No. Seems a minority gained too much influence. No idea why they are perceived as influential in the first place? They exhibit horrible behaviour. Letting go of Seuss seems like a small price to pay to get rid of them. But the sum total is censorship.
The Most Intolerant Wins: The Dictatorship of the Small Minority
It suffices for an intransigent minority – a certain type of intransigent minorities – to reach a minutely small level, say three or four percent of the total population, for the entire population to have to submit to their preferences. Further, an optical illusion comes with the dominance of the minority: a naive observer would be under the impression that the choices and preferences are those of the majority.
edit: or would you prefer "that's what a free market does"? Either way, this is a remarkably incendiary, and frankly absurd, attempt to recast voting with one's wallet as "dictatorship".
No, you are not. A substantial majority of people consider this foolish
Just think of it as a weird entertainment show that doesn’t have to be rational. There are crazies in all historical eras; the various social justice people are ours :)
> A substantial majority of people consider this foolish
[citation needed]. While ebay banning them may be a bit much, I don't know anyone IRL who is upset that Dr. Seuss's B-list books with offensive stereotypes are no longer being sold.
And I haven't heard anyone I've met in person argue in favor of the banning, and earlier (before the ebay thing) someone I know irl (well, haven't seen them in person in a while, but I still talk to them frequently) complained about the unpublication, and I warned against overreacting about it (now, hearing the ebay thing, I do think the ebay thing is indicative of something which is a somewhat larger concern).
(I've only spoken to one person I've met irl about the topic. It is likely that others other people I know would have a variety of different opinions on it, if it were brought up, but the topic didn't come up when we spoke recently.)
Not really sure why it would need to; I was just pointing out that claiming what "a substantial majority" of people think ought to have something backing it up, especially since it didn't jive with either of our anecdotes.
Had you ever heard of these six books before today? Have you ever read them? How many were sold?
We've been sanitising kids books for decades now.
What version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory do you own? The original with actual African slaves and the colonialist rescue narrative, or the later version with Oompa Loompas and the colonialist rescue narrative? What version of Edward's Sneeze from the Thomas the Tank Engine series do you own? The one that uses the N word and has a black face joke, or the one that replaced the N word but kept the black face gag?
There are like a million kids books published each year. We're not going to miss the few that have lazy, racist, stereotypes.
You just proved the point that things have gone too far. Instead of quietly editing out a drawing or word or two it now must be banned in every store, from ever platform, and even the word "Mulberry", for example, must be purged from theme parks. I wish there weren't old racist things it books too, but the weird censorship and book banning creeps me out.
> Had you ever heard of these six books before today? Have you ever read them?
Yes, I own McElligot's Pool and I particularly remember borrowing On Beyond Zebra from the library for its imaginary alphabet.
The offensive material in Pool appears to be the "Eskimo fish" (the word "Eskimo" apparently being derogatory), and in Zebra, somewhat obscurely, a "Nazzim of Bazzim" riding a camel called a "Spazzim".
> We've been sanitising kids books for decades now.
I don't really have a problem with that, but they aren't being sanitized are they? They're just not being sold at all.
I bought a used version of an early edition of the original Where's Waldo on eBay. I later picked up a modern reprinting of all of them. My son and I were inspecting side-by-side and noticed some differences. Made the books more fun in a way (although if there had been something outrageously offensive in the original that would be a different matter).
Exactly how is Roald Dahl, Dr Seuss or Wilbert Awdry lazy?
Looking at newspaper archives, "as black as niggers" was a used term, interestingly often around WW1 but also coal trains, which is Thomas the Tank Engines premise.
Mads Brügger's documentary "The Ambassador" has him getting Pygmy 'assistants', in a complex commentary of sorts.
Dr Seuss changed the Chinaman in On Mulberry Street once already.
The only laziness is people try to Just World these book burnings. How about we put them in the adult section of libraries, that would require effort to think about I guess. When will Facebook Marketplace ban this, will people reading them on Youtube be banned. How long before newspaper archives ban people searching on "as black as niggers". How long before they delete those articles.
The the typical answer to many of your questions is yes, and where the answers are no, the mission should be to preserve as the impact from selling them is apparently minimal.
You're not the only one. People are started to organise against this poison - in fact I read just yesterday about the launch of one new organisation to push back: https://www.fairforall.org/
It hasn't even gone as far as the actual Puritanism. Most mainstream web properties do not allow any pornography to be distributed via their service and will remove anything perceived as vaguely pornographic (ironically eBay is a rare exception, but it's walled off). Sometimes even innocuous nudity falls into that category.
Nobody on Hacker News compares that policy with Nazi book burning though.
Why should eBay override the wants of buyers in this way? How many people think the continued sale of Dr. Seuss books is doing harm? I think there are opportunities for less woke companies to gain share.
It's weird that these books got pulled from circulation in the first place; the offensiveness is relatively mild (especially for the time), and quite a few of these have historical and literary significance (including the very first children's book published under the "Dr. Seuss" pen name).
eBay deciding unilaterally that people can't buy or sell already-printed copies is just icing on the weirdness cake. This is the same website where searching for "minstrel" or "mammy" turns up a veritable smörgåsbord of racist caricatures, and yet some Dr. Seuss books cross the line for them?
I agree with you that it's a little weird that eBay has decided to draw the line there, but you might give a second thought to what constitutes "relatively mild offensiveness".
These racist caricatures have a long and ugly history, and they persist. They may seem mild to you, but to people who have to deal with racist caricatures every day of their lives, it's unpleasant. Not just having to explain to your children why they've been presented like that in this book targeted to them, but why all of the other children they know will have been exposed to the same images.
I don't think you intended to diminish that in your post, but I think it's worth taking note when you tell other people that they shouldn't be offended by something when you don't experience it.
Take a look at the images, and you can see why the publishers felt that they were better off without them. As for why eBay decided to glom onto that... that I can't say.
Maybe I'm old fashioned but all I see is a smiling boy, in traditional Chinese dress, eating what appears to be rice out of a bowl with chopsticks. Are there actually Chinese people who find this offensive? Why?
As someone with an Asian background, it's not offensive at all, and I can't think of an Asian person who would find it offensive.
This is just cancel culture playing out. Weak, risk-averse executives cowardly bending the knee to a small group of malicious, narcissistic activists.
This reminds me of the "What is the problem with Apu?" fiasco. No Indian I knew cared, but a small number of sociopathic activists forced the hands of the cowards in charge.
It’s clear as an Asian person you need the insights of white people to determine what you should/shouldn’t be offended about in the depiction of your own race.
As someone with an Asian background, you should go read some of Seuss' newspaper comics where he argues for Japanese internment, and then look at that picture again in that context
That seems like confirmation bias. The book was published before WW2, and the white people in that picture look just as ridiculous and caricatured as the Asian, with dots for eyes and absurd costumes and postures.
I care. Nearly every kid in middle school watched simpsons except me (my parents said it was bad, I had no idea why at the time), and every day I would have to deal with the same Apu jokes and stale imitated accents. At the time, I didn't even know what it was a reference to, and I just took it as kids being kids. But when I grew up, I realized that all that bullshit was pretty much just because of this one character. And I don't want any Indian-American kid to ever have to deal with that stuff again. Its about education and making sure there are real depictions of Indians on screen (not played by other races), not just outright banning media.
> forced the hands of the cowards in charge
So you support a white actor voicing an Indian character, and don't want some Indian-Americans added to the show? Change is good when something is messed up. Our problem wasn't with the show itself, its how the show influences the behavior of society negatively, and the fact that there was simply no other representation of Indian-Americans in media at the time.
South Park, Simpsons, Family Guy and all the greats are packed full of racially-adventurous humour and that's part of what makes these shows great. Scottish, British, Indian, Japanese, Jewish, Muslim and virtually everyone is picked on.
They're equal opportunity offenders.
If you don't like it, that's your prerogative, but don't force your preferences on the rest of us.
I don’t support hank azaria voicing the character, and i believe an indian writer should be deciding what apu says. I’m not saying things should be cancelled, we just want representation. You can make fun of cultures and people, but just recognize when jokes are having a negative impact on their targets in the real world. it’s incredibly disheartening that so many other problematic representations and things like yellowface are being addressed, but apparently nobody cares about this.
> and i believe an indian writer should be deciding what apu says
This seems to belie the entire concept of fiction writing. Must that writer also be a straight married male with children and own a convenience store? Can a male writer write a book with female characters, or vice versa?
I understand Hank as saying there that there ought to be south Asian voices in the writers room, not that they should have complete control over what Apu says.
I don't know what's special about this case. I mean I understand what's of special importance to you, but if writer <-> character matching is required here, I don't see what would prevent it from becoming a universalizable rule that would turn "write what you know" from a piece of hackneyed advice into a moral principle.
Because many prominent Indian-Americans share a similar opinion. Vivek Murthy (previous/future surgeon general), Hasan Minhaj, Aziz Ansari, were all in the film and have had similar experiences to mine. Most famous Indian Americans have in fact spoken out about it, and we do care, unlike 'the indians you know' who you implied had the opinion of most of us.
I know dang likes to tell us that Hacker News turning into Reddit is an illusion, but sometimes it really does turn into Reddit. Like this comment, right now.
In the interest of good HN commenting spirit I'll assume good faith on GP and elaborate on my snarky post. I'm sure that many people are tired of comedian's incessant refrain of the importance of "punching up." It's pretentious and tired, but before that the tired phrases were "I just want to make people laugh" and "I make fun of everyone equally." GP's first ethnic group cited were the Scots, so let's go there in the context of North America. Depending on your view, Scottish people are either part of or closely related to the dominant ethnic and racial group. They are not recent immigrants and share language, accent and given names with the majority of the population. By contrast (and especially in the 90s when the Simpsons enjoyed its prime) South Asian immigrants are a visibly different recent minority ethnic group. They have distinct languages, accents and generally don't use western given names for their children. So the Groundskeeper Willie/Scottsman argument is creating a false sense of fairness. To make a tired youth reference, making fun of the grunge kid with the long hair and the weird pale kid with the sweatpants and long fingernails aren't the same thing.
As to why not have whites play Asians even in a cartoon when they can just as easily play space aliens and pink unicorns? The same reason we all hate Big Bang Theory, it leads to tired and insulting jokes based on shallow stereotypes. This is why Asians don't like Apu, because most of the jokes around him are based on lazy and frequently negative stereotypes. The jokes about space aliens and pink unicorns could also be lazy, but there's no space aliens or pink unicorns to get affected by them, fortunately. Remember that Nahasapeemapetilon isn't even a name in any culture, it's made up to sound funny to western audiences.
Apu is on the whole a very positive stereotype - a successful and responsible small business owner who's respected by his and contributes to his community.
Compare him to someone like Cletus who is a negative stereotype of white Southerners, portrayed as an extremely low IQ ignoramus. Or Kyle's cousin in South Park who's a negative stereotype of a Jew, portrayed as a hypersensitive money-grubber. And so on.
Your injury is nothing more than an imagined grievance.
"This is why Asians don't like"
Speak for yourself. You aren't a spokesperson for South Asians, and not all of them are on the same wokeness bandwagon.
The problem wasn’t Apu or if he was played by a white actor or not, if he didn’t exist the kids would have made fun of you for anything that made you stand out. Skin, what shoes you wore, what you brought home for lunch, do you like a girl, or heaven forbid a boy (back in the day). Kids are vicious.
adults have done it too, including some teachers. people think it’s cool to do because they heard it on the Simpsons. not much stood out, we had uniforms. you get made fun of for the most fundamental and unchanging identity, your race. It absolutely destroyed my self worth at the time, and made me embarrassed of my skin color, and I know that others experienced the same thing.
I had a similar experience in middle school (many “thank you come again” comments), but the conclusion I’ve drawn was that it was due to Apu being the only Indian-American character middle schoolers saw on TV at the time. If there were others (and there are now), the Apu/color-of-my-skin association wouldn’t have been so strong.
I think that's something many people miss in these discussions. Bad/negative/stereotyped portrayals are one thing - those being the only ones is another.
EDIT to ask: how do the Dr. Seuss books fare in that regard?
I didn't even grow up in America, but it's irritating when your coworkers think that they are meaningfully connecting with you based on what they "learned" from some hackneyed stereotype in a mildly funny adult cartoon. Doubly so when that coworker happens to be in a management position above you.
My advice: if you have a South Asian coworker, put away the Apu jokes unless they like it and bring it up for some reason.
None of the white people are presented in exaggerated, outdated costumes. It exaggerates the slanted eyes, the queue, and (in some editions) the bright yellow color.
Compare it to some of the deliberately-racist cartoons that Giesel drew during World War II:
But it's all white people getting offended at it, and specifically it's white people who never give a shit about Chinese in any of their other culture wars.
Discriminated against in college admissions? Erased in discussions of diversity in tech? Who cares. Call me back when we can use you to get mad at a children's book.
And you know the depicted individual is wearing a queue... how, exactly? There's no hair depicted at all from what I can tell.
As for the wardrobe, no, it doesn't look that dated, especially for the time. Maybe the style of it, but conical hats and wooden shoes are both practical and still commonplace throughout East and Southeast Asia, last I checked. The clogs are probably the most objectionable aspect, and only because I don't know if anything resembling Japanese geta was common in China.
And further, the whole book is from the point of view of a child's imagination, so expecting it to map particularly closely to reality is entirely ignorant of literary context.
And honestly, it's not about that. It's about how Americans present the Chinese to each other. We have a history of abusing minorities, and one of the ways we do that is through presenting demeaning images of them.
I'm sure that actual Chinese people have more to worry about -- though the black people living in America definitely have current fears from people living up to the racist stereotypes presented here. This is about us and dealing with our own difficult past that still afflicts us today.
How out of date was the outfit in the 1930s when the picture was drawn? I don't really know what terms to look up to research that myself so any suggestions would be appreciated.
Anyways, IMO the white character's coloration is just as exaggerated as the Chinese character's. "White" people aren't actually 0xFFFFFF. The white character's physically improbable nose length and hair situation are also reminiscent of racist caricatures of white people.
> "How out of date was the outfit in the 1930s when the picture was drawn?"
It's kind of a stereotype of rural farmers in China. If you do a Google image search for "rural Chinese farmers" or even "Chinese peasants" you can still see the same type of grass hat being worn today. Then remember that in the 1930s the industrial revolution hadn't reached China yet; it was very much an agrarian society (much like the US a century before then) and nearly everybody was a farmer like that.
Is Dr. Seuss's cartoon offensive? Meh, it just feels dated and out of touch with what modern China has achieved, culturally and economically. I personally don't find it any worse a stereotype than what one sees today if they do a Google Image Search for "Texan", "Frenchman", or "Englishman" but YMMV.
(Actually, the GIS result for "Frenchman" is rather amusing; perhaps Google owes France an apology for being "offensive".)
> It's kind of a stereotype of rural farmers in China.
Is it, though? The wardrobe seems a fair bit elegant for some rural farmer; I'd expect a straw hat and simpler garb.
I ain't familiar with Chinese formal wear from that time period, but if I were a child in the 1930's trying to imagine a formally-dressed Chinese man (i.e. the literary context of that depiction) that's probably what I'd imagine. The white rice contributes to that perception of wealth, too; from what I understand, white rice is a symbol of affluence in a lot of Asian cultures, and brown rice a symbol of peasantry (see also: the Imperial Japanese Navy's experience with thiamine deficiency because sailors subsisted themselves entirely on "fancy" white rice instead of brown: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/japanese-curry-history). The Chinese man's presentation alongside a formally-dressed magician contributes further to that interpretation.
I'm of Chinese descent. I'm much, more more offended by progressives clamoring to take away educational and job opportunities away from Asians because we're "overrepresented minorities" (as if we hadn't earned our place through hard work and education) and then making a mountain out of a molehill like this to pretend that they are actually concerned about Asians as minorities. Compared to two-facedness of that degree, Dr. Seuss's little cartoon doesn't register at all.
Because most people disagree this is racist, but the opinion of the plebs is ignored and the deplatformings happen anyway without having a conversation first. Of course this was going to happen.
Take a look at the images, and you can see why the publishers felt that they were better off without them. As for why eBay decided to glom onto that... that I can't say.
This is the part that bothers me.
Publishers can do whatever they want, and it's nice that they're at least willing to try to be progressive, even if this particular case of outrage is maybe a bit exaggerated.
Ebay jumping on the bandwagon seems like it's just for brownie points with whatever faux-woke nerd happens to scroll past the announcement.
> eBay deciding unilaterally that people can't buy or sell already-printed copies
eBay isn't deciding that, it is deciding unilaterally that it will not participate in the buying or selling of those items.
eBay probably has no interest and in any case has no power to make decisions about what can be bought and sold, only about what it will participate as a facilitator of buying and selling.
> Well I guess I’ll just go and buy my copy at the other well known online auction site…
Online auctions aren’t the only places to buy and sell goods.
They aren’t even the only places to buy and sell goods online.
Plenty of places still selling them (though, because of the announcement that they won’t be published, prices are insane right now, as they’ve become instant high-interest speculative collectibles.)
I just bought a bunch of Dr. Seuss books because honestly I’ve never seen them before, never read them as a child, but now I’m deeply curious to find out what is in them
My parent's objection was that eBay was a monopoly, and as the only place to buy or sell used books they should face higher scrutiny. I pointed out that Amazon is a serious competitor of theirs; eBay is far from the only place for used book selling.
I really miss the anti-copyright radicalism that used to suffuse hacker culture in the early naughts. The Seuss estate should have the same power to limit publication of these books as Shakespeare’s heirs would have to stop publication of the Merchant of Venice.
And if that sounds like it’s going to far can they at least have no say in the right to resale?
> eBay deciding unilaterally that people can't buy or sell already-printed copies
eBay is not "unilaterally" deciding anything. I can't remember the last time I bought or sold anything on eBay for instance. As I see it, they probably want to avoid the resulting controversy from any of these items, and don't want anything to do with them on their platform.
As an immigrant to the US, this is what I don't get. Isn't the whole idea of capitalism supposed to be that eBay's delisting is an opportunity for ten other websites specializing in obscure Dr. Seuss books to pop up and eat their business? [1]
Or would you rather have one centralized government agency in charge of deciding which books can and can't be sold?
[1] What I personally suspect (without much evidence) is that there is very little of a secondary market for these books. Sure, some are going for $500 because people will collect anything, but the person simply doesn't care about them one way or the other.
> Isn't the whole idea of capitalism supposed to be that eBay's delisting is an opportunity for ten other websites specializing in obscure Dr. Seuss books to pop up and eat their business?
It is. And don't get me wrong: eBay's well within their rights to restrict what people can buy and sell on their platform. It's just weird that this is where they draw the line; the message here seems to be "we're totally fine with selling things depicting racist caricatures, except for these old children's books".
That is: eBay having the right to do something does not make them above criticism or scrutiny.
> That is: eBay having the right to do something does not make them above criticism or scrutiny.
Yes, the inconsistent policy applications you mention does mean that eBay is a terrible site if you want to find well-vetted products. Honestly, I have never gotten a particularly "trustworthy" vibe from eBay, so this doesn't come as a huge surprise to me.
This is what the fall of an empire looks like. If you’re bearish on this being a Chinese century, ponder where this unchecked neo-McCarthyism leads to.
gentle reminder that in China currently if you want to create audiovisual fiction you cannot portrait an extramarital affair that ends well. There are about a bazillion such rules.
Also I'm unsure what that has to do with the American Empire, does Darpa and the military run on Dr Seuss comics?
Censorship is the first tool of the CCP. Abduction and forced re-education is the second. Let’s ponder where forceful suppression of your people in the modern age, like Hong Kong, leads to. People whining about how dr Seuss is a bit racist until it’s censored is a far way from what the manipulative, brutalistic, and violent government of China does.
And that’s not even mentioning the active genocide they’re committing...
"Eschew flamebait. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents. Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."
Curious what was offensive I found the books are on youtube and I'm guessing it's drawing Chinese https://youtu.be/Vl6wD6EGOVk?t=228 and tribal Africans https://youtu.be/Vl6wD6EGOVk?t=519 looking like cartoon versions of those. Does this means cartoon caricatures are only acceptable if they are of white westerners?
I mean I can understand the publishers thinking they may get in trouble and it's easier to drop those lines but the thing seems to be getting a bit out of hand.
Not only whites can be racist. Any race in power, anywhere, becomes the new "white man" when powers are tipped. There is nothing fundamental to your skin color: all of us bear the seeds of our future cruelty. And until we address desire and deconstitute it atom by atom, none of us will ever be free.
I don't understand the need for the "in power" qualification. It specifically is saying that discrimination based on race is not racist unless they are the majority.
So does this mean that if an asian man murders a black man, specifically because he is black, that this is not racism?
I don't understand the need for the "in power" qualification. It specifically is saying that discrimination based on race is not racist unless they are the majority.
In a time and place where a local hegemonic group has a history of bigotry towards and/or oppression of a local minority or disempowered group, it could be argued that the hegemonic group has a greater moral authority to be sensitive to the oppressed/disempowered group.
I believe that's a big part of the moral reasoning that is applied in these cases. There is a logic to it that goes further and has more integrity than than "people just want to take other people down".
Some people call any discrimination discrimination and systemic discrimination racism. Some people call any discrimination racism and don't talk much about systemic discrimination.
People in group 2 think people in group 1 mean it's impossible to discriminate against someone in the majority. But they don't.
People in group 1 think people in group 2 mean systemic discrimination doesn't exist. But not all of them do.
Some people in group 2 say people in group 1 should come up with a new word for systemic discrimination. But people in group 1 don't bother because it wouldn't change what people believe.
Why do people always get tripped up on this. Racism is institutional and prejudice is personal. No one is saying an arbitrary person can't be prejudiced - ask the right people and you'll get an earful about how prejudiced x ethnicity is against y ethnicity. But a powerless group can't be racist because they don't control any institutions; for example there's no coordinated group of black landlords that don't rent to Asians. Would there exist such a thing if there were enough black landlords? Maybe. No one is denying that anyone can be cruel and hateful. What people do deny is that certain ethnicities have the same means to enact that cruelty. Again I don't see how this isn't manifestly obviously true.
Yes, I'm asking you to repeat it because what you're saying is absolutely insane and completely detached from the rest of the world. You might check the definition other people around you are using, I'll even give you a handy link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism
"Today, some scholars of racism prefer to use the concept in the plural racisms, in order to emphasize its many different forms that do not easily fall under a single definition. They also argue that different forms of racism have characterized different historical periods and geographical areas.[24] Garner (2009: p. 11) summarizes different existing definitions of racism and identifies three common elements contained in those definitions of racism. First, a historical, hierarchical power relationship between groups; second, a set of ideas (an ideology) about racial differences; and, third, discriminatory actions (practices).[13]"
This is exactly what the OP is talking about -- they are pointing out that some forms of racism are worse than others, and one thing that makes one form of racism worse than other forms is when there's a power imbalance that historically has resulted in the oppression of one group. Two individuals in a marginalized group getting into a scuff over an issue of race is one kind of racism, yes, but the damage is localized between themselves. One group of people, from a position of power an authority, subjugating and oppressing another group of people over an issue of race is a completely different matter.
Okay. Some scholars also think we should get rid of any and all market restrictions. The wide consensus as understood by literally everyone except those few very special scholars is still different.
You characterized the position of the other poster as "absolutely insane and completely detached from the rest of the world". Yet their view is at least supported by some scholars in academia and I'll also add is the majority viewpoint in my social circles and most of the academics and authors I read.
From my point of view, your point of view is the one that is the minority view. But I recognize it as valid point of view rather than characterizing you as "absolutely insane" and out of touch with "literally everyone except those few very special scholars".
Can you even prove that the view you espouse is the majority view? You've stated this multiple times as a reason for discounting the other poster's (and by extension my own) point of view, but you haven't made any effort to back up your assertion.
Well, I can say for sure that the classical interpretation is the official corriculum in school in germany, finland, france, england, russia , austria, switzerland, poland, slovakia and denmark. Those are all countries I know people in to discuss such matters. Since the whole population of those countries (and probably a lot more) has learned the regular meaning of the word, I'd say they are probably more than some group of scholars who really like their theory.
But you still haven't made a case for "the regular meaning" of racism, such that it makes what the other poster said "absolutely insane". To me, "absolutely insane" is a very extreme thing to say. The absolute insanity I've experienced in the past is on the level of believing your cats are microchipped by the CIA to spy on you. So when you characterize someone as "absolutely insane", and it's shown that there is credible scholarly research that supports their claim, I think you are under a burden to state your case at a higher level than pointing out you have friends in other countries who believe the same as you. You've made an appeal to popularity by pointing to your friends and making a leap to say everyone thinks like you and them. I also have friends in the above countries who do not think the same as you and your friends. Now where does that leave us? Nowhere.
Here's what I'm getting at. There is a difference between what you and I believe, and it doesn't come down to "absolute insanity". We can each make a logical, principled case for our positions. I implore you to open your self up to the other side instead of dismissing it with the vitriol you have exhibited.
I'm from one of those countries and while, on one hand, it seems perfectly logical to argue "racism is racism is racism", I think there's a widespread recognition here that it's not as simple as that. If you consider racism as part of the human condition, something that is exhibited by people regardless of their own race, then you must also realise that its impact is far more significant when the majority exhibits it than when the minority does. In that sense there's, if you like, two 'sides' to racism: 'motive' (or 'intent') and effect. The first may be broadly equal across groups of different sizes, but the latter certainly isn't.
>Racism is the belief that groups of humans possess different behavioral traits corresponding to physical appearance and can be divided based on the *superiority* of one race over another.
in your hypothetical about being assaulted by a black woman did you really mean that she believed herself to be of a *superior* race? or did you mean something else?
Incorrect. Systemic and institutional racism are systemic, and racism is personal.
Here's the definition of racism according to Google:
> prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against a person or people on the basis of their membership in a particular racial or ethnic group, typically one that is a minority or marginalized.
When most people say racism, they mean the dictionary (also, the colloquial and correct) definition, not the definition that sociology textbooks have tried to propagate.
Given that qualifier it is atypical that marginalized or minority aren't operative. Does that really pass the threshold in your mind necessary for me to be incorrect in what I'm claiming?
It's hilarious to me that the reactionary position on this (wherein people are quoting dictionary definitions and wiki articles) manifestly hinges on trivialities.
It's also amazing to me when people point to a dictionary definition, they don't seem to consider where that definition comes from. In this case, Google's definitions come from Oxford Languages, which describe their process:
"We take an evidence-based approach to language content creation, looking at real examples of the ways words are used in context to provide an accurate picture of a language.
