mean to buy six racist Dr. Seuss books. I didn’t even know these books were racist when I bought them almost two decades ago. All I thought was, cool, a bunch of Dr. Seuss books for sale really cheap; what a great deal!

When I read the books with my daughter back then, I noticed a couple of the controversial images and didn’t think much of them except that they probably would have been edited out if the books had been published twenty years ago.

Now that I realize I have all six books that will no longer be published, I wonder, what should I do with them? I could sell them and get a great price. Since they’ve been banned, their prices have skyracketed. Yes, I spelled it “skyracketed” on purpose. It’s a combination of skyrocket and racket, which I think is appropriate to this situation. I don’t want to be involved in a skyracket.

I could burn the books, but I still like them. If somebody else wants to burn his/her books, more power to that person. But I like a couple of these books a lot, and I burn only books that I don’t like. I don’t burn books that other people don’t like.

If race were the only prism or perspective in which I viewed the world, then maybe I’d get rid of or burn the books. But race is merely one out of millions of perspectives. The people who see things primarily in terms of race miss out on a lot of other stuff, and I’m not going to limit myself because of their narrow-mindedness.

The people who see things mostly by race might be able to limit me in some minor ways (like banning books they find offensive), but I’m not going to cooperate with them on this issue.

Besides, And To Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street is a damn good book. In fact, it’s f***ing awesome. I’d even call it f@cking awesome, but that might be an inappropriate way to talk about a children’s book, even if it’s deemed as racist.

I’m going to keep my six racist Dr. Seuss books. I think I’ll stop calling them racist too. I’ll just call them controversial. Or maybe I won’t call them anything at all. And no, you can’t have them.

Now that I think about it, I believe I’ve got The Song of the South somewhere in my VHS collection.