To gather this evidence, our corpora – massive collections of spoken and written language data – track and record the very latest language developments across an enormous variety of publications, covering everything from specialist journals to newspapers to social media posts."
So let me get this straight: Oxford comes up with their definitions by consulting people who have the power and agency to write and publish media. Wouldn't this exclude marginalized people? Incarcerated people? People who are not rich enough, educated enough, or connected enough to be able to afford the ability to publish in the mediums Oxford adds to their corpus?
If the definition comes from books, journals, newspapers, and social media posts, then its going to reflect the thoughts and opinions of authors, journalists, and people rich enough to afford a computer and internet connection.
All this is saying is that the definition changes depending who you ask. So when we want the definition of a word that has a clear power component involved, it behooves us to ask both sides of that divide as to their definition of the term.
They're not just cartoons. They're caricatures associated with racist tropes, which have been used in conjunction with discrimination and even violence. The African pictures in particular look like minstrel shows, which were deliberately intended to demean black people in America.
It's not that the publishers were afraid of getting in trouble. It's that they were ashamed of their own book -- with good reason.
Sure, anyone can read the books. Just buy them. You just have to open your own bookstore, your own rental operation for the building its in and your own payment processor. Also your own supplier, publisher and hosting provider for the company website residing in your own datacenter wired up by your own isp. Noone can claim he's being censored, it's not the government after all ;)
The book is explicitly depicting people from abroad, not African-Americans. As Dr. Seuss’s surviving family has attested to his character and wordliness, and his other books like “Horton Hears a Who” promote tolerance and the acceptance of minorities, I’m inclined to go with a simpler, more innocent explanation for these images.
Nitpicking and a pet-peeve but Elon Musk is an African-American.
You probably mean "black". They are not from Africa simply because they are black and for clarity we should stop being politically correct (especially when critical-race theory is so keen on language defining reality)
> Does this means cartoon caricatures are only acceptable if they are of white westerners?
They cancelled Apu from the Simpson’s without understanding that his presence on the show demonstrated a mainstreaming of Indian immigrants, in a similar way that the uncanceled Groundskeeper Willie, Mayor Quimby, and McBain demonstrate the mainstream acceptance of Scottish, Irish, and Austrian immigrants.
I watched The Simpsons religiously growing up and I never realised Mayor Quimby is supposed to be an Irish immigrant. Where is that established? He doesn't have an Irish accent.
> They cancelled Apu from the Simpson’s without understanding that his presence on the show demonstrated a mainstreaming of Indian immigrants, in a similar way that the uncanceled Groundskeeper Willie, Mayor Quimby, and McBain demonstrate the mainstream acceptance of Scottish, Irish, and Austrian immigrants.
The guy who voiced Apu, Hank Azaria, decided to stop doing it. Nobody "cancelled" him. He is an articulate guy and describes why he reached the decision in this interview:
> I mean I can understand the publishers thinking they may get in trouble and it's easier to drop those lines but the thing seems to be getting a bit out of hand.
But they dropped whole books. If they had changed a line in one of the books and cut out or changed a few illustrations, I'm sure fewer people would bother. Taking whole books off the market because (at least in one case) a single illustration could be deemed offensive seems a bit over the top.
Surprised by the majority of comments here. How many of you have actually looked at these pictures? A private entity decided to stop publishing certain things. Another private entity is declining to sell old copies of said things. This is not “cancel culture” like conservative commentators want to make it out to be - and I think the publisher and now eBay are making the right call - children are impressionable, and presenting racial caricatures like these to them is not good.
A handful of companies influencing the overton window of the entire nation in response to easily upset Twitter mobs is precisely what I consider to be part of cancel culture.
Like how exposure to pictures of demons and pretending to be wizards turns young D&D players into satanists? And exposure to violent rap lyrics turns them into murderers?
I have looked at the pictures, some make me cringe a bit, others don't seem like a big deal to me. And ultimately the Seuss copyright holders can do what they want, it's their property. I'm not sure why eBay feels the need to get involved. But I found the "think of the children" arguments for banning media equally unconvincing when they were conservative talking points thirty years ago.
Edit: Also, almost all kids will be exposed to these books with a parent present, having it read to them. The parent can contextualize the images however they like, reducing any risk of bad 'impressions'.
I saw some of the images. eBay's actions seem a bit heavy handed, but I think its entirely appropriate that the Seuss estate wishes to stop producing new copies. If I was a parent and I randomly bought a Seuss book and got the racist caricature I saw, I'd be disappointed in the brand.
Most purchasers of Seuss books are not looking to start a dialog with their toddler about racism.
I think you might be correct, I tend to see copyright itself as censorious, but copyright on something you have no intent allowing access to seems downright unacceptable.
According to what? A social contract? The written law? Some ethical/moral foundation?
The answer depends on what standard you're using.
In my opinion, yes they do have that responsibility. Once you attain a level of social and economic power on par with eBay, you have the responsibility to ensure that your actions do not limit free access to information.
If we were talking about a company that does 10k in sales a year -- they do not have that responsibility. But since we're talking about a company that does 4B in sales a year -- yes, according to my moral foundation, they do have that responsibility.
I value free speech and the freedom of expression pretty high on my list of important things though, while it seems like you value the ability of a billion dollar corporation to profit and maintain their brand image much higher than that.
> I think the publisher and now eBay are making the right call - children are impressionable, and presenting racial caricatures like these to them is not good.
The point is that the publisher and ebay choosing not to participate in commerce related to these books isn't telling you to do anything, and they don't have any obligation to participate in that commerce.
If the publisher was calling for the government to supervise the books that you read to your children, well then you'd have a point.
There will always be alternative marketplaces hosted by alternative web hosts that are willing to continue doing business with companies that are deemed dangerous to society...
...until banks and merchant processors cut off financial access to these "dangerous" entities and their service providers.
Wikileaks was a victim of this year's ago, and served as a great example of why cryptocurrencies are important.
As I pointed out elsewhere, this is misleading and approaching a lie. eBay only allows critically-annotated copies of Mein Kampf which are designed for scholars. I am sure that a copy of “If I Ran The Zoo” with a sociologist critically annotating the abhorrent racism would be permitted on eBay.
From one of the listed items:
> This item has been listed previously. eBay removed it with this reminder of the guidelines:
> "You listed the book Mein Kampf, but it is not a critically annotated edition. eBay only allows critically annotated versions of Mein Kampf to be listed on the site. While we appreciate that you chose to utilize our site, we must ask that you please not relist in this case."
> This is their policy and this edition is compliant with that policy.
What do you want me to say? I don’t work for eBay! It looks like that book is against eBay’s policy and should probably be flagged. They are not the only online marketplace where people sometimes break the rules.
> there’s a mildly offensive picture of a Chinese person.
a) Fuck off with “mildly offensive,” it’s flagrantly racist and doesn’t belong in a children’s book or on eBay’s marketplace (in accordance with eBay’a policy)
b) I see you didn’t mention the cartoon of the Africans in the exact same book, which is straight out of the Klan and makes your argument much weaker.
What bothers me is the speed with which this process - "accused -> convinced -> executed" happens. We are not discussing things anymore. Today, you could tweet any accusations, and, no matter how ridiculous they look at first, it will lead to a race of who is taking them most seriously. Something definitely is broken. Look at what happened to the "okay". 4chan forced that meme 5 years ago in what they thought is a mischievous parody of ridiculousness of the cancel culture, and recently I watched CNL where the audience gasped in disbelief when one of the sketches included "o"-word. 5 years only, and most common (almost used "o"-word, sorry) sign became a synonym of hatred and racism. And now, Dr. Seuss. What's next, someone will tweet the act of breathing is racist? Do you really think it's impossible?
Sure we are. There has been discussion. Just because you weren't involved in it, which is natural since I doubt you work for Dr. Seuss Enterprises, doesn't mean it didn't take place. The onus is on them to protect Dr. Seuss' legacy and it is important to change with the times.
This is not the first time something like this has happened and it won't be the last. There are plenty of examples to be found online of popular family cartoons which depicted racial stereotypes.
Go check out the Anti-black imagery in the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia and see if you think, by following the same logic you displayed in your comment, this stuff should still be allowed while keeping in mind it was mainstream acceptable during its time.
Why, exactly? I wouldn't buy any such a thing, but I know several institutions that have good reasons to.
People in general have some obsession with the Nazi and the last war. As if WWI never happened, and great wars before it. Because of this obsession, many people seem to think that the cause of a future war would be a kind of Nazism, completely disregarding the fact that it wasn't the cause of WWI and other earlier wars. Paradoxically, they also seem to forget what were the actual reasons of the rise of Nazism in post-WWI Germany (huge WWI retributions, enormous inflation and omnipresent poverty - basically people were very unhappy, and this very unhappiness was abused by Hitler; the ideology came afterwards).
While there is a grey area around general German WW2 artifacts, including those associated with the Nazi government, eBay explicitly disallows Nazi propaganda. It has a blanket ban on any item with a swastika that was made after 1933.
While some are going around to “point out” Mein Kampf can be bought on eBay, eBay only allows critically-annotated copies designed for scholars.
Consensus on HN questions commenters' accusation that accusations have been made. I have been corrected. Marketplaces follow creators' wishes to destroy secondary sales of materials deemed hateful. Society allows this via centuries of discussion.
Accusation is a term of conflict. Terms of service changes are decisive outcomes of compassion.
We're not talking about Dr. Seuss Enterprises though. We're talking about eBay (and soon booksellers and libraries) banning books. Also a few schools outright disavowing Dr. Seuss all together. eBay is currently selling hundreds of other items with more shocking imagery than this, so there is also some weird signaling going on here. Oh I get it, this time around the book bans are probably justified. But you don't need to be an alarmist or conspiracy theorist to want to be just a little more cautious with this kind of stuff. You can also support removing racist images and still worry about setting a dangerous precedent.
Your language seems needlessly hyperbolic to me. A handful of fairly obscure Dr. Seuss books are going to be harder to buy. It's not like Cat in the Hat is #cancelled or anything.
This is an "execution"?
Maybe try using language proportionate to the offence here.
That's not what happened. This decision has actually been in the works for a while and involved a lot of discussion.
> The decision to cease publication and sales of the books was made last year after months of discussion, the company, which was founded by Seuss’ family, told AP
eBay has an existing policy that removes racist materials. They're just applying it based on the Seuss info.
> Items with racist, anti-Semitic, or otherwise demeaning portrayals, for example through caricatures or other exaggerated features, including figurines, cartoons, housewares, historical advertisements, and golliwogs
This is misleading and approaching a lie. eBay only allows critically-annotated copies of Mein Kampf which are designed for scholars. I am sure that a copy of “If I Ran The Zoo” with a sociologist critically annotating the abhorrent racism would be permitted on eBay.
From one of the listed items:
> This item has been listed previously. eBay removed it with this reminder of the guidelines:
> "You listed the book Mein Kampf, but it is not a critically annotated edition. eBay only allows critically annotated versions of Mein Kampf to be listed on the site. While we appreciate that you chose to utilize our site, we must ask that you please not relist in this case."
> This is their policy and this edition is compliant with that policy.
Communist Manifesto and Lenin's books are allowed without any comments though. There are books by actual terrorists too, like Bill Ayers. Books advocating for segregation. One can go on.
Ok if you think eBay should ban more books then go tell them that!
Incidentally this isn’t true:
> Books advocating for segregation.
Or, rather, if such books are available it is against eBay’s policy and they should be reported. eBay has a specific policy against items that glorify racism or endorse racist stereotypes: https://www.ebay.com/help/policies/prohibited-restricted-ite...
It does not have a policy against everything morally icky, but it’s quite clear about racism. Mulberry Street and If I Ran The Zoo are both racist and against eBay’s policy.
The issue is that they are not just removing racist or hateful content according to some kind of standard. They are going after hot topics of the day, whatever it happens to be.
Even worse, hateful and racist content that is ideologically aligned is explicitly allowed. One would be hard-pressed to find anything more blatantly racist than White fragility or works of Dr Kendi, and yet you would not see eBay banning them, up until they fall out of favor.
Exactly. Why do those books get a pass? They encourage readers to do abhorrent things such as keep slaves and behead nonbelievers. If we're going to censor books because they cause people to hate others, then major religious texts should be first in line. The fact that censors don't go after these books is evidence that their actual goals differ from their claimed goals.
Despite HN regulations I am aware that you are arguing in bad faith and don’t care at all about the facts of the case. But I think it’s important to get the facts out there for other people.
Once again: eBay’s policy is not to ban harmful ideas generally or anything that might be morally icky. They have a specific policy against racist items, in any form. That includes the blatant racism in some of Dr. Suess’s books. The policy is reasonable and not that complicated. If you want to buy something racist, there are other websites.
eBay is not trying to police everything, they just don’t want racist stuff on their website. That is their perogative as a business and is hardly a meaningful threat to free speech even considering eBay’s market share.
Part of the reason this preposterous “debate” keeps raging is that people keep inappropriately elevating the issues to abstractions, since the specifics of the case are really not controversial:
- Just as YouTube and Twitch do not allow pornography, eBay does not allow racism. That does not mean that porn and racism are banned under the 1st Amendment. Likewise there’s plenty of stuff on YouTube that’s more immoral than any legal pornography, but YouTube never claimed to ban everything bad. They just don’t want to be associated with porn. Likewise, eBay doesn’t want to be associated with racism.
- Some of Dr. Seuss’s children’s books have bigoted depictions of nonwhites, including cartoons black people that resemble “darky iconography,” which anyone in good faith would agree are deeply racist.
- Since eBay doesn’t allow racist items (and had good reason to be concerned about racists rushing to buy discontinued Dr. Seuss books), it banned the items from its store.
Nobody seriously thinks that YouTube is censoring the porn industry. It is true is that the “buy racist crap to own the libs” industry is much smaller than porn and probably can’t easily survive without eBay’s help. I fail to see how that’s eBay’s problem.
It would probably trigger more debate if the link you referred to actually explained this thesis more convincingly rather than focus on the often deplorable language.
E.g. the oft denounced 'On the Jewish Question' that is predictably cited in your link is a work arguing for the political emancipation of Jewish people.
It does so with language that is offensive to a modern reader by turning around and mocking the arguments used by Bruno Bauer who argued against political emancipation.
That [use of language] makes it problematic, and I wouldn't recommend it to someone without commentary on the polemical debate it was a part of.
But Marx is addressing and attacking the very kind of political oppression of Jewish people that forced his father to convert to Lutheranism - which the article of course mentioned without later citing its relevance to 'On the Jewish Question' -, making the point that Jewish people should have political rights without being forced to abandon their religion.
As evidence of Marx willingness to use now-unacceptable language, it works. As evidence that he hated Jews it's a massive own goal for the article writer to use an article that argued for expanding Jewish peoples rights.
There are many legitimate criticisms to level against Marx' language. But this article is dishonest or ignorant in it's presentation of a lot of it.
To address specifically the Communist Manifesto, suggesting it is talking of a conspiracy suggests you have not read it, or understood it. If anything one of the key aspects of Marxist thinking was to directly denounce the idea that the individual actions of a few have much - if any - impact on history, and to present a conception of the way society changes as one controlled by historical and economical necessity, inevitably developing based on market forces.
The idea of capitalism as a conspiracy runs directly counter to the Marxist idea of historical materialism, so it's bizarre to try to frame his work as promoting a conspiracy theory.
Furthermore, the whole first chapter is fan-boy level praise for capitalism as having brought humanity to a level of development not seen before, and for how the free market is the "battering ram" that over time forces even the worst bigots to drop xenophobia, driven by economic forces.
If he was promoting a conspiracy, he was speaking awfully well about the supposed conspirators, given the idea of the development of new modes of production as the wheel of progress is a central thesis of Marxist thought, and his insistence that socialism/communism is a necessary consequence of capitalism rests on the idea that economic progress is inevitable and detached from the actions of individuals.
The Communist Manifesto presents capitalism as a huge step forward, just still flawed and something that would eventually give way to another step forwards.
This idea of Marx as promoting a conspiracy is an inherent demonstration of a lack of understanding of Marx writing, because it lifts up the idea of great leaders where Marx consistently put that idea down and criticised it, by talking of whole movements in terms of forces and modes of production within which the individuals - even the capitalists themselves - are trapped and playing out a role they have little control over.
> eBay only allows critically-annotated copies of Mein Kampf which are designed for scholars. I am sure that a copy of “If I Ran The Zoo” with a sociologist critically annotating the abhorrent racism would be permitted on eBay.
This seems worse than an outright ban on all copies.
Nobody's arguing that, so I'm not sure why anyone would need to defend a position they don't have. "I can't buy an uncommented copy of Mein Kampf from eBay" isn't the same thing as "I'm not allowed to read an uncommented copy of Mein Kampf", the latter isn't true.
This is ridiculous. Historians should be allowed to freely read original, non-critically annotated, historical documents. Otherwise they cannot do their job.
And they're welcome to read those at the library or other sources - eBay, as a company, is under no obligation to facilitate dissemination of historical documents.
I thought that ebay was just a website where people could sell their historical documents to each other. Ebay does not "disseminate" the things that people send to each other. Heck, it doesn't even deal with the delivery! It just processes the payments. Why are they willing to engage in editorializing stuff that they don't even see? It makes no sense.
Ebay is a company, not a website, and company policies specify which products can be listed by their users. It's not neutral, you're being deliberately obtuse here.
There's no special "historian card" that you need to show to access sources. Everybody has the right to study history on their own, and I guess the world would be a much better place if many of us did.
> Everybody has the right to study history on their own, and I guess the world would be a much better place if many of us did.
I guess?
History is something that historians do, not study. There is a meaningful difference between an expert applying actual methods and an interested layperson reading primary sources for their own edification. Not to say that people should be prevented from doing that, but it does seem like a bait and switch to say "what about the historians" and then swap to "what about this entirely different set of people" when it becomes clear that historians aren't actually using ebay in the method you describe.
If you really care about laypeople having access to primary sources, a way bigger problem is the fact that most archives will not allow non-credentialed people to access their materials. There's way more "censorship" going on there than anything happening on ebay if that counts.
Doing history is original analysis and narrative. The point here is to meaningfully explain the difference between what a history undergrad is doing and what a professional historian is doing.
Consider an algorithms class in undergrad. You can read about all sorts of algorithms. But learning the Nth algorithm won't transform your work into original algorithms research. You are only consuming information, not producing it. Similarly, just reading other history research can teach you things but isn't what historians are doing. A lot of "history buffs" fall into this category and love to read pop history and consider themselves experts.
Now consider somebody who wants to develop an original algorithm. But they've never learned any analysis methods and they've never critically engaged with the literature. They don't know how to prove an algorithm's correctness or behavior rigorously. There are a ton of these people online. They often gravitate to trying to solve P=NP. This would be comparable to somebody who never learned historiography (the method of doing history) reading primary sources and trying to replicate what historians are doing. Like any field, history has methods. It isn't just ad-hoc decision making from people who happen to have a title next to their name.
In CS this is largely harmless. But for many fields within history, accessing the archive also damages it because people are touching one-of-a-kind objects. So archives are selective in who they choose to allow to access their materials.
My wife is a historian. We've got hundreds and hundreds of books at home. Exactly zero ebay purchases. Among her colleagues, I'd bet that none of them have ever purchased a primary source on ebay.
N=1, but yes, surprisingly often. The one I know buys a lot of old books from people online to keep in their home library and has on occasion actually found some very rare items that people selling them simply don't know the rarity of. I've heard of at least one such find end up on display in a museum (incidentally, also a children's book, but probably not Seuss). And it's not just historians who have a use for unaltered source material.
While I don't mind cleaning up/modernizing certain things and not printing the originals anymore, not allowing the existing originals to be sold even by independent third-party sellers is just horrible.
We've got a lot of old books purchased second hand because historians tend to like old books, but none of them are primary sources used for research. All of the primary sources are coming directly from archives or inter-library-loans.
Fair enough, but if you're a historian wiring a book about Hitler, you'll probably want a copy of Mein Kampf that you can take home either way, even if you'll still refer to the archive to double-check direct citations. And if their only option are the archived version because no unaltered copies exist on the 2nd-hand market, that's a pretty high barrier to entry.
Yes, there are plenty of of options if you can't find a copy on eBay, especially these days, but nonetheless, there are plenty of legitimate reasons for historians and laypeople alike to want originals of old works.
I would be pretty surprised if it becomes impossible for a historian using these six books as primary sources to get long-term access to the original material. This can be a little more difficult with family archives since family archives do tend to paper over the colorful stuff in their history, but if people are truly concerned here about family archives limiting access to unsavory parts of their history for historians (which I don't believe is the reason for this outrage) then there's centuries of other examples to complain about.
There is absolute no chance that these radicals will not come for Shakespeare eventually. Their aim is to destroy the Western canon so they can replace it with their own propaganda: Shakespeare is too high-value a target for them to ignore.
There have been no accusations, no one has been executed, and if you see which books have been pulled and why, you'll see that the matter is pretty reasonable, far from ridiculous and almost obvious. It is you who are taking things out of proportion with this War on Christmas nonsense.
It’s super pernicious too, but effective bludgeon. Making “Okay” racist is obscure enough that most normal people (ie those not obsessed with wokeness) have never heard of it.
Consider that you’ve never heard until now that “okay” is racist and you did the okay symbol in front of a political commissar (I mean a woke person, can’t keep up) that doesn’t like you. You’re done.
It's particularly irksome. There was never any history of "racism" behind the okay gesture and it was a very widely used gesture for decades. It was also a very versatile one - it could mean "everything's okay" in the traditional sense, "yeah, ok, whatever" in a dismissive sense, or turned upside down became the Circle Game where if you were tricked into looking at it you had to immediately break the circle with your index finger or accept a punch to the arm. Then some neckbeards on 4Chan decided to prank people by claiming it was a "white power symbol". Unfortunately, some alt right edgelords then started actually using it as such. Now we find ourselves in the situation you just described where not everyone is aware of this history and people who grew up with it as an innocent symbol use it and find themselves on the wrong end of a Twitter mob.
You're drawing a distinction between the "4chan neckbeards" and the "alt-right edgelords" that I don't think meaningfully exists. ("Any community that gets its laughs by pretending to be idiots will eventually be flooded by actual idiots who mistakenly believe that they're in good company", after all.)
They were very much the same group; the "prank" could only lead to two outcomes, both of which were desired by the "pranksters". 1, they could successfully co-opt the symbol and permanently associate it with their ideology (symbols are arbitrary, after all, and how many mass shooters have to flash one before people connect the dots?). 2, they could troll with it enough that some would then see the symbol as an alt-right dogwhistle and decry it, only for them to turn around and say "haha! see those libtards? they're even offended by the OK symbol!".
In a way, it's absolutely hilarious. The fact that people were so outraged by this (which was a bait attempt at a meme a rational person could see a mile away) shows they're willing to be controlled by the very people they hate.
> In 2017, the “okay” hand gesture acquired a new and different significance thanks to a hoax by members of the website 4chan to falsely promote the gesture as a hate symbol, claiming that the gesture represented the letters “wp,” for “white power.” The “okay” gesture hoax was merely the latest in a series of similar 4chan hoaxes using various innocuous symbols; in each case, the hoaxers hoped that the media and liberals would overreact by condemning a common image as white supremacist.
> In the case of the “okay” gesture, the hoax was so successful the symbol became a popular trolling tactic on the part of right-leaning individuals, who would often post photos to social media of themselves posing while making the “okay” gesture.
> Ironically, some white supremacists themselves soon also participated in such trolling tactics, lending an actual credence to those who labeled the trolling gesture as racist in nature. By 2019, at least some white supremacists seem to have abandoned the ironic or satiric intent behind the original trolling campaign and used the symbol as a sincere expression of white supremacy, such as when Australian white supremacist Brenton Tarrant flashed the symbol during a March 2019 courtroom appearance soon after his arrest for allegedly murdering 50 people in a shooting spree at mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand.
> The overwhelming usage of the “okay” hand gesture today is still its traditional purpose as a gesture signifying assent or approval. As a result, someone who uses the symbol cannot be assumed to be using the symbol in either a trolling or, especially, white supremacist context unless other contextual evidence exists to support the contention. Since 2017, many people have been falsely accused of being racist or white supremacist for using the “okay” gesture in its traditional and innocuous sense.
>Since 2017, many people have been falsely accused of being racist or white supremacist for using the “okay” gesture in its traditional and innocuous sense.
This can only happen in a toxic mono-culture or a corrupt dictatorship. This kind of thing is coming straight out of academia and there are little to no checks and balances on the kinds of insane cultural shifts are being made. The left and far left absolutely dominate that space and they have lost touch with reality, as anyone can clearly see when 99% of their accusations are unjust and hasty and simply ridiculous to anyone who isn't part of the cult.
It's 6 of Dr. Seuss's books, and ones that most people haven't heard of. If you actually look at the content of the books, they are clearly racist and demeaning to those they make caricatures of.
And in any case, it was not a sudden "canceling" or anything approaching that. Seuss's estate, managed by his family, made the decision after much deliberation to cease the publication of only six books due to the content. You could even see it as an anti-cancellation - Seuss's family wants to avoid him being associated with the obviously racist content of some of his work.
Republicans and other right-wing racists will never stop being outraged, and they will never stop mistaking dumb slippery slope logical fallacies for good arguments.
There’s nothing you can do except deplatform them; but HN is explicitly designed as a safe space for far right wing bigots; so this is guaranteed to be a bad discussion.
Daniel Gackle has devoted much of his adult life to ensuring that extremists and racists feel safe here in HN; and that minorities do not. He likes to pretend this isn’t the case, but he only talks to very specific people for feedback, ensuring that he can always pretend that people like me are wrong.
He’s a closed-minded, bigot-supporting pile of shit who spends every day of his life making the world actively worse for minorities.
Look at the pictures in the relevant books and ask yourself if you would want a Black child to see themselves in those images. Ask yourself if Dr Seuss would. No one is outraged, the world just moves on.
If there is no outrage, then you wouldn’t mind if those books continue to be bought and read to children and stocked in libraries. A reasonable outward rhetorical demeanor is not what is in question.
Idk, you're the one deciding to be outraged by an authors children following through on a decision they made last year to stop printing a selection of their father's work. Are you tired of it yet?
Are you all misinterpreting my comment? Yes I think it's silly people are getting outraged over them deciding to stop printing the books. Seems like people can't stop being outraged about pointless issues. This is on par with Starbucks Christmas cups drama
Does Seuss state own ebay?Do they have a constitutional mandate to stop selling of private copies to be sold between 2 private individuals? Are you going to order Fanta, Volkswagen,Bayern,BASF, Ford and Hugo Boss products to be delisted because they were literally associated with the Nazis?
The problem is that you call it "clearly racist". If that is so clear why it took months to decide? In reality it's not that clear and you know it. You just moved a goalpost a little to include something that yesterday nobody complained about to become "clearly racist". And tomorrow will be something else.
Do you think they spent months deciding whether the works were racist?
Or, is it possible there's an interpretation of the sentence (and a perfectly reasonable one) where they spent months deciding whether they should stop publishing a publication that they had decided was racist?
The decision matrix might have been more complicated than: "does the work contain racist content".
I quickly read through Mulberry Street a few minutes ago, and there is a depiction of a Chinese man "eating with sticks." He is wearing sandals, a straw hat, a robe, and holding chop sticks. His facial features are not exaggerated or like a caricature in any way. To me, it's clearly a mistake.
According to this article [1] you may have read the updated version.
> Seuss actually grew to become more aware of his harmful images later in his life, and to regret them, eventually revising the Mulberry Street text and illustration. "I had a gentleman with a pigtail. I colored him yellow and called him a 'Chinaman,'" Seuss said. "That's the way things were 50 years ago. In later editions, I refer to him as a 'Chinese man.' I have taken the color out of the gentleman and removed the pigtail and now he looks like an Irishman."
The speed is part of the point. What better way to signal that you're part of the woke agenda than to be one of the first movers only a few days after the publisher made their announcement? It's like all the sycophants tripping over themselves to be the first to compliment their dear leader.
Yeah I was sad about that guy at a theme park that got fired for making an OK sign in a family's photo. Its like everyone forgot about the circle game, "the game", and went straight for white supremacy racist.
I wanted to write in or call in, but it was too late.
This one is crazy, but I have my own causes and that ain't one of them! I find it peculiar and I'm aware "they are coming for the trade unionists next" but I think I can navigate this reality and stay out of the re-education camps.
> I find it peculiar and I'm aware "they are coming for the trade unionists next" but I think I can navigate this reality and stay out of the re-education camps.
How? I think they'll get to you next. As commenters above pointed out, there is a "long march" through institutions before it starts trickling down.
a lot of people took the transfer agreement instead of tying their identity to their birth country. don't be like the ones that were married to their country, they got vanned and banned.
There were plenty of solutions to navigate before the .... last one. I think the parallels will hold pretty well this go-around, easily navigable options.
"Overnight". Swastikas and salutes become appropriated by the Nazis, and suddenly the pledge of allegiance in America became a hand over heart, instead of the Bellamy salute. Do you think that was wrong too?
You just said it right there. It’s the speed of social media that does this.
Call me crazy, but haven’t we seen social media being manipulated (bots) to push narratives?
These accusations or problems crop up fairly quick and then the media gets on it and then whoever/whatever is destroyed.
If social media can be manipulated to swing stock markets or elections, then isn’t it possible it can swing to push narratives or keep us constantly fighting ourselves?
I wouldn't if I had any. They're going to become collectibles eventually and could fetch you a decent amount. My totally true conspiracy-theory is, the dr-seus-industrial-complex is at it again, manipulating the collectible editions market to make bank.
Earlier this week when the story from the publisher broke, I had a look on ebay to see if these books were available. The ones I found were already listed for over $100.
Now this part is getting a little too carried away. It is one thing for libraries and bookstores to decide not to offer for borrowing or sale things that they disagree with.
It is another (and overstepping imo) for Ebay to restrict individual people from selling to others goods that are not illegal or in violation of their other practical rules (no selling jewelry, monetary equivalents, etc).
This falls into the category of taste / political opinions and has gone too far too quickly. Much as I don't like what the silly cartoons are, and of course while I don't think Ebay is a public forum that has any obligations (they can do what they want), I think Ebay is getting in deeper than it should.
Will they apply the logic here to all categories of goods for sale? T-shirts? Political buttons? Historical political pamphlets? Current political pamphlets or campaign material? How about baseball team merchandise that has racist mascots? (Why haven’t they?) Merchandise of companies where the CEO may have bigoted views?
How about books that have words in them that discuss race, or in any way describe an unflattering picture of a certain group? Or scientific studies that may come to race-based findings?
I think the other thing that bothers me is that to be protected by such measures, you have to be popular. And it's flimsy. This year it's <x> group, next year that group is forgotten and it's on to <y> group. Woe to the actually wronged group of people who can't garner enough popular support, and who fall by the wayside of laws that are less enforced because people thought the social-media driven justice system took care of it.
Ps. And edit just to add, lest someone discount my opinion as from a privileged position, I am among one of the groups said to be portrayed in a racist way in those books. If only people’s concern about racism in cartoons extended to more important matters as well.
and from a platform that still allows Mein Kampf to be listed it seems especially idiotic...
Edit, to add: as a comment below notes eBay only allows annotated versions of the book. So maybe they are consistent; I didn’t click through any of the listings when I searched. I also have no idea how you annotate Mein Kampf to not be racist/anti-Semitic propaganda...
It's the next step of corporate virtue signaling. Just repeating slogans on twitter or changing the bio and profile of a company account will not be enough anymore, instead pick a ridiculous hot topic from the news cycle and use this as an opportunity to implement an even more ridiculous policy change in your company to show that your company is down with the cause. I bet we will see even more of that.
I love the term virtue signalling, but I'd much prefer the stronger word come back into the regular lexicon: "sanctimonious". It feels more impactful, as in "we didn't need a new word to describe your tendency to shout about your moral superiority"
In the 70s and 80s, a common complaint about American Republicans was that they were sanctimonious moralizers. Now another party has adopted that mantle, but a lot of people have yet to catch up with that fact.
I've occasionally observed parallels between the 4chan-esque mob and the woke mob.
It's the power of peer pressure combined with the apparently human tendancy to encourage others to do things we know are wrong for our own amusement. It's the playground mentality where a bunch of kids stand around goading another kid into doing something terrible chanting "do it, do it". With each success the groups find new levels of perversion to push their members to.
Interesting! I have only ever read the original - does the annotated edition actually remove all the rampant racism and anti-semitism? Both are rather prevalent topics in the book...
I most certainly do! I was referring to this specific annotated version, which also indicates that it was edited... having read the book I just don’t see how annotations would change anything about how racist and anti-Semitic the book is. EBay’s police indicates that they remove racist and offensive items... there’s nothing about leaving those listings up so long as there is a stern disclaimer that the item is, in fact, quite offensive. I perhaps incorrectly assumed some of the more virulent nonsense was edited out.
> Edit, to add: as a comment below notes eBay only allows annotated versions of the book.
I wouldn't be surprised if this started as a copyright issue. Bavaria inherited Hitlers copyright and aggressively banned any sale of Mein Kampf, only annotated versions got around that ban and even that was a legal uphill battle as far as I remember.
Mein Kampf isn't a children book though. In addition to the be fact that the books are annotated, those who are going to read it will be of enough to get the context surrounding this book
You realize that libraries are not infinite in space or capacity, right? Every book in a library necessarily pushes out some other book that could have been in there but didn't make the cut.
Given that, libraries shouldn't be required to carry every book, they should optimize their collections for what their local users want to read. If it turns out that old out of print childrens' books aren't popular, then why should they carry them?
I am happy to pay to acquire any of these banned books for the Internet Archive to scan, store, and serve them in perpetuity.
Libraries come and go, and should be treated as temporary collections (fair enough re space constraints). To attempt to erase history (“cancel it”?) is to ignore its teachings.
and you can. From what I've seen, particularly at University libraries, they'll do sales of super old worn out books, or long since outdated academic material.
Edit: In retrospect, this comment reads like I'm dismissing the parent or grandparents' concern, but really I'm just saying that you can definitely buy old stock that's been taken off shelves.
And what if the Internet Archive falls victim to this disease and decide to self-censor? What next?
The precedent of books being illegal has already been set in many countries. Now all that is missing is the political will to have them banned (and at the rate things are deteriorating, I expect this will come sooner rather than later).
I’d also upload to Library Genesis, who previously were the storage backend for SciHub. To your point, distributed storage provides durability against censorship.
Obviously, you can't carry every book ever forever. I just meant that the general public should have timely access to books deemed too controversial by the elites, so that the plebs may make up their own mind.
The elites, in this case, being the people who own the rights and publish the books? Are you suggesting that libraries should increase the space they devote work going out of print? Books stop being published all the time.
And beyond that, I don't think you mean what you generally say here, that libraries should have books that are considered controversial by elites. I can think of plenty of books that are controversial to leftist elites and plenty of books that are controversial to right wing elites.
Yes, publishers being part of the elite but also the academic and media class. And I don't really care if they're left-wing or right-wing, whatever that means. I just want the general public to have access to books they're curious about, and especially so if they're deemed controversial. Yes, books go out of print all the time, but public libraries still mange to circulate them around to where they're requested.
Libraries have always been squarely against book banning however. Dr. Seuss is an immensely popular and historic children's author. No reason his books should not be in any library children's section.
No one is saying, "Stop all Seuss books from entering libraries". The publisher stopped printing a small subset of books. Oh the places you go will still have plenty of shelf space and be given to every graduating senior for quite a while I'm sure.
No the publisher can't do anything but likely the books in circulation will quickly be stolen. Most libraries don't even charge fines for non-returned materials anymore.
No more than a rounding error thought some of these books were offensive. Even if it was a decent size of the population, just don’t read the books to your kids.
Public libraries absolutely should not be in the business of exposing children to racist drivel, regardless of whether it's favored by internet crypto-Nazis. Most people don't have the luxury of access to a private collection.
The "private company" argument, while fully and technically correct, is such a ridiculous canard to trot out at a time when we slide rapidly into public-private authoritarianism.
Someone (probably), in 1934 Hacker News: "BASF, Deutsche Bank, Hugo Boss, Bayer, BMW, and Siemens are private merchants. They can choose what to sell, and to whom. Maybe this presents a survival problem for the Jews, we don't know."
I guess it's ok since the public-private authoritarianism and book-burning is left-leaning this time?
Conservatives wouldn't complain if private companies were censoring and cancelling left-leaning content. They'd be out there defending private property rights and corporate freedom to act. It's transparently political.
BTW: I don't think canceling left-leaning stuff is far fetched. If you think we have cancel culture now, wait until we have a serious "rebooted" labor movement in this country that starts getting traction. The gloves will come off.
Bill Maher made this point, that Republicans have lately tried to appropriate "cancel culture" for being correctly rebuked, while what happens to people with his views is insane. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmXTUSP9a9M
I always go into Maher from these recommendations thinking maybe I'll like his point here. Then halfway through I realize I've been duped again. In this case he laments republicans appropriating the term cancel culture, which he insists is a big deal for other reasons. Then at 4:15 he laughs while sarcastically saying "it's always okay when Trump's the nazi" and I'm like, oh okay. I remember how you like to draw people farther to the right while appearing as if you're anti-alt-right.
Yes of course the show is politically biased I just think his supposed thesis does not match the conclusions he draws. It is misleading that he presents himself as a centrist while laughing at those who would criticize the alt right.
Perhaps his thing is he just wants to criticize everyone and get away with it and if that's the case then I don't get what he stands for. Might be how I feel about conservatism in general which increasingly seems to be just anti-everything that would impose rules on the wealthy.
One might even point out that this is an example of karma, as conservatives fighting for the right to deny service for bigoted reasons (gay wedding cakes, anyone?) have put the law squarely on the side of companies that no longer want to carry even vaguely racist material.
> Conservatives wouldn't complain if private companies were censoring and cancelling left-leaning content. They'd be out there defending private property rights and corporate freedom to act. It's transparently political.
I think you are confusing two very different things.
Criticizing Ebay for banning particular books, or AWS for dropping Parlor, or Twitter for banning various conservatives is not in contradiction with the libertarian/conservative idea that private entities should have the freedom to manage their business as they see fit.
Arguing for limited government oversight/power in these situations is orthogonal to criticizing the decisions on their own merits.
It's not in contradiction provided you don't encourage people to storm government buildings on the basis of private entities making their own choices. Which did happen.
Simply that Don Jr criticizing Dr Seuss or eBay for canning books is contradictory to lib/con views on free speech when his base uses such arguments to violently rebel against the government.
> The "private company" argument, while fully and technically correct, is such a ridiculous canard to trot out at a time when we slide rapidly into public-private authoritarianism
So make a company yourself that specializes in trading items banned from other shops. It wouldn't be the first and it's completely legal. I bet someone is already capitalizing on the outrage over this news. I don't know how exactly and I don't mean the media.
About the companies you list, we study them to look at the rise of Hitler, and we have put anti-discrimination laws in place to hopefully stop someone from abusing their positions like that again.
This isn't the state entering your home and burning books. Wrong hill.
How about making a website selling banned, unpopular or borderline racist literature? And then payment providers cancel services to it. Can I then take orders using cash via letters? Seems like it can work. Hopefully the post office, Fedex and UPS and other mail carriers don't notice and cancel it for some obscure money-laundering law/regulation about mailing money! Must I maybe resort to selling that literature on the street corner, back alley maybe?
What you describe occurs in China with books that might criticize their government, only they can't even sell them in back alleys. I've never heard of it happening with any material in the US short of things that encourage acts of terror. And I think that is the right place to draw the line.
I don't consider internet company cancellation authoritarian because they're just following the will of the market. It's a symptom, not the cause. If it were solely up to Ebay execs, they would rather people not be overly sensitive because they can make more money that way.
The same is true for content platforms like Reddit or Facebook. They were pro-free speech until they started to get bad publicity from it.
The insanely vocal people will twist the narrative to convince the regular people to go on a morale crusade. The Youtube adpocalypse started because a journalist kept watching Isis videos before they got removed, until they found one with a Coca cola ad.
No one fails to make this "hey, it's a private company" point in these discussions. It's always brought up when someone is criticizing a tech behemoth for censorship of some kind, and it's nearly always a non-sequitur.
Guess what? It's totally fine and valid to criticize private entities even when their conduct is perfectly lawful.
Thought experiment: imagine eBay and Amazon started to promote Neo-Nazi literature on their home pages in the same way that they now promote anti-racist books and such. What would be the appropriate response: outrage, or "bUt iTs a pRiVaTe cOmPaNy!!!"?
I feel like we're both reading each other's comments in a completely different way than intended. I think it's not unreasonable to suggest that many people globally don't want freedom of religion, but I was saying that many people currently don't have the freedom to leave theirs, whether legally or for other reasons.
> many people globally don't want freedom of religion
Are you saying they don't want freedom of religion because they are happy with no religion or are happy with theirs? That may be true for folks who've never experienced anything different from the way they were raised. I think the majority would like the freedom to choose something different when one thing is not working for them.
Insert that picture of a person being stepped on with the text "At least its not the government"
At what point to we step up and say, these megacorps have as much power over our lives as the government. And in some cases more. The US government would struggle to ban a book world wide but ebay and amazon can do it pretty easily.
I agree there are monopolies that need antitrust attention. Wish we'd focus on the ISP infrastructure. Regional broadband ISP monopolies are the problem underlying the big tech social media and advertising companies. Yelling at eBay for banning Dr Seuss books is a distraction from that and I believe that may be the intent. We haven't been able to discuss net neutrality for a few years because of this tabloid style of news. Let's get back to business.
These companies don't have the legal means to put your body in a cage, end your life or take you into custody by force until you answer to their accusations like a government does. That's why comparing this to government jackboots is a very weak argument.
They also don’t have the legal means to bar black people from service - because we changed the laws to prevent them from acting evily. “At least they can’t kill you” isn’t a good argument.
Back in the 1950s, Louis B. Mayer, head of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, decided that he wasn't going to buy any more screenplays from communists, or anybody who had communist friends, or even anybody who'd been accused of having communist friends.
MGM was a private company, so that was perfectly okay.
...Yes? It seems like the head of a private company should be able to decide how to spend money based on whatever reasoning they want, within the limits of the law. Are you suggesting there should be a law that would have prohibited this behavior somehow? Or just that it was morally wrong?
I'm saying that the Hollywood Blacklist is pretty much universally considered to have been a Bad Thing nowadays, even though, yes, it was perfectly legal.
It's also a suggestion that perhaps one might want to think about what could happen should the "cancellation" shoe suddenly be on the other foot, as it well might. These things can change, sometimes faster than people expect them to.
Robespierre was pretty surprised when the mob showed up at his door, you can bet.
On re-reading the parent comment above yours, I see they were referring to criticizing things done by private companies that are technically lawful, so that's my bad for not seeing the full context. Legality and morality often get conflated in these sorts of threads so I just wanted to clarify. Although I don't really agree with either the choices behind the Hollywood Blacklist or this current Ebay banning, I believe they should both be able to happen in a free(ish) market.
Personally, I think the cancel culture stuff will hit a tipping point and go the other way toward some mean. That sort of pendulum swing happens with culture all the time. Just like our society and laws survived the Hollywood Blacklist (and many worse societal upheavals), it'll survive this.
People just stormed the capitol. It seems appropriate to remind the difference between public and private censorship given those who incited it are amplifying this idea that we're being disenfranchised in both the public and private sectors.
They can't choose based on current FCC policy. Private companies have choice within regulations, and that's a good thing for consumers. Everyone needs to play by the same rules and the big players don't get to take advantage of their positions as much.
That doesn't mean their choices are somehow immune from public criticism.
I realize that clarity is in short supply in online discussions, but mostly I think people that are reacting negatively are just asserting that they disagree with the decision and not that a law has been broken or that the government should step in and force the decision to be reversed.
I respond with this because the people who just stormed the capitol were egged on by those claiming disenfranchisement in public and private sectors. I feel it's important to make the distinction, just as it was to point out there was not widespread voter fraud.
Maybe a year or two ago I would have completely agreed with the public vs private argument, but the pace of change has clearly accelerated, and when private institutions can easily have just as much impact with their decisions as public institutions, the lines blur.
From first principles, the public vs private division is about preserving freedom. When a private company can exercise its freedom to infringe on the freedom of others to such an extent, we act. Private businesses can’t do a lot of things because they harm freedoms (civil rights act and its additions among others).
Yep. I err on the side of not censoring. However, if they're gonna stop printing a couple of books because of severe racist overtones then whatever.
But if they're banning the sale, which then leads to ownership, that's too far.
We have to draw a line somewhere. As a heavily left leaning person who feels unnerved about the state of politics at the moment, this decision is extremely discomforting.
I haven't seen a good summary of what parts of the withdrawn books were considered inappropriate, but my understanding is that the stronger objection has been to political cartoons that Theodor Seuss Geisel created.
I've not seen any assertions (never mind evidence) that the children's books contained "severe racist overtones". To be clear, I'm pushing back on the "severe" adjective. There clearly have been assertions about racist overtones in the children's books, just not "severe" racist overtones -- at least that is my understanding.
Unfortunately I guess it would be inappropriate to actually post the objectionable material for discussion since it has been made clear lately that there is no "use-mention" distinction permitted on these matters.
We are therefore rapidly finding ourselves in a situation where the most easily offended person wields immense power to shutdown speech and commerce by simply asserting that something offends them and there is no recourse to challenge their opinion, it must be accepted without discussion.
I find this situation appalling and rapidly approaching frightening.
I was reading my old Dr. Seuss books to my son a few months ago and came across those depictions, so the announcement to stop publishing the book made sense to me. I had been debating about censoring my copy to skip the worst pages.
I'm not sure if we'll ever come back to that book (it's part of an anthology) but if we do it'll be when he's old enough to understand a conversation about why it's not okay. And then we'll skip the pages, because the book is better off without them anyway.
Related: loved the Narnia books when I was a kid. Had a hard time not being put off by "A Horse And His Boy" when I re-read it as an adult (one of my favorites as a kid, BTW).
Perhaps that is why they sloughed off making the films.
We don't, but that's another conversation altogether. We've been trying to avoid screen time because he's only nine months old.
When he does get old enough to watch movies, I can't reasonably expect to keep him from watching or reading things. If he doesn't see them with us, he'll see it at friends' or grandparents' houses, but either way we'll have to talk with him about what he's seeing.
Disney movies are a great example of something a lot of people seem to remember as harmless and fun, but they pretty much all contain at least some problematic and/or scary elements to varying degrees.
Wikipedia wasn't of much use. It was secondary details and not primary details. I personally wasn't able to see the controversial content and able to make up my own mind and without primary material to judge, I can't in good conscience judge the content. To do otherwise is prejudicial.
Moreover, consider the appalling anti-Japanese political cartoons that Dr. Seuss made during WWII. Is there no merit in seeing the flaws of someone we otherwise hold in such high regard? And to understand that maybe something broke in the minds of otherwise nice people when a little incident at Pearl Harbor happened? We're worried about the traumas that words might inflict, but we seem to be discarding the trauma of war and history to do it. These are important discussions we need to have, but people are too scared to have them. It's easier to ban books.
>It's depressing to me that some people think that we should keep teaching this stuff to kids.
The concern is not that people want to continue using I ran the Zoo as a educational tool.
The concern is ebay is weighing in to say they know better than parents how to educate their children. OR that eBay is weighing in that they know better than collectors what books are suitable for purchase.
Some people find it presumptuous, patronizing, and concerning that eBay wants to make these decisions for individuals.
I get what you're trying to say, but would you rather make them sit there and watch everyone else eat? There's a big difference between being easily offended and having a very literal gut reaction.
Setting aside that out of the 25 acquaintances that claimed gluten intolerance, 1 had diagnoses ceiliac, 1 had self diagnosed ceiliac, and 3 had an alternative medicine diagnosis.
So while literal gut reaction is serious and exists, people claiming gluten intolerance are much more likely to be confusing something else.
But no, I don’t expect them to sit there and watch. Most restaurants have some gluten-free items so there is something to eat.
But I would expect there to be some fair rotation where every once in a while we go to a special gluten restaurant, and also the bbq guy’s favorite, etc etc
What happened was the veto power of allowing a single person who thinks they are gluten intolerant to have an undue power in selecting the restaurant.
It seems similar here as it’s really someone’s feeling but the response is not proportional. The response to some people feeling gluten intolerant shouldn’t be to never eat at pizza restaurants. Similar to some people feeling sad from reading a Dr Seuss book shouldn’t result in banning Dr Seuss books from ever being bought or sold.
The argument is “well it’s not that bad to avoid gluten” and that’s true. Skipping gluten isn’t the end of the world. It’s not a major problem. Just like missing out on a few Dr Seuss books doesn’t directly ruin ones life.
But it lessons it a little bit and the act of accommodating all these little changes puts culture in a downward spiral where very small groups limit experiences.
The challenge I have is that there are serious social justice needs that must be fought and worked on to make society better. Systemic racism, bias against the poor, systemic poverty, etc.
These kinds of things are thematically similar to this Dr Seuss stuff, but while Dr Seuss isn’t important, systemic injustice is important.
It’s like how health inspections for restaurants are important, but unrelated to gluten in the restaurant. I can be for restaurant hygiene but against banning gluten.
> I haven't seen a good summary of what parts of the withdrawn books were considered inappropriate, but my understanding is that the stronger objection has been to political cartoons that Theodor Seuss Geisel created.
Two of the books have traditional racist caricatures of Chinese people, and another one has something that seems like a caricature of an Arabian.
However, the other three are kind of a stretch, IMHO. One has "Eskimo fish" with parka-like manes. Another has a group of people in a boat at the North pole, which are being interpreted as being Inuit, but the text doesn't say so and they just look like people in parkas to me. And the last just has a Japanese person in traditional garb next to the nonsense question "How old do you have to be a Japanese?." I guess the sin is just referencing any non-Western ethnicity in any context, which is kinda nuts.
Am chinese, am not offended by this. I think it's cute in fact. Yes, N=1 but in general there's a valid point here. It is insane how often people are getting offended on behalf of others nowadays.
> Am chinese, am not offended by this. I think it's cute in fact. Yes, N=1 but in general there's a valid point here. It is insane how often people are getting offended on behalf of others nowadays.
Chinese-born or American-born? My guess is that American-born Chinese would be more likely to be offended, because they've been acculturated to the American culture around this kind of offense, and a lot of it is reasoning by analogy to the black experience (e.g. if similar caricatures of blacks are offensive to them due to centuries of pervasive racism, then other groups should be able to claim offense at caricatures of them)
I remember reading something years ago about an Asian-American frat (I think some pledge died during a hazing ritual). Part of the pledge process was to read a bunch of stuff about anti-Asian racism in order to build a shared identity.
I've banned this account for using HN primarily for ideological battle and also for the trollish username. We've asked you many times to stop the former, and you seem to have ignored my question about the latter (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25362566).
I am tempted to find these books, since it is many years since I've seen them, just to figure out what the actual offensive images are. It's irritating to think that my disposable income should be used that way, because otherwise I would not be able to see what is under discussion.
> We have to draw a line somewhere. As a heavily left leaning person who feels unnerved about the state of politics at the moment, this decision is extremely discomforting.
Maybe you are not familiar with eBay's existing policies, but this seems to fall well in line with their prior behavior. From their official policy [1]:
>Listings that promote, perpetuate or glorify hatred, violence, or discrimination, including on the grounds of race, ethnicity, color, religion, gender or sexual orientation, aren't allowed. This includes but is not limited to the following:
...
>Items with racist, anti-Semitic, or otherwise demeaning portrayals, for example through caricatures or other exaggerated features, including figurines, cartoons, housewares, historical advertisements, and golliwogs
I doubt the books would be banned under this policy alone, but the public uproar about them means they are going to be popular tokens among people who want them specifically because they are now deemed problematic and that group is going to include a lot of racists.
EDIT: Anyone want to explain any downvotes that don't amount to "I don't like eBay's policy"? OP was basically saying that eBay was opening a can of worms and all I did was point to an official eBay policy saying the can was already open.
As others have pointed out in this thread and is seemingly confirmed with a simple search of listings, eBay appears to only allows annotated versions of Mein Kampf which are meant for scholarly work. There is a historic value to those that doesn't exist for a Dr. Seuss book. And as the article points out, books that have a lower degree of historical significance like The Turner Diaries are removed.
Also let's not pretend that these moderation policies are foolproof. There are always going to be examples that slip through the cracks. If you want eBay to remove them for sake of consistency, you are free to report those items.
That logic just leads to a circular loop in which nothing can ever be banned because meriting a ban immediately makes something worthy of not being banned.
> As others have pointed out in this thread and is seemingly confirmed with a simple search of listings, eBay appears to only allows annotated versions of Mein Kampf which are meant for scholarly work.
Also, all the copies for sale appear to be from just before or just after the start of WWII, which means they'd likely have annotations of little modern scholarly value.
>As of this writing, I see three listings, and one appears to have been by someone hired by the Nazi Propaganda Ministry to do an English translation:
I'm not sure what distinction you are trying to show here. All three listing on eBay are annotated versions. That includes the one you mention that was originally commissioned by the Nazi Propaganda Ministry but the Wikipedia link says wasn't actually endorsed by anyone in the German government.
>Also, all the copies for sale appear to be from just before or just after the start of WWII, which means they'd likely have annotations of little modern scholarly value.
I'm not sure their age makes the annotations worthless. One can even argue that contemporaneous annotations are more valuable as they serve as their own historical documents.
Either way, like I said before you can always reach out to eBay support if you feel like these should also be banned.
I get flagged all the time on HN these days... For pointing out facts typically. But even as you suggested “slippery slopes” etc.
For example yesterday I pointed out everything from the COVID numbers on the CDC website (showing death rates are not as bad as they seem) or that covid vaccines are 100x more dangerous than standard vaccines lol
The quality of HN has decreased considerably over the last 4 years or so, much like the rest of society sadly. Posts like this, to me, should just be removed. There is little valid discussion, it's drowned out by nonsense and political pandering. Posts like these are no better than r/politics or r/conservative.
HN used to be above this drivel, and actually had thoughtful replies. I hope dang and company push for a less politics focused approach because it's degrading here, rapidly. I have flagged this post, but I doubt it will do much.
I’m happy to flag posts, but HN (back in 2008 when I joined) was always about the “hacker spirit” as well.
Generally, major invasion of freedoms were permitted and discussions were thorough and thoughtful. you can look at the average length of post back then, then compare to this thread, to get a gist of what I mean.
There also wasn’t downvoting analysis of data, there were retorts. Downvoting was typically reserved for poor manners.
All my time here I’ve analyzed points of view from a data perspective and shared my data / results. Only the past year it’s been flagged to oblivion (often not even downvoted). I personally disagree and don’t think this post deserves a flag just because you don’t want to read it. Others do, it’s relevant to all our lives and the “hacker” ethos. On the same token, I do think general politics should be limited and probably off topic here (book burnings are a bit of an extreme breach of freedom).
Personally @dang if you’re listening, we should probably remove flag abusers. This is getting ridiculous
I agree that the discussion in this thread does not lead anywhere, and I regret scrolling down all the way down here.
But being an "information libertarian" was part of the hacker spirit for me, to borrow a word from the sibling poster. I find it useful to see these headlines on HN to keep track of where tech companies stand. A recruiter tried to get me into an eBay subsidiary just a month ago! Glad I didn't have time.
Every time someone comments about downvotes, there has to be that one person to contribute a completely useless comment about comments about downvotes. It wouldn't be HN without you.
Yeah this doesn't even make sense to me. No one asked eBay to do this. I cringe at racial stereotypes as much as the next guy, but eBay is the flee market of the internet. The whole point is that you can buy/sell anything there as long as it's legal.
The most disturbing thing about this phenomenon is its encouragement to essentially attempt to destroy and rewrite history. I am more offended by that than anything else. The past may not have been very nice to certain groups, but it is what it is --- a historical artifact to learn from and remember. The other comments here comparing it to the Cultural Revolution are very relevant.
I don't know these books, but I was wondering that given they are for children, couldn't they instead serve to initiate critical thinking about race bias?
Eh, I feel eBay has more of a right to ban books than a library. Both are bad, and it’s terrible that society is in a place where book banning is virtuous.
I don't necessarily think eBay should be forced with legal might to sell these books -- but it's a terribly bad look for their company. Book banning has always felt scummy to me, and I always think back to being a child when many in my community participated in Harry Potter book burning events. Book burning, witch burning, it's all mob mentality and it's terrifying.
>It is one thing for libraries and bookstores to decide not to offer for borrowing or sale things that they disagree with.
If the library is publicly funded, then I don't really think this is OK. They might decide to not purchase additional copies of some books they disagree with, but I certainly don't want them to limit lending of what they have.
If the library takes no public money then they can obviously do whatever they want.
> After the announcement, one woman said she listed two titles, “On Beyond Zebra!” and “McElligot’s Pool,” for sale on eBay on Wednesday. Later that day, she said, she received an email from eBay explaining that “On Beyond Zebra!” had been removed from sale because it violated eBay’s “offensive material policy.” The second title was pulled Thursday morning, she said.
As in, the usual über vague policies that give the interpreter of the rules carte blanche to deem whatever he will a violation of the “rules”, — the typical prætence of rule of law, for what is really rule of men.
> Will they apply the logic here to all categories of goods for sale? T-shirts? Political buttons? Historical political pamphlets? Current political pamphlets or campaign material? How about baseball team merchandise that has racist mascots? (Why haven’t they?) Merchandise of companies where the CEO may have bigoted views?
Logic? If ever there will be a consistent thought process, it will be based on analysing profits and on nothing more, not on the actual qualities of the work removed, and most often it is not even about profit, but about gut feeling and arbitrary bandwagons and standards of being offended.
> How about books that have words in them that discuss race, or in any way describe an unflattering picture of a certain group? Or scientific studies that may come to race-based findings?
If ever they become notorious enough that they end up on advertiser's networks blacklists, and thus hurt their profits, then yes.
Consider the situation with TVTropes that implemented it's “content policy” to ban certain content in 2012 for advertisement reasons. The policy itself speaks of content, but in implementation, only matter notorious enough to end up on advertiser's blacklists was removed. So Kodomono Zikan, a work infamous, but actually quite mild when one takes the time to read it, is banned from being mentioned there, but less infamous works such as Prisma Ilya which go far further in serializing minors can freely be featured there, as they never became popular enough to be featured on advertiser's blacklists.
If ever a company have any rational thought process, it shall be in the pursuit of profit; morality is never a rational objective.
> Will they apply the logic here to all categories of goods for sale? T-shirts? Political buttons? Historical political pamphlets? Current political pamphlets or campaign material? How about baseball team merchandise that has racist mascots? (Why haven’t they?) Merchandise of companies where the CEO may have bigoted views?
I don't disagree. One thing that I think worth considering is that the seller is clearly making an attempt at a form of profiteering. I don't pretend to know if eBay intends to continue to restrict sales of these titles for all time. I certainly find it in poor taste that the seller wanted to use the moment to make a quick buck.
I just searched 'ebay nazi memorabilia' and found an iron cross. No swastikas. Not sure the extent of their ToS cause I don't use eBay so I'm not reading them.
From the article:
> After the announcement, one woman said she listed two titles, “On Beyond Zebra!” and “McElligot’s Pool,” for sale on eBay on Wednesday. Later that day, she said, she received an email from eBay explaining that “On Beyond Zebra!” had been removed from sale because it violated eBay’s “offensive material policy.” The second title was pulled Thursday morning, she said.
Sure, some sports fans were very opposed to changing team names. Childhood memories and nostalgia are even more effective knee-jerk reactionary topics.
Had eBay said that they were temporarily banning the sale of these titles, I think they could have prevented sellers from profiting off a big news story about racism without much negative publicity. They could then quietly lift the ban after the next big thing had refocused everyone's attention and this was forgot.
That said, I'm divided. I'm anti-racist. I prefer free speech and free expression. I believe POS Klansman have a right to say ignorant garbage. But I also support "no shirt, no shoes, no service." Put another way, my business has a right not to peddle your wares.
> I don't disagree. One thing that I think worth considering is that the seller is clearly making an attempt at a form of profiteering.
Is it profiteering? It's still legal to sell the book in other markets, for the time being.
You're also talking about an item that:
1. Is effective immediately, no longer in production
2. Being censored and banned
3. Probably being destroyed, just not in literal book burnings
4. Has clear literal and historical value
If I were a rare book collector I'd be all over these. Even if I were a speculative investor I would consider buying some and waiting a couple of decades for society to regain its wits or burn down.
It’s a comedy children’s book from an author who liberally applies absurdism. And he and the book are products of the prevailing views of society of the time. Also with nontrivially different demographics.
Among those different views, are included different attitudes about emotional safety(ism), propriety, politeness and so on.
Yes, it’s quite subjective and context-bound. Being intellectually reactionary, being uncharitable, applying stipulative 2020 norms to 1950s work... these are all analytic missteps.
I read it and see nothing in this sentence. I am starting to think that this is really much ado about nothing. Woke crowd should start picking their battles/victims more carefully since this may be the last straw for regular people ( HN crowd is not exactly a representative of general population ).
The only thing that truly bothers me is the lying and hypocrisy. I don't care what ebay does and doesn't allow. I do care about the ongoing lie that their removals have anything at all to do with offensive or discriminatory material. The Seuss books are being disallowed because eBay decided allowing them would cost more profit than it generated. End of story. They don't give a damn about racism and offensive depictions. If they did they'd ban the Bible, Quran, along with probably 75% of literature written before 1980. The Seuss books are now a public liability so they're gone. Whatever becomes a public liability next will find a ready justification for its own banishment.
Whatever way eBay's PR/Marketing team may spin it, they are a business and want to protect their bottom line. I don't agree with the depictions in these books, and I think it was the right choice to stop publishing them (also to protect the publisher's bottom line), but also I don't agree with scrubbing existing copies from existence. But eBay is a business and has a right to deny whatever they want on their platform. That's capitalism, baby!
> Will they apply the logic here to all categories of goods for sale?
Consider that the copyright owner, the Dr Seuss Foundation, has made the decision to cease publishing these six works. That is not the case for the other materials you mention.
Amazon have been doing this for a couple of years now. They removed all of Greg Johnson's books for example. VISA and Mastercard have also blacklisted him meaning he can't use any payment processor to sell his books on his counter currents website. He can only accept money orders or cheques. There is nothing illegal in his books.
The family which manages the author's estate pulled the books.
> The decision to cease publication and sales of the books was made last year after months of discussion, the company, which was founded by Seuss’ family, told AP.
Also, should eBay really be forced to carry books? Should the Seuss family really be forced to publish? When does the right to speech translate into someone else's obligation to publish?
That way is going to have reverse effect. Same like Mein Kampf in Europe. It was banned for a long time but any teenager had access to it. This is how a cult grows.
About 5 years ago a friend of mine was saying, "yeah, it's bad at the universities but it doesn't affect the real world." Pretty funny how quickly things accelerated. I'd like to get off this ride.
What data did your friend use to come to that conclusion? Would you be willing to share so we can come to our own conclusions based on the evidence presented?
Can you participate in one (1) conversation without asking for data or studies? Obviously he doesn't have a list of articles his friend used to make an offhand comment.
I wouldn't call it "obvious" that someone would accept another's opinion without any info to back it up and then extol it, though it's very interesting to me that you did.
I didn't accept or reject his opinion. I pointed out that you're acting like an unsocialized ass when you say shit like "Wow, got a source for what some other guy based his comment on 5 years ago?"
I don’t understand GP’s comments. It’s like they are so obstinate or cargo cult fixated on a good idea and messed it up so badly to think that asking for evidence is appropriate everywhere.
“Do you have data to support your stated preference for chocolate ice cream?”
A lot of people have cottoned on to how important hard evidence is for forming informed opinions. Unfortunately, many of them have yet to learn that you can judge a conclusion on its own merit without a bibliography of every idea that led to it.
This hypersensitivity all started at universities. Eventually those bubble-wrapped students will enter the workforce and eventually will end up in higher positions in HR or PR departments driving those decisions. No surprise there.
As someone who grew up in the 90's. I do feel a bit "older" and more conservative even though I never considered myself that way. It makes me take a step back and realize that our belief systems tend to stagnate and I can only imagine how radical my college or high school beliefs may have seemed to older folk.
One of many fun things is that most of the politically correct terms at the time ("retarded", "transvestite", "mentally ill" etc) have now become unspeakably offensive.
> One of many fun things is that most of the politically correct terms at the time ("retarded", "transvestite", "mentally ill" etc) have now become unspeakably offensive.
The euphemism treadmill strikes again.
I'd not heard that "mentally ill" crossed into that territory. What term do they say should be used instead? I'm guessing "neurodiverse."
"Neurodiverse" is code du jour for autism, and HR will be contacting you shortly for the offensive ableism of labeling neurodiversity as mental illness, instead of celebrating it.
You're acting like social attitudes have only progressed in one direction in that time.
The 70s or 60s kid might be raised in a context of peace and love, anti-war sentiment, then be just as shocked to see Ronald Reagan, low taxes, spending cuts for social programs, the religious right, wars of choice, higher wealth disparity, outsourcing in manufacturing and other industries, privatization, young fascists going on tiki marches in favor of the confederacy, on and on ...
Those that were involved in birthing the current brands of radicalism grew up in the 70s and 60s. They are merely reaping the consequences of those beliefs.
This is why you should support New Hampshire's bill HB 544, currently working its way through the NH legislature, and support similar bills that are nascent in other states (off the top of my head: Oklahoma, Iowa, West Virginia, maybe some others I've missed) and, if you're not in those states, contact your elected representatives and push for a similar bill.
The only way this poison is going to be defeated is through the law. In fact, the journalist Chris Rufo argues that much of what's pushed by the CRT activists is likely already illegal under the 14th Amendment and the Civil Rights Act. This needs to be affirmed in the courts.
Too late. HR has been moving to make us to stop using: blacklist, whitelist, sanity check, and master. It's a frighteningly difficult exercise in doublethink to take a required security course (produced by a third party) that refers to blacklist and whitelist and then having to self censor your own peer discussions about it.
I understand it's not a very common one and can be kind of confusing. Here's a pretty good definition:
"the acceptance of or mental capacity to accept contrary opinions or beliefs at the same time"
In this case, the conflicting belief that these words are okay in the course you are taking, but that these words are not okay if you are discussing the course material.
Excuse me but "person" contains "son" in it which is indicative of gendered childhood, and heteronormative reproduction.
This is highly problematic for children and adults who identify as children who may be struggling with their gender identity; as well as those who chose to reproduce through non-sexual or non-heterosexual mechanisms.
Please refer to them as per-offspring potato heads instead.
I personally like using “blocklist” instead of “blacklist” but that paper is pretty terrible. It seems more like an opinion piece with a bunch of references to give it authority.
Here’s a critical piece of the “evidence” presented:
“In this context, it is worth examining the origins of the term “blacklist” from the Douglas Harper Etymology Dictionary, which states that its origin and history is:
n.
also black-list, black list, “list of persons who have incurred suspicion,” 1610s, from black (adj.), here indicative of disgrace, censure, punishment (attested from 1590s, in black book) + list (n.). Specifically of employers’ list of workers considered troublesome (usually for union activity) is from 1888. As a verb, from 1718. Related: Blacklisted; blacklisting. [32]
It is notable that the first recorded use of the term occurs at the time of mass enslavement and forced deportation of Africans to work in European-held colonies in the Americas.”
Seriously? We clearly need to rethink the whole academic publishing process.
The etymology of the word has nothing to do with race.[1] There are many uses in the English language where colors are used as descriptors in ways that have nothing to do with race.
Do you think we should ban the terms blackout, blackbody radiation, black holes, black ice, black ops, and black markets? Not everything is about race.
> The symbolism of white as positive and black as negative is pervasive in our culture. Watts-Jones has highlighted many terms with negative meanings that reference blackness. In the English language, she wrote in 2004, color is “related to extortion (blackmail), disrepute (black mark), rejection (blackball), banishment (blacklist), impurity (‘not the driven snow’) and illicitness (black market).”
The point isn't to proof that these words are bad, the point is that people have already called for banning these words. 5-10 years ago you would have had similarly "bad" sources for banning blacklist et al., and yet here we are.
> In Old English, the adjective could mean “very evil or wicked; iniquitous; foul, hateful,” according to the dictionary. The earliest Oxford citation is from a scientific and theological treatise written by a Benedictine cleric in the late 10th century.
Not only that, but those colors have similar associations all over the world, for example in India and Japan. It has to do with nighttime/darkness having foreboding/negative implications.
> Berne notes that the ideas of light=goodness and dark=badness existed in ancient cultures (including Egyptian and Greek), and can be found in Asia and around the globe.
> Joseph Campbell, writing in the journal Daedalus in 1959, says it was the Persian philosopher Zoroaster (circa 600 BC) who put the seal on the concept of darkness being evil.
Yes, black vs white is a very old concept. Why do you think europeans started referring to people from africa as black and themselves as white, when they are really more like pink and brown?
Ever notice that purple foods tend to be called either red or blue (or sometimes black if they're dark purple)? Like red cabbage, red onions, red grapes, blue potatoes[1]. Or for that matter how white grapes are green and black walnuts are brown? How black eyes are usually purple?
English just seems to have a strong preference towards approximating everything with the most basic colors.
Europeans also called native Americans red and Asians yellow, and it probably wasn't because they associated those colors with evil.
All people are shades of brown. White people can be pinkish, but are usually light brown or reddish light brown. When you look at this white man's [2] skin color next to the light brown wood he's working with, he's clearly a darker brown than the wood. But I imagine Europeans didn't want to label races as light brown, medium brown and dark brown.
This is interesting. I plugged them into Google ngram viewer. Whitelist was almost unused until 2000. Blacklist came into use right after the Reconstruction era (may or may not mean anything), but it has two peaks in use: WWI and WWII. I was expecting McCarthyism, but it wasn't as popular as during major wars.
Blacklists's first known usage in English comes from England in the 1600's, specifically referring to a list of people who were involved in the execution of Charles I. Its origin literally has nothing to do with race.
Like three times I've had to figure out what is wrong with my git repo because Xcode switched the default branch from 'master' -> 'main'. Tutorials everywhere no longer work, etc.
We've managed to add even more pointless but required knowledge to programming. Ironically it's the newbies who suffer the most.
------------
A few days ago in the AsciiDoc mailing list – there was an effort to try to find a new word for "whitespace" (obviously the "white" comes from paper, how you even think of race in this context baffles me).
Clearly, you love environmentalists, but hate commies. Try again.
You can call it “gray space” now that everything is low contrast gray on gray. (Black on white and white on black were apparently also offensive color schemes.)
The AsciiDoc example is an interesting one as I've not seen really any discussion about "whitespace" as offensive and cannot really find anything. Add onto the fact that stuff like wikipedia also still refers to it as whitespace as so it does seem like they're going to define their own term for AsciiDoc that'll be at odds with broader community and just begs for newbie confusion.
It's so weird for me to see people complaining about hypersensitivity get so up in arms about a pun.
I just find it so hilariously hypocritical for the crowds that constantly complain about the over-policing of speech to find a light-hearted pun to be so dastardly offensive.
To each their own I guess, but a simple pun doesn't feel like the biggest threat we face...
It's weird for me to imagine people who would be outraged about a joke that played on, for example, a racial stereotype, using "It was a joke." as a defence.
Perhaps you're not such a person, and are not speaking on behalf of such people, but I think that saying "It was a joke." doesn't really address the issue that some people's offensive speech is being silenced, while others' is being celebrated.
I think some jokes can be offensive and other jokes can be not offensive at all. I think that's a subjective call that we all make on a case by case basis.
I think people are well within their rights to tell jokes, and I think others are well within their rights to criticize jokes that they find offensive.
I think if people want to play in the marketplace of ideas, they should wear a helmet because nothing says the marketplace of ideas has to be welcome to any given idea. If you tell a joke, then don't be surprised when people react to your joke.
I also didn't see _any_ criticism that the pastor's joke was offensive. I didn't see any public figures indicating that they were offended by the joke. I just saw people calling him insane, a moron, and an idiot for not knowing that "amen" didn't refer to a singular male person.
> I also didn't see _any_ criticism that the pastor's joke was offensive.
As the article[0] that you linked in another comment made clear in its title: "Some were offended". (Strangely the headline of the article is different from the title, but I think the title is still accurate).
While the article's HTML title does claim some were "offended", neither the headline nor the body of the article included the word "offended", or "offense".
There's not a single quote or statement in that article from a person saying that they found it offensive.
I need a source slightly stronger than the title element of an article that is entirely unsupported to be convinced that there were people offended.
All that being said, I would take more seriously the concerns of someone who was deeply religious that said they found it offensive to make a flippant joke during a prayer than I would the concerns of people who called him a moron for not getting the joke. I still haven't seen anyone say they were offended by the joke, though.
I don't know why you think the journalist just made up their conclusion, but here are a few examples of people finding it insulting / offensive:
"The idea of throwing in a pun, though not a federal crime, is poor form at best and can be viewed as flippant and insulting."[0]
"He has singularly demonstrated the ability to offend everyone possible while reciting what he deemed to be a politically correct prayer calling for unity."[1]
"many are offended on behalf of their politics. ... Instead, let’s be offended and furious on behalf of our God."[2]
I personally think that undermining religious language and activities like prayer, by deliberately misinterpreting and butchering words, is offensive in the same way that burning a flag is (even though I don't think that should be illegal either).
> I don't know why you think the journalist just made up their conclusion
First, I didn't say the journalist made up their conclusion. I stated I hadn't seen evidence of it.
Second, I don't really believe a journalist is in control of the headline and I *certainly* don't think the journalist is in control of the title element of the web version of their article. If it's not in the body of the article, I don't ascribe it to the journalist, but rather an editor.
> by deliberately misinterpreting and butchering words,
Third, I don't think puns are a deliberate misinterpretation of a word at all. It's a play on words that relies on similar sounds of words, but a pun doesn't "interpret" a word. If I say: "What does the fish say when it hits a wall? Dam!" I haven't "misinterpreted" the word "dam" to be an exclamation of surprise. I have made a pun based on the fact that the words "damn" and "dam" sound alike.
> I personally think that undermining religious language and activities like prayer
That's fair. Like I said, I take more seriously the concerns of people who are offended by the concept of making a joke during prayer. I'm willing to hear out those that say that prayer is not an appropriate place for jokes. I do, however, essentially discard and disregard the opinion of anyone that says that the pastor is a moron, or an idiot for not understanding the word "amen".
Basically, it boils down to this: if someone understands it is a joke, and think a joke in that place is offensive, I'm willing to hear you out. If someone doesn't understand that it's a joke, and are mad about the "politically correct" nature of his words, then I don't think they understand the situation properly and ignore their concerns.
> "many are offended on behalf of their politics. ... Instead, let’s be offended and furious on behalf of our God."[2]
This quote seems taken out of context from the onwardinthefaith article. The outrage that they are expressing is expressly not at the joke. Rather, the thing they find offensive and enraging is this contained in this quote:
"We ask it in the name of the monotheistic God and Brahma and God known by many names by many different faiths."
Yes, they note the flippancy of the "amen and awomen" joke, but only really find it offensive in light of his prior comments. They are offended and enraged at the nod toward universalism, and the pun at the end of the prayer confirms that in their opinion he lacks the appreciation for the Lord's majesty.
> Basically, it boils down to this: if someone understands it is a joke, and think a joke in that place is offensive, I'm willing to hear you out. If someone doesn't understand that it's a joke, and are mad about the "politically correct" nature of his words, then I don't think they understand the situation properly and ignore their concerns.
Thank you, I think we agree then.
> Yes, they note the flippancy of the "amen and awomen" joke, but only really find it offensive in light of his prior comments.
Yes, unfortunately it is difficult to isolate one's feeling of being offended from the context in which the words are spoken, which means if someone says multiple potentially offensive things it can be difficult to decide how much offence each word caused.
> “I concluded with a lighthearted pun in recognition of the record number of women who will be representing the American people in Congress during this term as well as in recognition of the first female Chaplain of the House of Representatives whose service commenced this week,” said Cleaver, who led the search committee that selected Grun Kibben, the former chief chaplain of the Navy, for the role.
> “I personally find these historic occasions to be blessings from God for which I am grateful.”
“In the end the whole notion of goodness and badness will be covered by only six words -- in reality, only one word. Don't you see the beauty of that, Winston?”
The fact that main is 33% shorter and more descriptive should be argument enough for it to be the new default, regardless of any issues surrounding sensitivity. You should be able to still set the default to whatever you want if xcode is at all sensible.
What's a terminology to replace 'master' in the case of a 'master list'. I've used 'primary' and 'main', but they both imply the existence of a secondary or other acceptable replacement, which is rarely the case. "Single source of truth" is too cumbersome and often the incorrect context. 'Prime' looks like the best candidate going by synonyms. 'Authoritative' has too many syllables, although gets the point across.
Blacklist and whitelist, when looking at the etymology these terms are obviously problematic, and I happily use block/ban list and allow list. Easy. Even "Green list" and "Red list" would work fine, traffic lights won't mind.
Sanity check, never thought about that one. "Sense check" may have similar connotations, but the word sense, itself, has multiple meanings, so that's got a backdoor. Congruity check? I don't want to have to explain the word every time I ask for someone to "congruity check" a set of data.
The wild thing about the term "master" and the people that want to censor it is how English-language centric it is. It really only has the sensitive connotations it has in English. In Italian for example, maestro is teacher.
My fear is that what today is "we should move away from that term" will in a few short years become "we can't hire them because they typed 'git checkout master' in their live coding interview" and at that point it discriminates against those for whom English is their second language.
This happened to a friend of mine with the word "lynch". In English it is a highly racializes term but in his native tongue, Portuguese, the connotation largely revolves around mob violence committed against rapists and adulterers (just go search for the verb "linchar" and you'll find youtube videos of mob violence against people suspected of rape and adultery).
Well he used that term in a discussion on github back when discussing the changes to a popular open source project's code of conduct about 7-8 years ago and a bunch of cancel culture folks jumped on him and it culminated in them trying to get him fired from his current job. He was lucky that it was long enough ago that his boss brushed it off, but in today's environment he's certain he would have lost his job over using a term in his native tongue that is fully divorced from how people feel about the word in English.
Your point really underscored how idiotically narrow minded and self absorbed these inquisition-like crusades against racial offense sometimes are. The people conducting them in the English-speaking western world seem to not even realize that their entire framing of "inclusiveness" is based on an amusingly simplistic and even unconsciously hypocritical presumption of all linguistic connotations being beholden to English definitions of things. Especially amusing to see this coming from people who otherwise fixate to an insane degree on signalling their embrace for non-western, non-"privileged" cultural values.
Another common example related to yours: in countries with latin languages like spanish or Portuguese, the word for both the color black and black people in a completely generic non-racist way is negro. It literally just means black. A Spanish speaker having said it in the wrong context in an english language setting could easily invite criticism born of the silliness I mentioned above.
The example you brought up is an interesting one because in English the work Black is the accepted term but in Portuguese the word for the color itself (preto) is the pejorative if used to describe people. So essentially the exact opposite of in English. The Portuguese pejorative is the accepted term in English and the English pejorative is the accepted term in Portuguese.
Americans sadly are now indiscriminately exporting their particularly toxic understanding of race and race relationships to other parts of the world and damaging the social fabric of these other countries. It's like introducing a new species of plant that ends up being invasive and destructive like kudzu.
I remember a couple decades ago, an "enlightened" fellow college student called one of our British collaborators on a project "African American". Because people around that time started thinking calling someone "black" was offensive.
Lots of this is very English and even US-centric. The lack of awareness and what is effectively an attempt to dominate other cultures in the name of inclusiveness is kinda interesting.
We had an extensive and wasteful discussion about this at my last company over the summer. It was absurd. The proponents of replacing every word that could potentially be offensive have this superstitious view of language as having inherent power that continues from generation to generation. They really believe that a word can carry traces of evil with it over time. Naturally there's zero science behind this.
It's a religion without forgiveness or redemption. And the high priests of this religion will never allow the language to sit they will always find new words to change and replace and shame us with.
From an English background, I imagine we are sitting at a meeting. Something that is tabled is between us and under discussion. Something shelved has been removed from the table. What things are Americans visualising here when they say table?
It comes from picking something up to discuss and setting it down when discussion is over. I don't know how many people visualize anything when they say it.
It’s dangerous to complain about this stuff. Was at one place that routinely trashed white males, of which I happened to be. Caught hell when I tried to push back. Sadly this seems like it’s becoming the norm.
All progress we’ve made so far was by talking and understanding one another. Leaving would amount to silencing since the people who left are afraid to make their thoughts public for fear of backlash.
As far as I can tell, historically leaving oppressive places has a better track record of success for individuals than fighting or trying to talk and understand.
(Eg think of the people fleeing North Korea, the Soviet Union, East Germany, Nazi Germany, etc.
Similar, you are better of quitting a bad company, than trying to reform.
Or just quitting twitter instead of 'talking' to people there.)
On a personal level I agree but it's not a moving forward solution to withdraw and stay quiet. I'm talking about the general sense of progress, the one where people are more in balance with other people and that involves understanding eachother and eventually it comes down to talking or some form of communication. Yes, clearly what we're doing at the moment (social media and it's ills) is not only not right but very divisive but that does not meat it's going to be like that forever.
If people move from places that have bad social norms (or bad norms of discussion), like say Twitter, to place that have good norms, like say the Slatestarcodex comments section, the experience of the average person will improve.
The bad places can just quietly whither away when no one goes there anymore.
"It’s dangerous to complain about this stuff." Yep, I'm Latino but when NYC's law was going to make it a crime to call someone an "illegal immigrant" with a $250K fine I didn't even feel safe speaking out against this bad idea. Because I am in tech and high-income so "what do I know". Despite being slurred this way many years ago by a cop and despite assisting some cousins enter the country illegally and being held by a border agent.
All this "privilege checking" makes it difficult to speak out. The least privileged people have existential concerns more significant than our culture war so they don't speak out either. The Woke movement has been hijacked by narcissists. There is no resistance so this will only accelerate in the near term.
My 70 year old Democrat immigrant Muslim mom is forwarding me Bill Maher segments and complaining about cancel culture of Facebook. She texted me approvingly when Trump banned critical race theory in the federal government.
Yes, this is how Trump, or someone similar, gets elected.
It's not the only reason people voted for him, but it certainly strengthens his position and chances for 2024....not to mention, the first thing the authoritarian left did after CPAC was to ban his speech from Youtube.
this only applies in workplaces, to landlords, or providers of public accommodations, and this only applies to harassment, its like saying hate crime legislation makes it illegal to be bigoted
whenever something sounds this absurd, read past the headline and you usually find whats actually going on is a lot more reasonable
> New York City has banned the term "illegal alien" when used "with intent to demean, humiliate or harass a person," the city said.
That sounds like an important qualification, but I suspect in praxis intent is hard to (dis)prove so it would probably depend on the judge and precedents?
In these situations, malicious and over the top affirmation is the safest and most effective form of critique. See Laibach and NSK on how it’s done. Woke hyperliberalism With all it’s terrible contradiction should be an easier target than The authoritarian Socialism of the 80s.
(The author cleverly and deliberately picks up examples from obsolete Christian schisms to avoid derailing the core of the book with any present-day inflammatory topics.)
We are on a serious tangent but I'll make a go at it. At the time a friend of mine felt that it should be a crime for anyone to use the hateful words "illegal alien" but the fine should be small "like $100". His comment which ended the conversation:
"I value language and am thoughtful with my communication. If I can do that why can't others?"
Maybe how I should have responded?: "So you always ask someone's pronouns prior to initiating conversation. You agree to those and should be obliged by law to not error ever?"
Or doing that may have backfired ? Now I am a self-hating Latino and transphobic ? Not a reputation I want and I have no power to change things. So why bother is the natural conclusion.
Sue. That’s creating a hostile work environment. Civil rights laws are still based on actual equality and not critical theory, and racism against white people is a cognizable violation.
Counterpoint: I graduated from a university still named after the confederacy that held "slave auction" fundraisers all the way into the 80s. I think it's easy to downplay how pervasive racism still is in America, and to imagine that hypersensitivity is the result of "fragility" instead of "constant exposure".
There’s a difference between schools named after the Confederacy and schools named after Abraham Lincoln.
The fact that this bears mentioning points to the general historical ignorance affecting many of these misguided activists, such as those who tore down the statue of Hans Christian Heg in Madison, WI. Heg was a Union soldier and abolitionist who led an anti-slavecatcher militia. He was also a white man, which is presumably why his statue got dragged through the street and beheaded during the height of last summer’s protest violence:
Historical ignorance has been the goal of America's right wing for some time; America has such a glut of mass-produced statues of confederate soldiers that I'm actually a bit surprised that more innocent civil war statues haven't been caught in the crossfire.
But more to my original point: when people have been subjected to incessant whitewashing of deeply flawed historical figures (Christopher Columbus, for example), I find it unsurprising when they consider things like "If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it" in any context to be less-than-venerable.
> There’s a difference between schools named after the Confederacy and schools named after Abraham Lincoln.
Given the number of people who make precisely the same complaints that appear in this thread when high schools change their name from "Lee", that difference seems to be lost to many "free speech absolutists".
This is a great argument for why we shouldn’t work in generalities. “Systematic racism” isn’t practically actionable, so it results in Lincoln High getting the same treatment as yours, which apparently held “slave auction” fundraisers relatively recently, and another school which may teach the “Happy Slave” narrative.
1 of those is a high school named after a president that freed slaves, 1 is a high school with a seriously questionable recent past, and 1 is a high school actively perpetuating racist dogma. We shouldn’t be treating them all like what their doing is equally bad
Was your university doing something kind of like Halloween, where people dress as demons to show the demons have no power over them, or was it more enamored with the past?
And it's not like we haven't seen the same pattern before with the Weather Underground. (I do feel obligated to acknowledge that I was one of those people on the "just in the universities" train 5 years ago, so I'm not accusing anyone of a mistake I haven't made myself.)
The Weather Underground was founded by students from the University of Michigan, who spent their college years arguing that people should violently resist the government. When they graduated, they didn't moderate out of these ideas; they doubled down, started an organized bombing campaign, and successfully hit targets including Capitol Hill and the Pentagon.
I can't tell if you mean "eventually they graduate and carry the new ideas into the world" or if you mean "eventually they graduate and buy into into the system and turn into drones like the greasers, hippies, and punks all did."
Unfortunately your only choices today are this or overt neo-Naziism. You have to stake out the most extreme, divisive, fanatical position possible. If you try to be nuanced and rational you get attacked by both sides.
I think social media has a lot to do with it. We created a global communication medium and then programmed it to prioritize the most "engaging" content, which is of course the most triggering and controversial content. I'm wondering how long it will be before people are literally setting themselves on fire for likes and views.
Seriously, the amount of “this” that I see online is 100x what I see in real-life (per interaction). Outrage engagement drives it and if you have found yourself tired of arguing with people you’ve never shared a meal with, just close the tab. Let them be outraged without you.
Have you seen the recent article in the NY Times about labour relations at Smith College, where a black woman who graduated from an elite Connecticut prep school managed to get four local employees fired over allegations of racism and sicced her Twitter army on them? There was an external investigation that found no fault with the fired employees and no systemic racism, yet the solution was to implement sensitivity training for the staff.
Me? I was told by a genderqueer woman at a sister college of Smith during a job interview that she does not get along with older men.
My wife? She is a faculty member at another Amherst area college and was told by a colleague that she is held in high regard because she is BIPOC. That is shit so tasteless that you can't make it up, so it must be true.
The atmosphere at colleges in the Northeast is fucked up beyond description, and playing ostrich is just that, hiding from reality. Unfortunately, reality won't change anytime soon.
Good for you that you can close tabs, unfortunately that article is an account of daily life for many academics and university staff. Read it, you cannot discuss labour relations at colleges in the Northeast (and I guess many Silicon Valley companies) without taking this article into account.
There might be some interesting macro-scale effects if Cancel Culture causes conservative Democrat voters to move to purple counties/states and turns them slightly but consistently blue.
Joining a group that's willing to scream "oppression!" at every convenient target is also living a life of pain. At least if you're sincere, they can only cancel you once.
There's a third option that is neither "publicly align myself with extremists" nor "publicly align myself with the grey area in between", and that is not to participate in the game at all.
Also, I've been on the receiving end of a mob before; "you can only get cancelled once" wasn't exactly true for me. Sure, the public figures who initially called you out will stop eventually -- they know when they've won the battle. But their followers? They're like that annoying kid at school who kept making the same joke long after it was ever considered funny. They'll happily continue harassing you until the end of time (or until you're able to make yourself disappear).
I don't think that way, but that's the wider dynamic I've seen in play for years. On one hand you have 4chan /pol, and on the other hand you have "woke" Twitter mobs. The whole thing seems gamified and the participants all seem to be playing a video game where getting attention or scoring a kill (trolling, offending someone, getting someone cancelled, etc.) is the objective. Gamified social media seems to be increasingly pulling the whole culture along for a ride.
Of course maybe I am succumbing to the "the nuts are always the loudest" effect.
Edit: I don't think the Internet per se is at fault. I lay the blame squarely at the feet of the "algorithmic timeline." Social media isn't neutral. It's programmed to "engage" us, which usually means either offending us or luring us into some kind of cult.
Chan culture isn't algorithmic in this way, but it's organized primarily around influencing algorithmic social media from outside and as such operates within the same algorithmic attention-maximization game paradigm.
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that it ramped up during COVID and it’s worse in western countries (actually would like to know if wokeness is affecting non-western locked down countries).
Far left and far right identity politics both started ramping up around 2010. There are quantitative measurements based on word counts of some of this. See elsewhere in this thread.
You can leave Twitter and social media alone, but that's no guarantee that Twitter and social media will leave you alone. That's why I think it's so important for everyone who can speak out against this to do so before it metastasizes to the point where you can't say anything anymore.
I think you're right and you're not succumbing to any effects. The nuts are the loudest and wiser people stay quiet, which gets worse when it causes the young and impressionable to think that the nuts have buy-in.
yeah i am afraid of another Robespierre just as much as i am of another Mussolini. and at this point i am not sure which side is closer to taking over.
I’ve been saying for years that if inequality keeps growing then whether we get a far left or a far right totalitarian will depend on which side fields the most compelling demagogue first. The ideology won’t matter as long as pitchforks are being handed out.
I’ve been thinking this kind of thing since the 2008 bank bailouts. I’ve also wondered if that was when America collapsed and we are just living through a slow unwinding period.
The problem wasn’t the crash. Crashes happen. The problem was that banks were bailed out and the we pretended there was a recovery. There wasn’t. It was a largely paper recovery, basically fake. Yes unemployment went down but the quality of the jobs were poor, housing inflation ate any gains, and inequality exploded.
Trumpism was just a superficial symptom. If things don’t improve we will get someone much much worse.
the wider dynamic at play is the loss of trust in institutions due to the internet and the massive information unleashed thru the web.
One can see that same dynamic when the printing press was invented. Suddenly, the old power structure did not control the narrative. Within 100 years of the invention of the printing press in 1450, and its spread by 1500, there was a major conflict all over Europe over very minor religious dogma differences of opinion (wars of religion).
We are about 2/3rds into that cycle with the internet, which was borne around 1960 and came into true widespread use around 2005 (Facebook, etc).
The irony of downvotes on this above comment above mine comment.
There is a third option. Most people are stuck with this. It is staying quiet and saying nothing. Because there is unity in extreme right. And there is unity in extreme left. And there is no unity in the center so these extremes can pick off each individual center person who says something.
I’ve been wondering if a radical, dare I say even Trumpian, centrist politician who is willing to pick vitriolic fights with both extremes is just what our times demand.
I really believe that Republicans can elect some of the craziest Qanon believers precisely because the Democrats refuse to forcefully denounce the craziest whims of their radical base, and are tainted by association, even though almost none of the national-level Democrats are nearly so extreme.
> A fiercely independent thinker, Viereck (who died in 2006 at age 89) was mostly without a political home.
I haven't finished reading it, but it doesn't seem all that encouraging as a source of ideas for building a center if the article's protagonist never succeeded.
Or we could be have like sane rational people and not indulge either sides insane society destroying extremes. you don't defeat extremism by adding to polarizing the situation even more.
The saddest part is boring but popular ideas like universal healthcare continually get thrown to the wayside by loud idiots who want to demand nonsense like "latinx"
Good observation, I've felt the same since I encountered this new generation of humans who demand changing speech, and use esoteric terminology and demand other people say and not say things. I don't care if someone believes in social constructivism, that we're born blank slates, that words influence perception more than biology, so on and so forth, but I care very much when people who believe these things believe that anyone who questions - who dares question - them is a villain and an enemy who must be stopped.
A focus on symbolisms like statues and children books and language on Twitter or git repos is being embraced by the powerful corporate interests. Something that actually does an enormous positive for racial justice, universal healthcare, takes a back seat.
I see some people say they'd like to be called Latinx. I see no one demand it. I see many more people complain it's used at all.
100% of people who say Latinx support universal health care in my experience. But they have more control over what they say than what their government does.
Only 30% of Latinos have even heard the term Latinx. Using the term is a problem because it’s alienating for someone to use a term for you that you’ve never heard before. Out of the 30% who have heard it, 2/3 think it shouldn’t be used to describe Latinos. Be respectful of people and don’t call them some weird thing some professor made up that the vast majority of affected people either don’t recognize or actively don’t want used to refer to them.
Identity politics type news stories shot up right at the end of the Great Recession, around the occupy wall Street time, when people were the most infuriated that moneyed interests bailed themselves out at the taxpayers expense. Really makes you think...
Occupy, as derision-worthy as it was, saw a broad coalition of Americans--blacks, whites, latino, straight, gay, trans--all get together to push back against Team Elite.
Then the entirely tiny group of people who control the media (and hate us, apparently) got together and pushed endless identity bullshit on us.
That's a figment of the media. The "far right" and the huge collection of "white supremacists" that have been drummed up as some huge evil plot in America has, as far as I can tell, zero basis in reality.
Note that basically everything done by white people is a "far right" "white supremacist" plot. E.g., AOC refers to the (hilarious) "insurrection" (the unarmed, leaderless one that waltzed into some of the most protected space on earth with nary a problem) as a "white supremacist" plot.
If you buy that, you're an instrument, played like a fiddle.
You're trying to make parent doubt their own memory. The only out you have that distinguishes that from gaslighting is that you weren't being subtle about it.
You've heard something three times on one of the most popular podcasts in the world? Well that settles it, his friend definitely can't have said it then.
I'm surprised people don't understand public relations. These books were likely not good sellers. I have many of their books but never heard if these titles.
All 6 books have issues? But only two images have been described.
The company just hit a home run in global PR the whole world has run this story. Honestly this is very smart for the company it gives them attention, they get to remove low volume books and it makes cancel cultural look bad to normal people
I was thinking something similar. Now it seems eBay is jumping in, trying to ride the wave of viral publicity. I haven't thought about Dr. Seuss or ebay in ages but suddenly my wife is buying Dr. Seuss books in case they ban more. Maybe I am just cynical, but it seems like a few people are getting promotions over this ordeal.
What hyperbole. The publisher decided to stop publishing a book. Ebay decided to enforce their TOS that has been in place all over. It's hardly book burning.
Edit: Also, you know there are Americans out there actually burning books like the Quran, right? No need to be outraged over slippery slope fallacious "book burning" when you could spend that energy on cases where real actual book burning has taken place.
Perhaps - but at what point do we stand up and say "no"? One day something you agree with or love will be taken down because it's found to be "offensive".
Thank God I have ebay to protect me from reading Doctor Seuss! Now please excuse me while I go bid on a vintage copy of "Charles Manson In His Own Words".
IDK I think it's quite cowardly if ebay is not willing to be consistent in what they are willing to sell. For example, if they can find a few people that are offended by violent video games, then all violent video games should be taken down from eBay. If I'm offended by the Communist Manifesto then it's time to take all copies of it off the site.
In fact they could even automate this. They already have a report item button. Whenever someone clicks that and marks the item offensive they could remove that whole class of items.
On Beyond Zebra was one of my favorites as a child, one of the first I bought for my own children, and its message makes banning it very sadly ironic. make no mistake - this is a massive loss of american culture.
Really? Very racist? You don’t think you’re exaggerating with the “very”?
If “what I saw on Mulberry street” counts as “very racist” where do you put “Huckleberry Finn” or “To kill a Mockingbird” with their colorful language?
I mean you have two great American classics unapologetically using the n-word vs a cartoon of a Chinese kid dressed as he did a few decades before the book was written.
N-word vs. kid dressed as he dressed.
Don’t you think “mildly discomforting depiction of a foreigner?” is more proportional?
A bit off-topic, but I use Green Eggs and Ham to help teach my friends English here in Asia.
It works pretty well, since there is quite a limited vocabulary. And it's pretty magical! I can have someone reading aloud from the book quite fluently, with extremely limited english skills, after only a few hours.
The other part is, because of the superior illustration skills of the author, people quickly understand the difference between things like "here" and "there".
Because of the repetition of words, they quickly memorize them permanently.
We take those things for granted, and I'm not sure if that was the Doctor's intent, but gosh-darned it, it is so effective for teaching adults to read English.
They're not racist - they're books with caricatures of any number of cultures, including Western cultures. It's possible people could be offended, but they're not any more offensive than any creative depiction of anything (Edit: poor choice of words there - they are more offensive than 'anything' but not more so than many things). All of Disney's films, even the most modern one's are caricatured articulations of cultures. If Alladin is not racist, neither is Dr. Seuss.
Edit: Go anywhere in the Middle East, stay there for two weeks. Then have a look at the 'Alladin' Disney cartoon and you will see, undoubtedly that it's buffoonishly caricatured, Orientalist pastiche of ME culture. I don't think most people in the ME are going to be straight up offended, but it's undoubtedly a clownish and reductive depiction. Not racist ... but definitely stereotypically caricatured.
I agree they're probably not perfectly suitable for kids, that's fine, and publishers have to make decisions based on fear as much as anything, but the EBay ban is ridiculous, and a sign of American cultural decline consistent with the rise of Trumpism. It's not progress.
We are adults, we know roughly what's nice and not, and within the margins we can make up our own minds. A sticker on the book indicating that some might be offended would be appropriate, just as they do for a lot of pop music (incidentally targeted at young teens) which contains brutally misogynist and violent content.
He’s an example that extremist authoritarian and highly bigoted views, such as those he holds and often defends are welcome here on HN, so long as you are polite while making extremely dishonest arguments.
It fucking sucks, but HN is a place that welcomes racist shit-posting so long as it adheres to a particular style guideline; and bans people who do not adhere to the style guideline.
I’m banned anyway, so I’ll just add that Daniel Gackle’s mother should be fucking ashamed that she raised a pathetic son who devotes his entire life to the creation of “safe spaces” for racist shitbags like jerf.
The real racism in that movie was portraying the king and his daughter as too stupid to realize that they could each get wishes from the lamp prior to Aladdin freeing the genie.
I don't understand your point. Aladdin is mildly offensive, so it's ok that Dr. Seuss was really offensive? I have those books, and the drawings in them are straight up offensive, for all individuals that are not white.
> It works pretty well, since there is quite a limited vocabulary.
You probably know this already, but that was due to a bet!
> The vocabulary of the text consists of just 50 words and was the result of a bet between Seuss and Bennett Cerf, Dr. Seuss's publisher, that Seuss (after completing The Cat in the Hat using 236 words) could not complete an entire book without exceeding that limit. The 50 words are a, am, and, anywhere, are, be, boat, box, car, could, dark, do, eat, eggs, fox, goat, good, green, ham, here, house, I, if, in, let, like, may, me, mouse, not, on, or, rain, Sam, say, see, so, thank, that, the, them, there, they, train, tree, try, will, with, would, you.
Children's literature is undervalued by second-language learners. It will expose you to common language and vocabulary items that are, in a formal academic context, those you would be the least likely to encounter. (I can read an article in French usually without needing the dictionary on topics as diverse as cryptography and art history, but I don't know the words for some common kitchen utensils.)
I'm just so offended that you would economically harm all the good people working at EBay due to political stances they might not even agree with. People are so reactionary these days. This is the real cancel culture.
No I'm dead serious, you are actually doing the thing you are claiming to prevent. There's a new Red Scare going around and it's costing people their livelihoods. First Ebay canceled, then all American companies, then all of America.
Don't want to be a mouth piece for a 50 year old children writer? Canceled! It's basically just virtue signaling, but the effects are huge.
Going to any Christian owned businesses? Are they canceled too because they burned Galio's books? Rank hypocrisy. Go my tribe I guess.
Dude, if US companies want to engage in this woke nonsense, then I quite frankly think they deserve to be cancelled. This country is honestly so pathetic, IMO, in the way that we pretend to be a "free speech" nation and yet in reality live under a woke thought police that has taken over through Twitter. I will eagerly and gladly take my business to Chinese companies, as not only do they stand for more traditional values that I tend to align with, but they are also innovating more rapidly (probably because they just focus on the tech and don't have to worry about every little thing they say).
The same argument was used to stop embargoes against apartheid South Africa...that was somewhat explicable given the poverty of South Africa, using it for a multi-billion tech company. Interesting take.
eBay has been determining what's too offensive for its platform since the very beginning, as has more or less every other website on the internet, including this one.
So the real line in the sand being drawn here isn't about the principle of moderation but what is being moderated. In this case, the idea it was offensive wasn't even original to eBay: the publisher decided it was inappropriate to sell and eBay followed.
So a flurry of account cancellations isn't going to signal opposition to the principle of moderation so much as angry denial that images like this[1] could be deemed racist. That's a point of view of course, but all eBay get out of it is "wow, the other side of the culture war is even more obsessive"
What the fuck is eBay thinking? Erasing the past we don’t like is not the way to make progress.
Teaching a kid how much we have progressed from this moment in time. Our present is the collection of all the actions we have taken as a species in the past. Our present is defined by context.
Thanks for keeping us safe from these scary depictions of how different “acceptability” was in the past. /s
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[ 5.6 ms ] story [ 508 ms ] threadSeuss won't be the last beloved cultural icon they come for. At what point are we going to stand up to these lunatics?
It suffices for an intransigent minority – a certain type of intransigent minorities – to reach a minutely small level, say three or four percent of the total population, for the entire population to have to submit to their preferences. Further, an optical illusion comes with the dominance of the minority: a naive observer would be under the impression that the choices and preferences are those of the majority.
https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dict...
edit: or would you prefer "that's what a free market does"? Either way, this is a remarkably incendiary, and frankly absurd, attempt to recast voting with one's wallet as "dictatorship".
Just think of it as a weird entertainment show that doesn’t have to be rational. There are crazies in all historical eras; the various social justice people are ours :)
[citation needed]. While ebay banning them may be a bit much, I don't know anyone IRL who is upset that Dr. Seuss's B-list books with offensive stereotypes are no longer being sold.
(I've only spoken to one person I've met irl about the topic. It is likely that others other people I know would have a variety of different opinions on it, if it were brought up, but the topic didn't come up when we spoke recently.)
Do our anecdotes cancel out?
We've been sanitising kids books for decades now.
What version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory do you own? The original with actual African slaves and the colonialist rescue narrative, or the later version with Oompa Loompas and the colonialist rescue narrative? What version of Edward's Sneeze from the Thomas the Tank Engine series do you own? The one that uses the N word and has a black face joke, or the one that replaced the N word but kept the black face gag?
There are like a million kids books published each year. We're not going to miss the few that have lazy, racist, stereotypes.
Yes, I own McElligot's Pool and I particularly remember borrowing On Beyond Zebra from the library for its imaginary alphabet.
The offensive material in Pool appears to be the "Eskimo fish" (the word "Eskimo" apparently being derogatory), and in Zebra, somewhat obscurely, a "Nazzim of Bazzim" riding a camel called a "Spazzim".
> We've been sanitising kids books for decades now.
I don't really have a problem with that, but they aren't being sanitized are they? They're just not being sold at all.
Um, yes, of course. Have you not?
Exactly how is Roald Dahl, Dr Seuss or Wilbert Awdry lazy?
Looking at newspaper archives, "as black as niggers" was a used term, interestingly often around WW1 but also coal trains, which is Thomas the Tank Engines premise.
Mads Brügger's documentary "The Ambassador" has him getting Pygmy 'assistants', in a complex commentary of sorts.
Dr Seuss changed the Chinaman in On Mulberry Street once already.
The only laziness is people try to Just World these book burnings. How about we put them in the adult section of libraries, that would require effort to think about I guess. When will Facebook Marketplace ban this, will people reading them on Youtube be banned. How long before newspaper archives ban people searching on "as black as niggers". How long before they delete those articles.
They weren't slaves in the original story - they were Africans but were offered payment to come work at his factory and went voluntarily.
There's strength in numbers. We must speak up.
if history is any guide, they are just getting started. Buckle your seatbelts up and brace for the [multiple] impacts.
Nobody on Hacker News compares that policy with Nazi book burning though.
Personally, I wouldn't necessarily care too much. But these people's opinions are just as valid as the other two participants' to that transaction.
eBay deciding unilaterally that people can't buy or sell already-printed copies is just icing on the weirdness cake. This is the same website where searching for "minstrel" or "mammy" turns up a veritable smörgåsbord of racist caricatures, and yet some Dr. Seuss books cross the line for them?
These racist caricatures have a long and ugly history, and they persist. They may seem mild to you, but to people who have to deal with racist caricatures every day of their lives, it's unpleasant. Not just having to explain to your children why they've been presented like that in this book targeted to them, but why all of the other children they know will have been exposed to the same images.
I don't think you intended to diminish that in your post, but I think it's worth taking note when you tell other people that they shouldn't be offended by something when you don't experience it.
Take a look at the images, and you can see why the publishers felt that they were better off without them. As for why eBay decided to glom onto that... that I can't say.
Maybe I'm old fashioned but all I see is a smiling boy, in traditional Chinese dress, eating what appears to be rice out of a bowl with chopsticks. Are there actually Chinese people who find this offensive? Why?
This is just cancel culture playing out. Weak, risk-averse executives cowardly bending the knee to a small group of malicious, narcissistic activists.
This reminds me of the "What is the problem with Apu?" fiasco. No Indian I knew cared, but a small number of sociopathic activists forced the hands of the cowards in charge.
> forced the hands of the cowards in charge
So you support a white actor voicing an Indian character, and don't want some Indian-Americans added to the show? Change is good when something is messed up. Our problem wasn't with the show itself, its how the show influences the behavior of society negatively, and the fact that there was simply no other representation of Indian-Americans in media at the time.
South Park, Simpsons, Family Guy and all the greats are packed full of racially-adventurous humour and that's part of what makes these shows great. Scottish, British, Indian, Japanese, Jewish, Muslim and virtually everyone is picked on.
They're equal opportunity offenders.
If you don't like it, that's your prerogative, but don't force your preferences on the rest of us.
This seems to belie the entire concept of fiction writing. Must that writer also be a straight married male with children and own a convenience store? Can a male writer write a book with female characters, or vice versa?
Hank literally agrees with me. Of course I'm not saying that in general, but in this specific case its absolutely the right thing to do.
I don't know what's special about this case. I mean I understand what's of special importance to you, but if writer <-> character matching is required here, I don't see what would prevent it from becoming a universalizable rule that would turn "write what you know" from a piece of hackneyed advice into a moral principle.
As to why not have whites play Asians even in a cartoon when they can just as easily play space aliens and pink unicorns? The same reason we all hate Big Bang Theory, it leads to tired and insulting jokes based on shallow stereotypes. This is why Asians don't like Apu, because most of the jokes around him are based on lazy and frequently negative stereotypes. The jokes about space aliens and pink unicorns could also be lazy, but there's no space aliens or pink unicorns to get affected by them, fortunately. Remember that Nahasapeemapetilon isn't even a name in any culture, it's made up to sound funny to western audiences.
Apu is on the whole a very positive stereotype - a successful and responsible small business owner who's respected by his and contributes to his community.
Compare him to someone like Cletus who is a negative stereotype of white Southerners, portrayed as an extremely low IQ ignoramus. Or Kyle's cousin in South Park who's a negative stereotype of a Jew, portrayed as a hypersensitive money-grubber. And so on.
Your injury is nothing more than an imagined grievance.
"This is why Asians don't like"
Speak for yourself. You aren't a spokesperson for South Asians, and not all of them are on the same wokeness bandwagon.
EDIT to ask: how do the Dr. Seuss books fare in that regard?
I didn't even grow up in America, but it's irritating when your coworkers think that they are meaningfully connecting with you based on what they "learned" from some hackneyed stereotype in a mildly funny adult cartoon. Doubly so when that coworker happens to be in a management position above you.
My advice: if you have a South Asian coworker, put away the Apu jokes unless they like it and bring it up for some reason.
Compare it to some of the deliberately-racist cartoons that Giesel drew during World War II:
https://reimaginingmigration.org/dr-seuss-political-cartoons...
This wasn't intended to offend, and I don't know how many people were offended by it. But if I were the publisher the similarities would distress me.
There was a white person presented in an exaggerated, outdated costume in that very same drawing.
Discriminated against in college admissions? Erased in discussions of diversity in tech? Who cares. Call me back when we can use you to get mad at a children's book.
Outdated? These cartoons were drawn in the 1930's and 40's... 90+ years ago. They were not outdated at the time.
Regardless if we find some of these drawings racist by today's standards - they are historical and should be preserved as such.
1984 becomes more real by the day...
They aged pretty f-ing fantastically considering what they could have drawn back then.
As for the wardrobe, no, it doesn't look that dated, especially for the time. Maybe the style of it, but conical hats and wooden shoes are both practical and still commonplace throughout East and Southeast Asia, last I checked. The clogs are probably the most objectionable aspect, and only because I don't know if anything resembling Japanese geta was common in China.
And further, the whole book is from the point of view of a child's imagination, so expecting it to map particularly closely to reality is entirely ignorant of literary context.
Nobody cares at all.
I'm sure that actual Chinese people have more to worry about -- though the black people living in America definitely have current fears from people living up to the racist stereotypes presented here. This is about us and dealing with our own difficult past that still afflicts us today.
Anyways, IMO the white character's coloration is just as exaggerated as the Chinese character's. "White" people aren't actually 0xFFFFFF. The white character's physically improbable nose length and hair situation are also reminiscent of racist caricatures of white people.
It's kind of a stereotype of rural farmers in China. If you do a Google image search for "rural Chinese farmers" or even "Chinese peasants" you can still see the same type of grass hat being worn today. Then remember that in the 1930s the industrial revolution hadn't reached China yet; it was very much an agrarian society (much like the US a century before then) and nearly everybody was a farmer like that.
Is Dr. Seuss's cartoon offensive? Meh, it just feels dated and out of touch with what modern China has achieved, culturally and economically. I personally don't find it any worse a stereotype than what one sees today if they do a Google Image Search for "Texan", "Frenchman", or "Englishman" but YMMV.
(Actually, the GIS result for "Frenchman" is rather amusing; perhaps Google owes France an apology for being "offensive".)
Is it, though? The wardrobe seems a fair bit elegant for some rural farmer; I'd expect a straw hat and simpler garb.
I ain't familiar with Chinese formal wear from that time period, but if I were a child in the 1930's trying to imagine a formally-dressed Chinese man (i.e. the literary context of that depiction) that's probably what I'd imagine. The white rice contributes to that perception of wealth, too; from what I understand, white rice is a symbol of affluence in a lot of Asian cultures, and brown rice a symbol of peasantry (see also: the Imperial Japanese Navy's experience with thiamine deficiency because sailors subsisted themselves entirely on "fancy" white rice instead of brown: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/japanese-curry-history). The Chinese man's presentation alongside a formally-dressed magician contributes further to that interpretation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baizuo
[ACT1] Comment here: "What bothers me is the speed with which this process ... happens. We are not discussing things anymore."
[ACT2] jfengel discusses racism. Gets repeatedly downvoted.
This is the part that bothers me.
Publishers can do whatever they want, and it's nice that they're at least willing to try to be progressive, even if this particular case of outrage is maybe a bit exaggerated.
Ebay jumping on the bandwagon seems like it's just for brownie points with whatever faux-woke nerd happens to scroll past the announcement.
eBay isn't deciding that, it is deciding unilaterally that it will not participate in the buying or selling of those items.
eBay probably has no interest and in any case has no power to make decisions about what can be bought and sold, only about what it will participate as a facilitator of buying and selling.
/s
eBay has a natural monopoly due to the nature of auctions. If they decide not to list something, it becomes at the very least much harder to trade.
Online auctions aren’t the only places to buy and sell goods.
They aren’t even the only places to buy and sell goods online.
Plenty of places still selling them (though, because of the announcement that they won’t be published, prices are insane right now, as they’ve become instant high-interest speculative collectibles.)
And if that sounds like it’s going to far can they at least have no say in the right to resale?
eBay is not "unilaterally" deciding anything. I can't remember the last time I bought or sold anything on eBay for instance. As I see it, they probably want to avoid the resulting controversy from any of these items, and don't want anything to do with them on their platform.
As an immigrant to the US, this is what I don't get. Isn't the whole idea of capitalism supposed to be that eBay's delisting is an opportunity for ten other websites specializing in obscure Dr. Seuss books to pop up and eat their business? [1]
Or would you rather have one centralized government agency in charge of deciding which books can and can't be sold?
--------------------------------------------------
[1] What I personally suspect (without much evidence) is that there is very little of a secondary market for these books. Sure, some are going for $500 because people will collect anything, but the person simply doesn't care about them one way or the other.
It is. And don't get me wrong: eBay's well within their rights to restrict what people can buy and sell on their platform. It's just weird that this is where they draw the line; the message here seems to be "we're totally fine with selling things depicting racist caricatures, except for these old children's books".
That is: eBay having the right to do something does not make them above criticism or scrutiny.
Yes, the inconsistent policy applications you mention does mean that eBay is a terrible site if you want to find well-vetted products. Honestly, I have never gotten a particularly "trustworthy" vibe from eBay, so this doesn't come as a huge surprise to me.
This take feels pretty left field, to be honest.
Also I'm unsure what that has to do with the American Empire, does Darpa and the military run on Dr Seuss comics?
And that’s not even mentioning the active genocide they’re committing...
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking to the rules when posting here, we'd be grateful. They include:
"Eschew flamebait. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents. Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."
Curious what was offensive I found the books are on youtube and I'm guessing it's drawing Chinese https://youtu.be/Vl6wD6EGOVk?t=228 and tribal Africans https://youtu.be/Vl6wD6EGOVk?t=519 looking like cartoon versions of those. Does this means cartoon caricatures are only acceptable if they are of white westerners?
I mean I can understand the publishers thinking they may get in trouble and it's easier to drop those lines but the thing seems to be getting a bit out of hand.
So does this mean that if an asian man murders a black man, specifically because he is black, that this is not racism?
I honestly don't get it.
You don’t get it because it’s wrong.
In a time and place where a local hegemonic group has a history of bigotry towards and/or oppression of a local minority or disempowered group, it could be argued that the hegemonic group has a greater moral authority to be sensitive to the oppressed/disempowered group.
I believe that's a big part of the moral reasoning that is applied in these cases. There is a logic to it that goes further and has more integrity than than "people just want to take other people down".
Because you are honest you wont get it.
People in group 2 think people in group 1 mean it's impossible to discriminate against someone in the majority. But they don't.
People in group 1 think people in group 2 mean systemic discrimination doesn't exist. But not all of them do.
Some people in group 2 say people in group 1 should come up with a new word for systemic discrimination. But people in group 1 don't bother because it wouldn't change what people believe.
So when a black women walks up at you and punches you in the face because you're white and she hates white people that's not racist?
"Today, some scholars of racism prefer to use the concept in the plural racisms, in order to emphasize its many different forms that do not easily fall under a single definition. They also argue that different forms of racism have characterized different historical periods and geographical areas.[24] Garner (2009: p. 11) summarizes different existing definitions of racism and identifies three common elements contained in those definitions of racism. First, a historical, hierarchical power relationship between groups; second, a set of ideas (an ideology) about racial differences; and, third, discriminatory actions (practices).[13]"
This is exactly what the OP is talking about -- they are pointing out that some forms of racism are worse than others, and one thing that makes one form of racism worse than other forms is when there's a power imbalance that historically has resulted in the oppression of one group. Two individuals in a marginalized group getting into a scuff over an issue of race is one kind of racism, yes, but the damage is localized between themselves. One group of people, from a position of power an authority, subjugating and oppressing another group of people over an issue of race is a completely different matter.
> Today, some scholars
Okay. Some scholars also think we should get rid of any and all market restrictions. The wide consensus as understood by literally everyone except those few very special scholars is still different.
From my point of view, your point of view is the one that is the minority view. But I recognize it as valid point of view rather than characterizing you as "absolutely insane" and out of touch with "literally everyone except those few very special scholars".
Can you even prove that the view you espouse is the majority view? You've stated this multiple times as a reason for discounting the other poster's (and by extension my own) point of view, but you haven't made any effort to back up your assertion.
Here's what I'm getting at. There is a difference between what you and I believe, and it doesn't come down to "absolute insanity". We can each make a logical, principled case for our positions. I implore you to open your self up to the other side instead of dismissing it with the vitriol you have exhibited.
>Racism is the belief that groups of humans possess different behavioral traits corresponding to physical appearance and can be divided based on the *superiority* of one race over another.
in your hypothetical about being assaulted by a black woman did you really mean that she believed herself to be of a *superior* race? or did you mean something else?
Here's the definition of racism according to Google:
> prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against a person or people on the basis of their membership in a particular racial or ethnic group, typically one that is a minority or marginalized.
When most people say racism, they mean the dictionary (also, the colloquial and correct) definition, not the definition that sociology textbooks have tried to propagate.
>against a person ... typically one that is a minority or marginalized.
this clearly implies white people cannot be the victims of racism (at least not in america)
It's hilarious to me that the reactionary position on this (wherein people are quoting dictionary definitions and wiki articles) manifestly hinges on trivialities.
"We take an evidence-based approach to language content creation, looking at real examples of the ways words are used in context to provide an accurate picture of a language.
To gather this evidence, our corpora – massive collections of spoken and written language data – track and record the very latest language developments across an enormous variety of publications, covering everything from specialist journals to newspapers to social media posts."
https://languages.oup.com/about-us/how-we-create-language-co...
So let me get this straight: Oxford comes up with their definitions by consulting people who have the power and agency to write and publish media. Wouldn't this exclude marginalized people? Incarcerated people? People who are not rich enough, educated enough, or connected enough to be able to afford the ability to publish in the mediums Oxford adds to their corpus?
If the definition comes from books, journals, newspapers, and social media posts, then its going to reflect the thoughts and opinions of authors, journalists, and people rich enough to afford a computer and internet connection.
All this is saying is that the definition changes depending who you ask. So when we want the definition of a word that has a clear power component involved, it behooves us to ask both sides of that divide as to their definition of the term.
It's not that the publishers were afraid of getting in trouble. It's that they were ashamed of their own book -- with good reason.
So if someone makes caricatures to demean the irish should we ban those? Seems pretty ridiculous...
https://www.gaiafoundation.org/app/uploads/2019/05/DSC_0150....
The book is explicitly depicting people from abroad, not African-Americans. As Dr. Seuss’s surviving family has attested to his character and wordliness, and his other books like “Horton Hears a Who” promote tolerance and the acceptance of minorities, I’m inclined to go with a simpler, more innocent explanation for these images.
They cancelled Apu from the Simpson’s without understanding that his presence on the show demonstrated a mainstreaming of Indian immigrants, in a similar way that the uncanceled Groundskeeper Willie, Mayor Quimby, and McBain demonstrate the mainstream acceptance of Scottish, Irish, and Austrian immigrants.
The documentary also explicitly discusses the "mainstreaming of Indian immigrants". It isn't something that is just ignored or missed.
The guy who voiced Apu, Hank Azaria, decided to stop doing it. Nobody "cancelled" him. He is an articulate guy and describes why he reached the decision in this interview:
https://www.npr.org/2021/01/29/962031274/hank-azaria-on-broc...
The whole interview, not just the Apu-related stuff, is quite interesting.
But they dropped whole books. If they had changed a line in one of the books and cut out or changed a few illustrations, I'm sure fewer people would bother. Taking whole books off the market because (at least in one case) a single illustration could be deemed offensive seems a bit over the top.
Like how exposure to pictures of demons and pretending to be wizards turns young D&D players into satanists? And exposure to violent rap lyrics turns them into murderers?
I have looked at the pictures, some make me cringe a bit, others don't seem like a big deal to me. And ultimately the Seuss copyright holders can do what they want, it's their property. I'm not sure why eBay feels the need to get involved. But I found the "think of the children" arguments for banning media equally unconvincing when they were conservative talking points thirty years ago.
Edit: Also, almost all kids will be exposed to these books with a parent present, having it read to them. The parent can contextualize the images however they like, reducing any risk of bad 'impressions'.
Most purchasers of Seuss books are not looking to start a dialog with their toddler about racism.
edit: I believe you had originally written "procure". Maybe I misread, but that's why my comment is phrased as such.
The answer depends on what standard you're using.
In my opinion, yes they do have that responsibility. Once you attain a level of social and economic power on par with eBay, you have the responsibility to ensure that your actions do not limit free access to information.
If we were talking about a company that does 10k in sales a year -- they do not have that responsibility. But since we're talking about a company that does 4B in sales a year -- yes, according to my moral foundation, they do have that responsibility.
I value free speech and the freedom of expression pretty high on my list of important things though, while it seems like you value the ability of a billion dollar corporation to profit and maintain their brand image much higher than that.
Like I said, different moral foundations.
But in USA, they don't really have to list anything they don't like.
> I think the publisher and now eBay are making the right call - children are impressionable, and presenting racial caricatures like these to them is not good.
The point is that the publisher and ebay choosing not to participate in commerce related to these books isn't telling you to do anything, and they don't have any obligation to participate in that commerce.
If the publisher was calling for the government to supervise the books that you read to your children, well then you'd have a point.
It's a pretty dumb conversation if all comments have to follow a wrong premise in an initial comment.
Step 2: censorship now doesn't exist anymore since "muh private entities, what are you, a commie?"
Brilliant. What a beautiful and free society we have created for ourselves.
...until banks and merchant processors cut off financial access to these "dangerous" entities and their service providers.
Wikileaks was a victim of this year's ago, and served as a great example of why cryptocurrencies are important.
From one of the listed items:
> This item has been listed previously. eBay removed it with this reminder of the guidelines:
> "You listed the book Mein Kampf, but it is not a critically annotated edition. eBay only allows critically annotated versions of Mein Kampf to be listed on the site. While we appreciate that you chose to utilize our site, we must ask that you please not relist in this case."
> This is their policy and this edition is compliant with that policy.
https://www.ebay.ca/itm/Der-Giftpilz-by-Ernst-Hiemer-English...
I can buy a children’s book written by literal Nazis that was created to teach kids why Jews are bad and how to recognize them.
I can’t buy a Dr. Seuss book about the zoo because there’s a mildly offensive picture of a Chinese person.
Really?
> there’s a mildly offensive picture of a Chinese person.
a) Fuck off with “mildly offensive,” it’s flagrantly racist and doesn’t belong in a children’s book or on eBay’s marketplace (in accordance with eBay’a policy)
b) I see you didn’t mention the cartoon of the Africans in the exact same book, which is straight out of the Klan and makes your argument much weaker.
https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/04/air-pollutio...
Sure we are. There has been discussion. Just because you weren't involved in it, which is natural since I doubt you work for Dr. Seuss Enterprises, doesn't mean it didn't take place. The onus is on them to protect Dr. Seuss' legacy and it is important to change with the times.
This is not the first time something like this has happened and it won't be the last. There are plenty of examples to be found online of popular family cartoons which depicted racial stereotypes.
Go check out the Anti-black imagery in the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia and see if you think, by following the same logic you displayed in your comment, this stuff should still be allowed while keeping in mind it was mainstream acceptable during its time.
https://www.ferris.edu/jimcrow/cartoons/
Why, exactly? I wouldn't buy any such a thing, but I know several institutions that have good reasons to.
People in general have some obsession with the Nazi and the last war. As if WWI never happened, and great wars before it. Because of this obsession, many people seem to think that the cause of a future war would be a kind of Nazism, completely disregarding the fact that it wasn't the cause of WWI and other earlier wars. Paradoxically, they also seem to forget what were the actual reasons of the rise of Nazism in post-WWI Germany (huge WWI retributions, enormous inflation and omnipresent poverty - basically people were very unhappy, and this very unhappiness was abused by Hitler; the ideology came afterwards).
But I was factually wrong ; It is not illegal to sell them, at least in the countries I had in mind (France & Germany).
However in France it is forbidden to exhibit them. So in order to be sold they must only be described but not shown.
Yahoo & eBay do ban the sell of such items, notably since being sued for that.
While there is a grey area around general German WW2 artifacts, including those associated with the Nazi government, eBay explicitly disallows Nazi propaganda. It has a blanket ban on any item with a swastika that was made after 1933.
While some are going around to “point out” Mein Kampf can be bought on eBay, eBay only allows critically-annotated copies designed for scholars.
Accusation is a term of conflict. Terms of service changes are decisive outcomes of compassion.
This is an "execution"?
Maybe try using language proportionate to the offence here.
> The decision to cease publication and sales of the books was made last year after months of discussion, the company, which was founded by Seuss’ family, told AP
https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nation-world/ct-aud-nw-dr-...
eBay has an existing policy that removes racist materials. They're just applying it based on the Seuss info.
> Items with racist, anti-Semitic, or otherwise demeaning portrayals, for example through caricatures or other exaggerated features, including figurines, cartoons, housewares, historical advertisements, and golliwogs
https://www.ebay.com/help/policies/prohibited-restricted-ite...
From one of the listed items:
> This item has been listed previously. eBay removed it with this reminder of the guidelines:
> "You listed the book Mein Kampf, but it is not a critically annotated edition. eBay only allows critically annotated versions of Mein Kampf to be listed on the site. While we appreciate that you chose to utilize our site, we must ask that you please not relist in this case."
> This is their policy and this edition is compliant with that policy.
That's a good point. I didn't realize they were annotated by modern scholars.
This fine example is ok too: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Protocols-of-the-Learned-Elders-of-...
But Mulberry street is the problem.
Incidentally this isn’t true:
> Books advocating for segregation.
Or, rather, if such books are available it is against eBay’s policy and they should be reported. eBay has a specific policy against items that glorify racism or endorse racist stereotypes: https://www.ebay.com/help/policies/prohibited-restricted-ite...
It does not have a policy against everything morally icky, but it’s quite clear about racism. Mulberry Street and If I Ran The Zoo are both racist and against eBay’s policy.
Even worse, hateful and racist content that is ideologically aligned is explicitly allowed. One would be hard-pressed to find anything more blatantly racist than White fragility or works of Dr Kendi, and yet you would not see eBay banning them, up until they fall out of favor.
If one was actually banning books that did harm, those books ought to be at the top of the list.
But they are not banned (not should they be IMO). So books that've incited less violence then them ought not be either.
Once again: eBay’s policy is not to ban harmful ideas generally or anything that might be morally icky. They have a specific policy against racist items, in any form. That includes the blatant racism in some of Dr. Suess’s books. The policy is reasonable and not that complicated. If you want to buy something racist, there are other websites.
eBay is not trying to police everything, they just don’t want racist stuff on their website. That is their perogative as a business and is hardly a meaningful threat to free speech even considering eBay’s market share.
Part of the reason this preposterous “debate” keeps raging is that people keep inappropriately elevating the issues to abstractions, since the specifics of the case are really not controversial:
- Just as YouTube and Twitch do not allow pornography, eBay does not allow racism. That does not mean that porn and racism are banned under the 1st Amendment. Likewise there’s plenty of stuff on YouTube that’s more immoral than any legal pornography, but YouTube never claimed to ban everything bad. They just don’t want to be associated with porn. Likewise, eBay doesn’t want to be associated with racism.
- Some of Dr. Seuss’s children’s books have bigoted depictions of nonwhites, including cartoons black people that resemble “darky iconography,” which anyone in good faith would agree are deeply racist.
- Since eBay doesn’t allow racist items (and had good reason to be concerned about racists rushing to buy discontinued Dr. Seuss books), it banned the items from its store.
Nobody seriously thinks that YouTube is censoring the porn industry. It is true is that the “buy racist crap to own the libs” industry is much smaller than porn and probably can’t easily survive without eBay’s help. I fail to see how that’s eBay’s problem.
Edit: This comment doesn't deserve response, it deserves to be silenced.
E.g. the oft denounced 'On the Jewish Question' that is predictably cited in your link is a work arguing for the political emancipation of Jewish people.
It does so with language that is offensive to a modern reader by turning around and mocking the arguments used by Bruno Bauer who argued against political emancipation.
That [use of language] makes it problematic, and I wouldn't recommend it to someone without commentary on the polemical debate it was a part of.
But Marx is addressing and attacking the very kind of political oppression of Jewish people that forced his father to convert to Lutheranism - which the article of course mentioned without later citing its relevance to 'On the Jewish Question' -, making the point that Jewish people should have political rights without being forced to abandon their religion.
As evidence of Marx willingness to use now-unacceptable language, it works. As evidence that he hated Jews it's a massive own goal for the article writer to use an article that argued for expanding Jewish peoples rights.
There are many legitimate criticisms to level against Marx' language. But this article is dishonest or ignorant in it's presentation of a lot of it.
To address specifically the Communist Manifesto, suggesting it is talking of a conspiracy suggests you have not read it, or understood it. If anything one of the key aspects of Marxist thinking was to directly denounce the idea that the individual actions of a few have much - if any - impact on history, and to present a conception of the way society changes as one controlled by historical and economical necessity, inevitably developing based on market forces.
The idea of capitalism as a conspiracy runs directly counter to the Marxist idea of historical materialism, so it's bizarre to try to frame his work as promoting a conspiracy theory.
Furthermore, the whole first chapter is fan-boy level praise for capitalism as having brought humanity to a level of development not seen before, and for how the free market is the "battering ram" that over time forces even the worst bigots to drop xenophobia, driven by economic forces.
If he was promoting a conspiracy, he was speaking awfully well about the supposed conspirators, given the idea of the development of new modes of production as the wheel of progress is a central thesis of Marxist thought, and his insistence that socialism/communism is a necessary consequence of capitalism rests on the idea that economic progress is inevitable and detached from the actions of individuals.
The Communist Manifesto presents capitalism as a huge step forward, just still flawed and something that would eventually give way to another step forwards.
This idea of Marx as promoting a conspiracy is an inherent demonstration of a lack of understanding of Marx writing, because it lifts up the idea of great leaders where Marx consistently put that idea down and criticised it, by talking of whole movements in terms of forces and modes of production within which the individuals - even the capitalists themselves - are trapped and playing out a role they have little control over.
This seems worse than an outright ban on all copies.
(Edit: I'd really like to see some thought out defense on how censorship doesn't injure scholarship. Downvotes are just limp concessions.)
https://babylonbee.com/news/skynet-is-a-private-company-they...
Given how frequently people reference historians and history in these discussions, I'm surprised that nobody ever seems to ask them their opinions.
I guess?
History is something that historians do, not study. There is a meaningful difference between an expert applying actual methods and an interested layperson reading primary sources for their own edification. Not to say that people should be prevented from doing that, but it does seem like a bait and switch to say "what about the historians" and then swap to "what about this entirely different set of people" when it becomes clear that historians aren't actually using ebay in the method you describe.
If you really care about laypeople having access to primary sources, a way bigger problem is the fact that most archives will not allow non-credentialed people to access their materials. There's way more "censorship" going on there than anything happening on ebay if that counts.
Consider an algorithms class in undergrad. You can read about all sorts of algorithms. But learning the Nth algorithm won't transform your work into original algorithms research. You are only consuming information, not producing it. Similarly, just reading other history research can teach you things but isn't what historians are doing. A lot of "history buffs" fall into this category and love to read pop history and consider themselves experts.
Now consider somebody who wants to develop an original algorithm. But they've never learned any analysis methods and they've never critically engaged with the literature. They don't know how to prove an algorithm's correctness or behavior rigorously. There are a ton of these people online. They often gravitate to trying to solve P=NP. This would be comparable to somebody who never learned historiography (the method of doing history) reading primary sources and trying to replicate what historians are doing. Like any field, history has methods. It isn't just ad-hoc decision making from people who happen to have a title next to their name.
In CS this is largely harmless. But for many fields within history, accessing the archive also damages it because people are touching one-of-a-kind objects. So archives are selective in who they choose to allow to access their materials.
While I don't mind cleaning up/modernizing certain things and not printing the originals anymore, not allowing the existing originals to be sold even by independent third-party sellers is just horrible.
We've got a lot of old books purchased second hand because historians tend to like old books, but none of them are primary sources used for research. All of the primary sources are coming directly from archives or inter-library-loans.
Yes, there are plenty of of options if you can't find a copy on eBay, especially these days, but nonetheless, there are plenty of legitimate reasons for historians and laypeople alike to want originals of old works.
I think they mean execution of a sentence/task, not of a person.
“Okay” is now considered racist.
It’s super pernicious too, but effective bludgeon. Making “Okay” racist is obscure enough that most normal people (ie those not obsessed with wokeness) have never heard of it.
Consider that you’ve never heard until now that “okay” is racist and you did the okay symbol in front of a political commissar (I mean a woke person, can’t keep up) that doesn’t like you. You’re done.
They were very much the same group; the "prank" could only lead to two outcomes, both of which were desired by the "pranksters". 1, they could successfully co-opt the symbol and permanently associate it with their ideology (symbols are arbitrary, after all, and how many mass shooters have to flash one before people connect the dots?). 2, they could troll with it enough that some would then see the symbol as an alt-right dogwhistle and decry it, only for them to turn around and say "haha! see those libtards? they're even offended by the OK symbol!".
> In 2017, the “okay” hand gesture acquired a new and different significance thanks to a hoax by members of the website 4chan to falsely promote the gesture as a hate symbol, claiming that the gesture represented the letters “wp,” for “white power.” The “okay” gesture hoax was merely the latest in a series of similar 4chan hoaxes using various innocuous symbols; in each case, the hoaxers hoped that the media and liberals would overreact by condemning a common image as white supremacist.
> In the case of the “okay” gesture, the hoax was so successful the symbol became a popular trolling tactic on the part of right-leaning individuals, who would often post photos to social media of themselves posing while making the “okay” gesture.
> Ironically, some white supremacists themselves soon also participated in such trolling tactics, lending an actual credence to those who labeled the trolling gesture as racist in nature. By 2019, at least some white supremacists seem to have abandoned the ironic or satiric intent behind the original trolling campaign and used the symbol as a sincere expression of white supremacy, such as when Australian white supremacist Brenton Tarrant flashed the symbol during a March 2019 courtroom appearance soon after his arrest for allegedly murdering 50 people in a shooting spree at mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand.
> The overwhelming usage of the “okay” hand gesture today is still its traditional purpose as a gesture signifying assent or approval. As a result, someone who uses the symbol cannot be assumed to be using the symbol in either a trolling or, especially, white supremacist context unless other contextual evidence exists to support the contention. Since 2017, many people have been falsely accused of being racist or white supremacist for using the “okay” gesture in its traditional and innocuous sense.
This can only happen in a toxic mono-culture or a corrupt dictatorship. This kind of thing is coming straight out of academia and there are little to no checks and balances on the kinds of insane cultural shifts are being made. The left and far left absolutely dominate that space and they have lost touch with reality, as anyone can clearly see when 99% of their accusations are unjust and hasty and simply ridiculous to anyone who isn't part of the cult.
And in any case, it was not a sudden "canceling" or anything approaching that. Seuss's estate, managed by his family, made the decision after much deliberation to cease the publication of only six books due to the content. You could even see it as an anti-cancellation - Seuss's family wants to avoid him being associated with the obviously racist content of some of his work.
There’s nothing you can do except deplatform them; but HN is explicitly designed as a safe space for far right wing bigots; so this is guaranteed to be a bad discussion.
Daniel Gackle has devoted much of his adult life to ensuring that extremists and racists feel safe here in HN; and that minorities do not. He likes to pretend this isn’t the case, but he only talks to very specific people for feedback, ensuring that he can always pretend that people like me are wrong.
He’s a closed-minded, bigot-supporting pile of shit who spends every day of his life making the world actively worse for minorities.
Or, is it possible there's an interpretation of the sentence (and a perfectly reasonable one) where they spent months deciding whether they should stop publishing a publication that they had decided was racist?
The decision matrix might have been more complicated than: "does the work contain racist content".
> Seuss actually grew to become more aware of his harmful images later in his life, and to regret them, eventually revising the Mulberry Street text and illustration. "I had a gentleman with a pigtail. I colored him yellow and called him a 'Chinaman,'" Seuss said. "That's the way things were 50 years ago. In later editions, I refer to him as a 'Chinese man.' I have taken the color out of the gentleman and removed the pigtail and now he looks like an Irishman."
[1] https://theweek.com/articles/969777/complicated-quagmire-dr-...
I wanted to write in or call in, but it was too late.
This one is crazy, but I have my own causes and that ain't one of them! I find it peculiar and I'm aware "they are coming for the trade unionists next" but I think I can navigate this reality and stay out of the re-education camps.
How? I think they'll get to you next. As commenters above pointed out, there is a "long march" through institutions before it starts trickling down.
There were plenty of solutions to navigate before the .... last one. I think the parallels will hold pretty well this go-around, easily navigable options.
Sorry, what ‘o’ word? I'm seriously asking.
Call me crazy, but haven’t we seen social media being manipulated (bots) to push narratives?
These accusations or problems crop up fairly quick and then the media gets on it and then whoever/whatever is destroyed.
If social media can be manipulated to swing stock markets or elections, then isn’t it possible it can swing to push narratives or keep us constantly fighting ourselves?
Joking of course, but if all you've seen of Seuss is the kids books, take a look at his other artwork: https://www.drseussart.com/secretandarchive
The very first one is "The Abduction of the Sabine Women"!!! By Dr. Seuss!!!!
It was SOOOOOOO worth wading through all the sturm und drang in here just to find your comment. You have enriched my life rufus_foreman. Thank you!
It is another (and overstepping imo) for Ebay to restrict individual people from selling to others goods that are not illegal or in violation of their other practical rules (no selling jewelry, monetary equivalents, etc).
This falls into the category of taste / political opinions and has gone too far too quickly. Much as I don't like what the silly cartoons are, and of course while I don't think Ebay is a public forum that has any obligations (they can do what they want), I think Ebay is getting in deeper than it should.
Will they apply the logic here to all categories of goods for sale? T-shirts? Political buttons? Historical political pamphlets? Current political pamphlets or campaign material? How about baseball team merchandise that has racist mascots? (Why haven’t they?) Merchandise of companies where the CEO may have bigoted views?
How about books that have words in them that discuss race, or in any way describe an unflattering picture of a certain group? Or scientific studies that may come to race-based findings?
I think the other thing that bothers me is that to be protected by such measures, you have to be popular. And it's flimsy. This year it's <x> group, next year that group is forgotten and it's on to <y> group. Woe to the actually wronged group of people who can't garner enough popular support, and who fall by the wayside of laws that are less enforced because people thought the social-media driven justice system took care of it.
Ps. And edit just to add, lest someone discount my opinion as from a privileged position, I am among one of the groups said to be portrayed in a racist way in those books. If only people’s concern about racism in cartoons extended to more important matters as well.
Edit, to add: as a comment below notes eBay only allows annotated versions of the book. So maybe they are consistent; I didn’t click through any of the listings when I searched. I also have no idea how you annotate Mein Kampf to not be racist/anti-Semitic propaganda...
It really was not that long ago... like 20 years we knew that all the things we’re seeing now are wrong and even had an idea why they were wrong.
There is going to be a kick back from all of this. I think we all know it, just not what form it will take.
It's the power of peer pressure combined with the apparently human tendancy to encourage others to do things we know are wrong for our own amusement. It's the playground mentality where a bunch of kids stand around goading another kid into doing something terrible chanting "do it, do it". With each success the groups find new levels of perversion to push their members to.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26350364
Most people wouldn't call a version with just a disclaimer annotated. I assume annotated versions of Mein Kampf refute Hitler's claims.
I wouldn't be surprised if this started as a copyright issue. Bavaria inherited Hitlers copyright and aggressively banned any sale of Mein Kampf, only annotated versions got around that ban and even that was a legal uphill battle as far as I remember.
Private libraries can do whatever they like. Public ones should be required to carry even the most offensive book.
Given that, libraries shouldn't be required to carry every book, they should optimize their collections for what their local users want to read. If it turns out that old out of print childrens' books aren't popular, then why should they carry them?
Libraries come and go, and should be treated as temporary collections (fair enough re space constraints). To attempt to erase history (“cancel it”?) is to ignore its teachings.
Edit: In retrospect, this comment reads like I'm dismissing the parent or grandparents' concern, but really I'm just saying that you can definitely buy old stock that's been taken off shelves.
The precedent of books being illegal has already been set in many countries. Now all that is missing is the political will to have them banned (and at the rate things are deteriorating, I expect this will come sooner rather than later).
And beyond that, I don't think you mean what you generally say here, that libraries should have books that are considered controversial by elites. I can think of plenty of books that are controversial to leftist elites and plenty of books that are controversial to right wing elites.
they can surely stop publishing additional copies, but existing copies should not be burned.
were their local readers asked if these books were offensive? Or was this pushed over them?
Ebay is a private merchant. They can choose what to list too. Maybe this presents a copyright problem with clones, we don't know.
I found the books by googling the title and PDF because I was curious about why they were removed. Curiosity satisifed and I still love Dr. Seuss.
Someone (probably), in 1934 Hacker News: "BASF, Deutsche Bank, Hugo Boss, Bayer, BMW, and Siemens are private merchants. They can choose what to sell, and to whom. Maybe this presents a survival problem for the Jews, we don't know."
I guess it's ok since the public-private authoritarianism and book-burning is left-leaning this time?
BTW: I don't think canceling left-leaning stuff is far fetched. If you think we have cancel culture now, wait until we have a serious "rebooted" labor movement in this country that starts getting traction. The gloves will come off.
Edit: Am I incorrect?
Perhaps his thing is he just wants to criticize everyone and get away with it and if that's the case then I don't get what he stands for. Might be how I feel about conservatism in general which increasingly seems to be just anti-everything that would impose rules on the wealthy.
I think you are confusing two very different things.
Criticizing Ebay for banning particular books, or AWS for dropping Parlor, or Twitter for banning various conservatives is not in contradiction with the libertarian/conservative idea that private entities should have the freedom to manage their business as they see fit.
Arguing for limited government oversight/power in these situations is orthogonal to criticizing the decisions on their own merits.
And for what it is worth the capitol rioters have been widely condemned by libertarians and conservatives.
So make a company yourself that specializes in trading items banned from other shops. It wouldn't be the first and it's completely legal. I bet someone is already capitalizing on the outrage over this news. I don't know how exactly and I don't mean the media.
About the companies you list, we study them to look at the rise of Hitler, and we have put anti-discrimination laws in place to hopefully stop someone from abusing their positions like that again.
This isn't the state entering your home and burning books. Wrong hill.
If you make a social media site that organizes domestic terror and your bank cancels you then that's your problem.
You do realise that most of the organisation of the "domestic terror" was done on Facebook right ?
The same is true for content platforms like Reddit or Facebook. They were pro-free speech until they started to get bad publicity from it.
Guess what? It's totally fine and valid to criticize private entities even when their conduct is perfectly lawful.
Thought experiment: imagine eBay and Amazon started to promote Neo-Nazi literature on their home pages in the same way that they now promote anti-racist books and such. What would be the appropriate response: outrage, or "bUt iTs a pRiVaTe cOmPaNy!!!"?
I don't expect eBay to cater to my banned Dr Seuss book needs.
Are you saying they don't want freedom of religion because they are happy with no religion or are happy with theirs? That may be true for folks who've never experienced anything different from the way they were raised. I think the majority would like the freedom to choose something different when one thing is not working for them.
At what point to we step up and say, these megacorps have as much power over our lives as the government. And in some cases more. The US government would struggle to ban a book world wide but ebay and amazon can do it pretty easily.
Back in the 1950s, Louis B. Mayer, head of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, decided that he wasn't going to buy any more screenplays from communists, or anybody who had communist friends, or even anybody who'd been accused of having communist friends.
MGM was a private company, so that was perfectly okay.
Right?
Right?
It's also a suggestion that perhaps one might want to think about what could happen should the "cancellation" shoe suddenly be on the other foot, as it well might. These things can change, sometimes faster than people expect them to.
Robespierre was pretty surprised when the mob showed up at his door, you can bet.
Personally, I think the cancel culture stuff will hit a tipping point and go the other way toward some mean. That sort of pendulum swing happens with culture all the time. Just like our society and laws survived the Hollywood Blacklist (and many worse societal upheavals), it'll survive this.
Colorado Power is a private company, they can choose who to sell power to. Maybe this is a problem with that data center.
That doesn't mean their choices are somehow immune from public criticism.
I realize that clarity is in short supply in online discussions, but mostly I think people that are reacting negatively are just asserting that they disagree with the decision and not that a law has been broken or that the government should step in and force the decision to be reversed.
From first principles, the public vs private division is about preserving freedom. When a private company can exercise its freedom to infringe on the freedom of others to such an extent, we act. Private businesses can’t do a lot of things because they harm freedoms (civil rights act and its additions among others).
But if they're banning the sale, which then leads to ownership, that's too far.
We have to draw a line somewhere. As a heavily left leaning person who feels unnerved about the state of politics at the moment, this decision is extremely discomforting.
I haven't seen a good summary of what parts of the withdrawn books were considered inappropriate, but my understanding is that the stronger objection has been to political cartoons that Theodor Seuss Geisel created.
I've not seen any assertions (never mind evidence) that the children's books contained "severe racist overtones". To be clear, I'm pushing back on the "severe" adjective. There clearly have been assertions about racist overtones in the children's books, just not "severe" racist overtones -- at least that is my understanding.
Unfortunately I guess it would be inappropriate to actually post the objectionable material for discussion since it has been made clear lately that there is no "use-mention" distinction permitted on these matters.
We are therefore rapidly finding ourselves in a situation where the most easily offended person wields immense power to shutdown speech and commerce by simply asserting that something offends them and there is no recourse to challenge their opinion, it must be accepted without discussion.
I find this situation appalling and rapidly approaching frightening.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If_I_Ran_the_Zoo#Criticism
I've owned copies with these pages. It's depressing to me that some people think that we should keep teaching this stuff to kids.
It did provide a lot more insight for me than the superficial coverage I found in most places.
I'm not sure if we'll ever come back to that book (it's part of an anthology) but if we do it'll be when he's old enough to understand a conversation about why it's not okay. And then we'll skip the pages, because the book is better off without them anyway.
Perhaps that is why they sloughed off making the films.
When he does get old enough to watch movies, I can't reasonably expect to keep him from watching or reading things. If he doesn't see them with us, he'll see it at friends' or grandparents' houses, but either way we'll have to talk with him about what he's seeing.
Disney movies are a great example of something a lot of people seem to remember as harmless and fun, but they pretty much all contain at least some problematic and/or scary elements to varying degrees.
How do you teach a child what's wrong if you can't show them examples and articulate to them why it's wrong?
Do you just not teach them and hope that one of them doesn't grow up to be the next Hitler instead?
The concern is not that people want to continue using I ran the Zoo as a educational tool.
The concern is ebay is weighing in to say they know better than parents how to educate their children. OR that eBay is weighing in that they know better than collectors what books are suitable for purchase.
Some people find it presumptuous, patronizing, and concerning that eBay wants to make these decisions for individuals.
https://nationalpost.com/entertainment/books/here-are-the-wr...
However, I have seen some disagreement among different news sources about what exactly led to the bans.
It all started with the gluten intolerant choosing the lunch location
So while literal gut reaction is serious and exists, people claiming gluten intolerance are much more likely to be confusing something else.
But no, I don’t expect them to sit there and watch. Most restaurants have some gluten-free items so there is something to eat.
But I would expect there to be some fair rotation where every once in a while we go to a special gluten restaurant, and also the bbq guy’s favorite, etc etc
What happened was the veto power of allowing a single person who thinks they are gluten intolerant to have an undue power in selecting the restaurant.
It seems similar here as it’s really someone’s feeling but the response is not proportional. The response to some people feeling gluten intolerant shouldn’t be to never eat at pizza restaurants. Similar to some people feeling sad from reading a Dr Seuss book shouldn’t result in banning Dr Seuss books from ever being bought or sold.
The argument is “well it’s not that bad to avoid gluten” and that’s true. Skipping gluten isn’t the end of the world. It’s not a major problem. Just like missing out on a few Dr Seuss books doesn’t directly ruin ones life.
But it lessons it a little bit and the act of accommodating all these little changes puts culture in a downward spiral where very small groups limit experiences.
The challenge I have is that there are serious social justice needs that must be fought and worked on to make society better. Systemic racism, bias against the poor, systemic poverty, etc.
These kinds of things are thematically similar to this Dr Seuss stuff, but while Dr Seuss isn’t important, systemic injustice is important.
It’s like how health inspections for restaurants are important, but unrelated to gluten in the restaurant. I can be for restaurant hygiene but against banning gluten.
> I haven't seen a good summary of what parts of the withdrawn books were considered inappropriate, but my understanding is that the stronger objection has been to political cartoons that Theodor Seuss Geisel created.
This is the first link I could find, but I've seen the same content elsewhere: https://nationalpost.com/entertainment/books/here-are-the-wr...
Two of the books have traditional racist caricatures of Chinese people, and another one has something that seems like a caricature of an Arabian.
However, the other three are kind of a stretch, IMHO. One has "Eskimo fish" with parka-like manes. Another has a group of people in a boat at the North pole, which are being interpreted as being Inuit, but the text doesn't say so and they just look like people in parkas to me. And the last just has a Japanese person in traditional garb next to the nonsense question "How old do you have to be a Japanese?." I guess the sin is just referencing any non-Western ethnicity in any context, which is kinda nuts.
Is it racist to depict a citizen of a country in that country’s traditional national garb? Simplified to cartoon form for children?
I guarantee no actual Chinese are offended by this.
Chinese-born or American-born? My guess is that American-born Chinese would be more likely to be offended, because they've been acculturated to the American culture around this kind of offense, and a lot of it is reasoning by analogy to the black experience (e.g. if similar caricatures of blacks are offensive to them due to centuries of pervasive racism, then other groups should be able to claim offense at caricatures of them)
I remember reading something years ago about an Asian-American frat (I think some pledge died during a hazing ritual). Part of the pledge process was to read a bunch of stuff about anti-Asian racism in order to build a shared identity.
Born in Europe actually, so I don't know where I fall on that spectrum, haha. But probably closer to the US than to China.
Your ilk have been warned time and again.
>Listings that promote, perpetuate or glorify hatred, violence, or discrimination, including on the grounds of race, ethnicity, color, religion, gender or sexual orientation, aren't allowed. This includes but is not limited to the following:
...
>Items with racist, anti-Semitic, or otherwise demeaning portrayals, for example through caricatures or other exaggerated features, including figurines, cartoons, housewares, historical advertisements, and golliwogs
I doubt the books would be banned under this policy alone, but the public uproar about them means they are going to be popular tokens among people who want them specifically because they are now deemed problematic and that group is going to include a lot of racists.
[1] - http://ebay.com/help/policies/prohibited-restricted-items/of...
EDIT: Anyone want to explain any downvotes that don't amount to "I don't like eBay's policy"? OP was basically saying that eBay was opening a can of worms and all I did was point to an official eBay policy saying the can was already open.
Also let's not pretend that these moderation policies are foolproof. There are always going to be examples that slip through the cracks. If you want eBay to remove them for sake of consistency, you are free to report those items.
I don't think so: https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?&_nkw=%22Mein+Kampf%22
As of this writing, I see three listings, and one appears to have been by someone hired by the Nazi Propaganda Ministry to do an English translation:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Unexpurgated-Edition-of-Hitlers-Mei...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mein_Kampf_in_English#Murphy_t...
Also, all the copies for sale appear to be from just before or just after the start of WWII, which means they'd likely have annotations of little modern scholarly value.
I'm not sure what distinction you are trying to show here. All three listing on eBay are annotated versions. That includes the one you mention that was originally commissioned by the Nazi Propaganda Ministry but the Wikipedia link says wasn't actually endorsed by anyone in the German government.
>Also, all the copies for sale appear to be from just before or just after the start of WWII, which means they'd likely have annotations of little modern scholarly value.
I'm not sure their age makes the annotations worthless. One can even argue that contemporaneous annotations are more valuable as they serve as their own historical documents.
Either way, like I said before you can always reach out to eBay support if you feel like these should also be banned.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Mein-Kampf-Annotated-Book-criticall...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_book_burnings
For example yesterday I pointed out everything from the COVID numbers on the CDC website (showing death rates are not as bad as they seem) or that covid vaccines are 100x more dangerous than standard vaccines lol
https://wonder.cdc.gov/controller/saved/D8/D124F787
Frankly, it’s become exhausting posting here. I don’t even want to participate.
HN used to be above this drivel, and actually had thoughtful replies. I hope dang and company push for a less politics focused approach because it's degrading here, rapidly. I have flagged this post, but I doubt it will do much.
Generally, major invasion of freedoms were permitted and discussions were thorough and thoughtful. you can look at the average length of post back then, then compare to this thread, to get a gist of what I mean.
There also wasn’t downvoting analysis of data, there were retorts. Downvoting was typically reserved for poor manners.
All my time here I’ve analyzed points of view from a data perspective and shared my data / results. Only the past year it’s been flagged to oblivion (often not even downvoted). I personally disagree and don’t think this post deserves a flag just because you don’t want to read it. Others do, it’s relevant to all our lives and the “hacker” ethos. On the same token, I do think general politics should be limited and probably off topic here (book burnings are a bit of an extreme breach of freedom).
Personally @dang if you’re listening, we should probably remove flag abusers. This is getting ridiculous
But being an "information libertarian" was part of the hacker spirit for me, to borrow a word from the sibling poster. I find it useful to see these headlines on HN to keep track of where tech companies stand. A recruiter tried to get me into an eBay subsidiary just a month ago! Glad I didn't have time.
Jewelry and monetary equivalents are sold on Ebay, and they get lower transaction fees than most categories.
History to-date has been dominated by a white supremacist rewrite, so now there is an attempt to write corrections to that.
If the library is publicly funded, then I don't really think this is OK. They might decide to not purchase additional copies of some books they disagree with, but I certainly don't want them to limit lending of what they have.
If the library takes no public money then they can obviously do whatever they want.
"Oh sorry, the ISP is private, so they are allowed to disconnect you if they dont like what you wrote on twitter"
Welcome to America.
> After the announcement, one woman said she listed two titles, “On Beyond Zebra!” and “McElligot’s Pool,” for sale on eBay on Wednesday. Later that day, she said, she received an email from eBay explaining that “On Beyond Zebra!” had been removed from sale because it violated eBay’s “offensive material policy.” The second title was pulled Thursday morning, she said.
As in, the usual über vague policies that give the interpreter of the rules carte blanche to deem whatever he will a violation of the “rules”, — the typical prætence of rule of law, for what is really rule of men.
> Will they apply the logic here to all categories of goods for sale? T-shirts? Political buttons? Historical political pamphlets? Current political pamphlets or campaign material? How about baseball team merchandise that has racist mascots? (Why haven’t they?) Merchandise of companies where the CEO may have bigoted views?
Logic? If ever there will be a consistent thought process, it will be based on analysing profits and on nothing more, not on the actual qualities of the work removed, and most often it is not even about profit, but about gut feeling and arbitrary bandwagons and standards of being offended.
> How about books that have words in them that discuss race, or in any way describe an unflattering picture of a certain group? Or scientific studies that may come to race-based findings?
If ever they become notorious enough that they end up on advertiser's networks blacklists, and thus hurt their profits, then yes.
Consider the situation with TVTropes that implemented it's “content policy” to ban certain content in 2012 for advertisement reasons. The policy itself speaks of content, but in implementation, only matter notorious enough to end up on advertiser's blacklists was removed. So Kodomono Zikan, a work infamous, but actually quite mild when one takes the time to read it, is banned from being mentioned there, but less infamous works such as Prisma Ilya which go far further in serializing minors can freely be featured there, as they never became popular enough to be featured on advertiser's blacklists.
If ever a company have any rational thought process, it shall be in the pursuit of profit; morality is never a rational objective.
I don't disagree. One thing that I think worth considering is that the seller is clearly making an attempt at a form of profiteering. I don't pretend to know if eBay intends to continue to restrict sales of these titles for all time. I certainly find it in poor taste that the seller wanted to use the moment to make a quick buck.
I just searched 'ebay nazi memorabilia' and found an iron cross. No swastikas. Not sure the extent of their ToS cause I don't use eBay so I'm not reading them.
From the article:
> After the announcement, one woman said she listed two titles, “On Beyond Zebra!” and “McElligot’s Pool,” for sale on eBay on Wednesday. Later that day, she said, she received an email from eBay explaining that “On Beyond Zebra!” had been removed from sale because it violated eBay’s “offensive material policy.” The second title was pulled Thursday morning, she said.
Sure, some sports fans were very opposed to changing team names. Childhood memories and nostalgia are even more effective knee-jerk reactionary topics.
Had eBay said that they were temporarily banning the sale of these titles, I think they could have prevented sellers from profiting off a big news story about racism without much negative publicity. They could then quietly lift the ban after the next big thing had refocused everyone's attention and this was forgot.
That said, I'm divided. I'm anti-racist. I prefer free speech and free expression. I believe POS Klansman have a right to say ignorant garbage. But I also support "no shirt, no shoes, no service." Put another way, my business has a right not to peddle your wares.
Is it profiteering? It's still legal to sell the book in other markets, for the time being.
You're also talking about an item that:
1. Is effective immediately, no longer in production
2. Being censored and banned
3. Probably being destroyed, just not in literal book burnings
4. Has clear literal and historical value
If I were a rare book collector I'd be all over these. Even if I were a speculative investor I would consider buying some and waiting a couple of decades for society to regain its wits or burn down.
Among those different views, are included different attitudes about emotional safety(ism), propriety, politeness and so on.
Yes, it’s quite subjective and context-bound. Being intellectually reactionary, being uncharitable, applying stipulative 2020 norms to 1950s work... these are all analytic missteps.
Consider that the copyright owner, the Dr Seuss Foundation, has made the decision to cease publishing these six works. That is not the case for the other materials you mention.
> The decision to cease publication and sales of the books was made last year after months of discussion, the company, which was founded by Seuss’ family, told AP.
Also, should eBay really be forced to carry books? Should the Seuss family really be forced to publish? When does the right to speech translate into someone else's obligation to publish?
“Do you have data to support your stated preference for chocolate ice cream?”
It's really off-putting.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning
The euphemism treadmill strikes again.
I'd not heard that "mentally ill" crossed into that territory. What term do they say should be used instead? I'm guessing "neurodiverse."
https://www.time-to-change.org.uk/media-centre/responsible-r...
"Neurodiverse" is code du jour for autism, and HR will be contacting you shortly for the offensive ableism of labeling neurodiversity as mental illness, instead of celebrating it.
The 70s or 60s kid might be raised in a context of peace and love, anti-war sentiment, then be just as shocked to see Ronald Reagan, low taxes, spending cuts for social programs, the religious right, wars of choice, higher wealth disparity, outsourcing in manufacturing and other industries, privatization, young fascists going on tiki marches in favor of the confederacy, on and on ...
If somebody sent me racist emails at work I would file a complaint.
The only way this poison is going to be defeated is through the law. In fact, the journalist Chris Rufo argues that much of what's pushed by the CRT activists is likely already illegal under the 14th Amendment and the Civil Rights Act. This needs to be affirmed in the courts.
"the acceptance of or mental capacity to accept contrary opinions or beliefs at the same time"
In this case, the conflicting belief that these words are okay in the course you are taking, but that these words are not okay if you are discussing the course material.
Most of Orwell is misunderstood in an aesthetic or superficial way unfortunately.
This is highly problematic for children and adults who identify as children who may be struggling with their gender identity; as well as those who chose to reproduce through non-sexual or non-heterosexual mechanisms.
Please refer to them as per-offspring potato heads instead.
Here’s a critical piece of the “evidence” presented:
“In this context, it is worth examining the origins of the term “blacklist” from the Douglas Harper Etymology Dictionary, which states that its origin and history is:
n.
also black-list, black list, “list of persons who have incurred suspicion,” 1610s, from black (adj.), here indicative of disgrace, censure, punishment (attested from 1590s, in black book) + list (n.). Specifically of employers’ list of workers considered troublesome (usually for union activity) is from 1888. As a verb, from 1718. Related: Blacklisted; blacklisting. [32]
It is notable that the first recorded use of the term occurs at the time of mass enslavement and forced deportation of Africans to work in European-held colonies in the Americas.”
Seriously? We clearly need to rethink the whole academic publishing process.
Do you think we should ban the terms blackout, blackbody radiation, black holes, black ice, black ops, and black markets? Not everything is about race.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blacklisting
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/common-words-phrases-racist-o... :
> The symbolism of white as positive and black as negative is pervasive in our culture. Watts-Jones has highlighted many terms with negative meanings that reference blackness. In the English language, she wrote in 2004, color is “related to extortion (blackmail), disrepute (black mark), rejection (blackball), banishment (blacklist), impurity (‘not the driven snow’) and illicitness (black market).”
> > black ops
https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20101110054644A... :
> Consequently, it becomes apparent that 'Call of Duty: Black Ops' really means - Call to Arms against the Black People
You thought you were joking, weren't you? The latter link might be sarcasm, but at this point, it's actually hard to tell.
How do you think it came about?
> In Old English, the adjective could mean “very evil or wicked; iniquitous; foul, hateful,” according to the dictionary. The earliest Oxford citation is from a scientific and theological treatise written by a Benedictine cleric in the late 10th century.
Not only that, but those colors have similar associations all over the world, for example in India and Japan. It has to do with nighttime/darkness having foreboding/negative implications.
> Berne notes that the ideas of light=goodness and dark=badness existed in ancient cultures (including Egyptian and Greek), and can be found in Asia and around the globe.
> Joseph Campbell, writing in the journal Daedalus in 1959, says it was the Persian philosopher Zoroaster (circa 600 BC) who put the seal on the concept of darkness being evil.
English just seems to have a strong preference towards approximating everything with the most basic colors.
Europeans also called native Americans red and Asians yellow, and it probably wasn't because they associated those colors with evil.
All people are shades of brown. White people can be pinkish, but are usually light brown or reddish light brown. When you look at this white man's [2] skin color next to the light brown wood he's working with, he's clearly a darker brown than the wood. But I imagine Europeans didn't want to label races as light brown, medium brown and dark brown.
[1] https://www.almanac.com/sites/default/files/image_nodes/all_... [2] https://c.stocksy.com/a/0m5500/z9/1213836.jpg
Like three times I've had to figure out what is wrong with my git repo because Xcode switched the default branch from 'master' -> 'main'. Tutorials everywhere no longer work, etc.
We've managed to add even more pointless but required knowledge to programming. Ironically it's the newbies who suffer the most.
------------
A few days ago in the AsciiDoc mailing list – there was an effort to try to find a new word for "whitespace" (obviously the "white" comes from paper, how you even think of race in this context baffles me).
Clearly, you love environmentalists, but hate commies. Try again.
You can call it “gray space” now that everything is low contrast gray on gray. (Black on white and white on black were apparently also offensive color schemes.)
We all want off this crazy ride.
It's so weird for me to see people complaining about hypersensitivity get so up in arms about a pun.
I just find it so hilariously hypocritical for the crowds that constantly complain about the over-policing of speech to find a light-hearted pun to be so dastardly offensive.
To each their own I guess, but a simple pun doesn't feel like the biggest threat we face...
Perhaps you're not such a person, and are not speaking on behalf of such people, but I think that saying "It was a joke." doesn't really address the issue that some people's offensive speech is being silenced, while others' is being celebrated.
I think people are well within their rights to tell jokes, and I think others are well within their rights to criticize jokes that they find offensive.
I think if people want to play in the marketplace of ideas, they should wear a helmet because nothing says the marketplace of ideas has to be welcome to any given idea. If you tell a joke, then don't be surprised when people react to your joke.
I also didn't see _any_ criticism that the pastor's joke was offensive. I didn't see any public figures indicating that they were offended by the joke. I just saw people calling him insane, a moron, and an idiot for not knowing that "amen" didn't refer to a singular male person.
As the article[0] that you linked in another comment made clear in its title: "Some were offended". (Strangely the headline of the article is different from the title, but I think the title is still accurate).
[0] https://www.kansascity.com/news/local/news-columns-blogs/the...
There's not a single quote or statement in that article from a person saying that they found it offensive.
I need a source slightly stronger than the title element of an article that is entirely unsupported to be convinced that there were people offended.
All that being said, I would take more seriously the concerns of someone who was deeply religious that said they found it offensive to make a flippant joke during a prayer than I would the concerns of people who called him a moron for not getting the joke. I still haven't seen anyone say they were offended by the joke, though.
"The idea of throwing in a pun, though not a federal crime, is poor form at best and can be viewed as flippant and insulting."[0]
"He has singularly demonstrated the ability to offend everyone possible while reciting what he deemed to be a politically correct prayer calling for unity."[1]
"many are offended on behalf of their politics. ... Instead, let’s be offended and furious on behalf of our God."[2]
I personally think that undermining religious language and activities like prayer, by deliberately misinterpreting and butchering words, is offensive in the same way that burning a flag is (even though I don't think that should be illegal either).
[0] https://www.dailyregister.com/lifestyle/20210113/david-otten...
[1] https://standard-democrat.com/story/2858446.html
[2] https://onwardinthefaith.com/amen-and-a-woman-a-biblical-per...
First, I didn't say the journalist made up their conclusion. I stated I hadn't seen evidence of it.
Second, I don't really believe a journalist is in control of the headline and I *certainly* don't think the journalist is in control of the title element of the web version of their article. If it's not in the body of the article, I don't ascribe it to the journalist, but rather an editor.
> by deliberately misinterpreting and butchering words, Third, I don't think puns are a deliberate misinterpretation of a word at all. It's a play on words that relies on similar sounds of words, but a pun doesn't "interpret" a word. If I say: "What does the fish say when it hits a wall? Dam!" I haven't "misinterpreted" the word "dam" to be an exclamation of surprise. I have made a pun based on the fact that the words "damn" and "dam" sound alike.
> I personally think that undermining religious language and activities like prayer
That's fair. Like I said, I take more seriously the concerns of people who are offended by the concept of making a joke during prayer. I'm willing to hear out those that say that prayer is not an appropriate place for jokes. I do, however, essentially discard and disregard the opinion of anyone that says that the pastor is a moron, or an idiot for not understanding the word "amen".
Basically, it boils down to this: if someone understands it is a joke, and think a joke in that place is offensive, I'm willing to hear you out. If someone doesn't understand that it's a joke, and are mad about the "politically correct" nature of his words, then I don't think they understand the situation properly and ignore their concerns.
> "many are offended on behalf of their politics. ... Instead, let’s be offended and furious on behalf of our God."[2]
This quote seems taken out of context from the onwardinthefaith article. The outrage that they are expressing is expressly not at the joke. Rather, the thing they find offensive and enraging is this contained in this quote:
"We ask it in the name of the monotheistic God and Brahma and God known by many names by many different faiths."
Yes, they note the flippancy of the "amen and awomen" joke, but only really find it offensive in light of his prior comments. They are offended and enraged at the nod toward universalism, and the pun at the end of the prayer confirms that in their opinion he lacks the appreciation for the Lord's majesty.
Thank you, I think we agree then.
> Yes, they note the flippancy of the "amen and awomen" joke, but only really find it offensive in light of his prior comments.
Yes, unfortunately it is difficult to isolate one's feeling of being offended from the context in which the words are spoken, which means if someone says multiple potentially offensive things it can be difficult to decide how much offence each word caused.
- https://www.kansascity.com/news/local/news-columns-blogs/the...
- https://lostcoastoutpost.com/2021/jan/10/growing-old-ungrace...
> “I concluded with a lighthearted pun in recognition of the record number of women who will be representing the American people in Congress during this term as well as in recognition of the first female Chaplain of the House of Representatives whose service commenced this week,” said Cleaver, who led the search committee that selected Grun Kibben, the former chief chaplain of the Navy, for the role.
> “I personally find these historic occasions to be blessings from God for which I am grateful.”
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/553001-it-s-a-beautiful-thi...
Blacklist and whitelist, when looking at the etymology these terms are obviously problematic, and I happily use block/ban list and allow list. Easy. Even "Green list" and "Red list" would work fine, traffic lights won't mind.
Sanity check, never thought about that one. "Sense check" may have similar connotations, but the word sense, itself, has multiple meanings, so that's got a backdoor. Congruity check? I don't want to have to explain the word every time I ask for someone to "congruity check" a set of data.
Plausibility check is a good replacement for sanity check. Or something like quick check to communicate it isn't extensive.
Am I missing something? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blacklisting#Origins_of_the_te...
Isn’t that a little Bigoted?
"wife" is one of the new ones. Not inclusive
The wild thing about the term "master" and the people that want to censor it is how English-language centric it is. It really only has the sensitive connotations it has in English. In Italian for example, maestro is teacher.
My fear is that what today is "we should move away from that term" will in a few short years become "we can't hire them because they typed 'git checkout master' in their live coding interview" and at that point it discriminates against those for whom English is their second language.
This happened to a friend of mine with the word "lynch". In English it is a highly racializes term but in his native tongue, Portuguese, the connotation largely revolves around mob violence committed against rapists and adulterers (just go search for the verb "linchar" and you'll find youtube videos of mob violence against people suspected of rape and adultery).
Well he used that term in a discussion on github back when discussing the changes to a popular open source project's code of conduct about 7-8 years ago and a bunch of cancel culture folks jumped on him and it culminated in them trying to get him fired from his current job. He was lucky that it was long enough ago that his boss brushed it off, but in today's environment he's certain he would have lost his job over using a term in his native tongue that is fully divorced from how people feel about the word in English.
Another common example related to yours: in countries with latin languages like spanish or Portuguese, the word for both the color black and black people in a completely generic non-racist way is negro. It literally just means black. A Spanish speaker having said it in the wrong context in an english language setting could easily invite criticism born of the silliness I mentioned above.
Americans sadly are now indiscriminately exporting their particularly toxic understanding of race and race relationships to other parts of the world and damaging the social fabric of these other countries. It's like introducing a new species of plant that ends up being invasive and destructive like kudzu.
It has absolutely nothing to do with slavery.
Sorry if this offends someone but I think a lot of these newly verboten words nonsense stems from poor education and ignorance in the US.
Lots of this is very English and even US-centric. The lack of awareness and what is effectively an attempt to dominate other cultures in the name of inclusiveness is kinda interesting.
It's a religion without forgiveness or redemption. And the high priests of this religion will never allow the language to sit they will always find new words to change and replace and shame us with.
Check out SFUSD renaming racists schools like “Lincoln High”. Eventually parents had start a recall effort to end it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_(parliamentary_procedure...
As far as I can tell, historically leaving oppressive places has a better track record of success for individuals than fighting or trying to talk and understand.
(Eg think of the people fleeing North Korea, the Soviet Union, East Germany, Nazi Germany, etc.
Similar, you are better of quitting a bad company, than trying to reform.
Or just quitting twitter instead of 'talking' to people there.)
The bad places can just quietly whither away when no one goes there anymore.
All this "privilege checking" makes it difficult to speak out. The least privileged people have existential concerns more significant than our culture war so they don't speak out either. The Woke movement has been hijacked by narcissists. There is no resistance so this will only accelerate in the near term.
Ban second hand sales of out-of-print, arguably sort of racist children’s books, or keep that man out of the white house.
Pick one.
Yes, this is how Trump, or someone similar, gets elected.
[1]https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/01/us/nyc-illegal-alien-discrimi...
Perhaps the stories at the time conflated discrimination with mere use of the phrase if that is what you meant by good/not true.
whenever something sounds this absurd, read past the headline and you usually find whats actually going on is a lot more reasonable
> New York City has banned the term "illegal alien" when used "with intent to demean, humiliate or harass a person," the city said.
That sounds like an important qualification, but I suspect in praxis intent is hard to (dis)prove so it would probably depend on the judge and precedents?
If you read German, https://www.amazon.com/Fundamentalisten-diskutiert-ohne-Vers... is interesting. The title translates to "How to discuss with fundamentalists without going insane".
(The author cleverly and deliberately picks up examples from obsolete Christian schisms to avoid derailing the core of the book with any present-day inflammatory topics.)
What does this entail, do you mind giving an example?
"I value language and am thoughtful with my communication. If I can do that why can't others?"
Maybe how I should have responded?: "So you always ask someone's pronouns prior to initiating conversation. You agree to those and should be obliged by law to not error ever?"
Or doing that may have backfired ? Now I am a self-hating Latino and transphobic ? Not a reputation I want and I have no power to change things. So why bother is the natural conclusion.
What is the problem that needs to be solved?
The fact that this bears mentioning points to the general historical ignorance affecting many of these misguided activists, such as those who tore down the statue of Hans Christian Heg in Madison, WI. Heg was a Union soldier and abolitionist who led an anti-slavecatcher militia. He was also a white man, which is presumably why his statue got dragged through the street and beheaded during the height of last summer’s protest violence:
https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/2020/06/24/madison-prote...
But more to my original point: when people have been subjected to incessant whitewashing of deeply flawed historical figures (Christopher Columbus, for example), I find it unsurprising when they consider things like "If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it" in any context to be less-than-venerable.
Given the number of people who make precisely the same complaints that appear in this thread when high schools change their name from "Lee", that difference seems to be lost to many "free speech absolutists".
1 of those is a high school named after a president that freed slaves, 1 is a high school with a seriously questionable recent past, and 1 is a high school actively perpetuating racist dogma. We shouldn’t be treating them all like what their doing is equally bad
I think social media has a lot to do with it. We created a global communication medium and then programmed it to prioritize the most "engaging" content, which is of course the most triggering and controversial content. I'm wondering how long it will be before people are literally setting themselves on fire for likes and views.
Oh wait...
https://www.the-sun.com/news/1903978/youtuber-kills-pregnant...
Nope, we're basically there already.
Seriously, the amount of “this” that I see online is 100x what I see in real-life (per interaction). Outrage engagement drives it and if you have found yourself tired of arguing with people you’ve never shared a meal with, just close the tab. Let them be outraged without you.
As often happens, Randall has nailed it: https://xkcd.com/386/
Me? I was told by a genderqueer woman at a sister college of Smith during a job interview that she does not get along with older men.
My wife? She is a faculty member at another Amherst area college and was told by a colleague that she is held in high regard because she is BIPOC. That is shit so tasteless that you can't make it up, so it must be true.
The atmosphere at colleges in the Northeast is fucked up beyond description, and playing ostrich is just that, hiding from reality. Unfortunately, reality won't change anytime soon.
Unfortunately it bleeds into real life, work, and family/friend connections. You can't close work, or your siblings.
Also, I've been on the receiving end of a mob before; "you can only get cancelled once" wasn't exactly true for me. Sure, the public figures who initially called you out will stop eventually -- they know when they've won the battle. But their followers? They're like that annoying kid at school who kept making the same joke long after it was ever considered funny. They'll happily continue harassing you until the end of time (or until you're able to make yourself disappear).
Well, WOPR did say that
> "The only winning move is not to play."
Either I have to agree with obviously stupid stuff from "my side" or I'm with the nazis? That only empowers the stupid at the end of the day.
Of course maybe I am succumbing to the "the nuts are always the loudest" effect.
Edit: I don't think the Internet per se is at fault. I lay the blame squarely at the feet of the "algorithmic timeline." Social media isn't neutral. It's programmed to "engage" us, which usually means either offending us or luring us into some kind of cult.
Chan culture isn't algorithmic in this way, but it's organized primarily around influencing algorithmic social media from outside and as such operates within the same algorithmic attention-maximization game paradigm.
TL;DR: this is not discourse. It's a video game.
I'm not convinced that's helpful.
As a more moderate, I would suggest perhaps writing a blog, or commenting on something well moderated like HN or EconLog, or even certain subreddits?
No need to log off completely. Just avoid twitter, tumblr, most of reddit and other outrage platforms.
[1] https://nassimtaleb.org/2016/08/intolerant-wins-dictatorship...
I’ve been thinking this kind of thing since the 2008 bank bailouts. I’ve also wondered if that was when America collapsed and we are just living through a slow unwinding period.
The problem wasn’t the crash. Crashes happen. The problem was that banks were bailed out and the we pretended there was a recovery. There wasn’t. It was a largely paper recovery, basically fake. Yes unemployment went down but the quality of the jobs were poor, housing inflation ate any gains, and inequality exploded.
Trumpism was just a superficial symptom. If things don’t improve we will get someone much much worse.
One can see that same dynamic when the printing press was invented. Suddenly, the old power structure did not control the narrative. Within 100 years of the invention of the printing press in 1450, and its spread by 1500, there was a major conflict all over Europe over very minor religious dogma differences of opinion (wars of religion).
We are about 2/3rds into that cycle with the internet, which was borne around 1960 and came into true widespread use around 2005 (Facebook, etc).
Lets hope we have learned our lessons.
There is a third option. Most people are stuck with this. It is staying quiet and saying nothing. Because there is unity in extreme right. And there is unity in extreme left. And there is no unity in the center so these extremes can pick off each individual center person who says something.
I really believe that Republicans can elect some of the craziest Qanon believers precisely because the Democrats refuse to forcefully denounce the craziest whims of their radical base, and are tainted by association, even though almost none of the national-level Democrats are nearly so extreme.
https://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/a-center...
I haven't finished reading it, but it doesn't seem all that encouraging as a source of ideas for building a center if the article's protagonist never succeeded.
A focus on symbolisms like statues and children books and language on Twitter or git repos is being embraced by the powerful corporate interests. Something that actually does an enormous positive for racial justice, universal healthcare, takes a back seat.
Can we agree this is a feature, not a bug?
100% of people who say Latinx support universal health care in my experience. But they have more control over what they say than what their government does.
https://www.pewresearch.org/hispanic/2020/08/11/about-one-in...
Occupy, as derision-worthy as it was, saw a broad coalition of Americans--blacks, whites, latino, straight, gay, trans--all get together to push back against Team Elite.
Then the entirely tiny group of people who control the media (and hate us, apparently) got together and pushed endless identity bullshit on us.
Note that basically everything done by white people is a "far right" "white supremacist" plot. E.g., AOC refers to the (hilarious) "insurrection" (the unarmed, leaderless one that waltzed into some of the most protected space on earth with nary a problem) as a "white supremacist" plot.
If you buy that, you're an instrument, played like a fiddle.
I've heard almost the exact quote three times on different episodes of the Joe Rogan podcast.
Oh the places we'll go.
I’m pretty sure my HN account will be next. I’m not going to solve this, but I won’t drown in it either.
All 6 books have issues? But only two images have been described.
The company just hit a home run in global PR the whole world has run this story. Honestly this is very smart for the company it gives them attention, they get to remove low volume books and it makes cancel cultural look bad to normal people
https://www.rollingstone.com/product-recommendations/books/b...
What a strange time we live in.
Edit: Also, you know there are Americans out there actually burning books like the Quran, right? No need to be outraged over slippery slope fallacious "book burning" when you could spend that energy on cases where real actual book burning has taken place.
99% of Seuss readers have never read Oh Beyond Zebra, and nobody will miss the Cat's Quizzer.
In fact they could even automate this. They already have a report item button. Whenever someone clicks that and marks the item offensive they could remove that whole class of items.
Really? Very racist? You don’t think you’re exaggerating with the “very”?
If “what I saw on Mulberry street” counts as “very racist” where do you put “Huckleberry Finn” or “To kill a Mockingbird” with their colorful language?
I mean you have two great American classics unapologetically using the n-word vs a cartoon of a Chinese kid dressed as he did a few decades before the book was written.
N-word vs. kid dressed as he dressed.
Don’t you think “mildly discomforting depiction of a foreigner?” is more proportional?
It works pretty well, since there is quite a limited vocabulary. And it's pretty magical! I can have someone reading aloud from the book quite fluently, with extremely limited english skills, after only a few hours.
The other part is, because of the superior illustration skills of the author, people quickly understand the difference between things like "here" and "there".
Because of the repetition of words, they quickly memorize them permanently.
We take those things for granted, and I'm not sure if that was the Doctor's intent, but gosh-darned it, it is so effective for teaching adults to read English.
I wish there were more books like that.
Next try Fox in Socks - that is some next-level elucidation.
Edit: Go anywhere in the Middle East, stay there for two weeks. Then have a look at the 'Alladin' Disney cartoon and you will see, undoubtedly that it's buffoonishly caricatured, Orientalist pastiche of ME culture. I don't think most people in the ME are going to be straight up offended, but it's undoubtedly a clownish and reductive depiction. Not racist ... but definitely stereotypically caricatured.
I agree they're probably not perfectly suitable for kids, that's fine, and publishers have to make decisions based on fear as much as anything, but the EBay ban is ridiculous, and a sign of American cultural decline consistent with the rise of Trumpism. It's not progress.
We are adults, we know roughly what's nice and not, and within the margins we can make up our own minds. A sticker on the book indicating that some might be offended would be appropriate, just as they do for a lot of pop music (incidentally targeted at young teens) which contains brutally misogynist and violent content.
If you’ve seen both Alladin and the cartoons in question, it’s hard to believe you’re commenting in good faith.
He’s an example that extremist authoritarian and highly bigoted views, such as those he holds and often defends are welcome here on HN, so long as you are polite while making extremely dishonest arguments.
It fucking sucks, but HN is a place that welcomes racist shit-posting so long as it adheres to a particular style guideline; and bans people who do not adhere to the style guideline.
I’m banned anyway, so I’ll just add that Daniel Gackle’s mother should be fucking ashamed that she raised a pathetic son who devotes his entire life to the creation of “safe spaces” for racist shitbags like jerf.
The real racism in that movie was portraying the king and his daughter as too stupid to realize that they could each get wishes from the lamp prior to Aladdin freeing the genie.
The parent makes a point that needs to be heard and considered. It is reasonable part of this discussion.
You probably know this already, but that was due to a bet!
> The vocabulary of the text consists of just 50 words and was the result of a bet between Seuss and Bennett Cerf, Dr. Seuss's publisher, that Seuss (after completing The Cat in the Hat using 236 words) could not complete an entire book without exceeding that limit. The 50 words are a, am, and, anywhere, are, be, boat, box, car, could, dark, do, eat, eggs, fox, goat, good, green, ham, here, house, I, if, in, let, like, may, me, mouse, not, on, or, rain, Sam, say, see, so, thank, that, the, them, there, they, train, tree, try, will, with, would, you.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Eggs_and_Ham
There were no words for crypto, but both had words for kitchen utensils and art history!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Petit_Nicolas
Personally I've always considered Hop on Pop underrated as a Dr. Seuss classic.
https://www.ebay.com.au/help/account/changing-account-settin...
It should not be up to them what is and isn't offensive.
I did the same to Netflix last year. Money talks at the end of the day.
Throwing these books away isn't cancel culture. Telling other people they can't sell or buy the book is cancel culture.
Don't want to be a mouth piece for a 50 year old children writer? Canceled! It's basically just virtue signaling, but the effects are huge.
Going to any Christian owned businesses? Are they canceled too because they burned Galio's books? Rank hypocrisy. Go my tribe I guess.
Big tech really needs to get the memo that they need to be a neutral party.
So the real line in the sand being drawn here isn't about the principle of moderation but what is being moderated. In this case, the idea it was offensive wasn't even original to eBay: the publisher decided it was inappropriate to sell and eBay followed.
So a flurry of account cancellations isn't going to signal opposition to the principle of moderation so much as angry denial that images like this[1] could be deemed racist. That's a point of view of course, but all eBay get out of it is "wow, the other side of the culture war is even more obsessive"
[1]https://www.cbc.ca/kidsnews/content/DrSuess_Board_2.png
Teaching a kid how much we have progressed from this moment in time. Our present is the collection of all the actions we have taken as a species in the past. Our present is defined by context.
Thanks for keeping us safe from these scary depictions of how different “acceptability” was in the past. /s