Six Books Down -- How many more to go?

According to Dr. Seuss Enterprises, the company which publishes Dr. Seuss's rhyming punning uniquely eccentrically illustrated stories, some of them "center White-ness and White supremacy". So they've got to go (which to many a reader means they've got to be collected, as is usual for banned books. Thank you, censors!) Yet the assault on free speech is ominous. Which title's next? Which writer's next? Once Author is silenced, Reader is left holding the empty book bag. Will the world really be better without Dr. Seuss?

Horton heard nothing, and neither will you,

you won't see any Thing, neither One nor Two,

you won't go anywhere, oh me, oh my, oh no,

some thoughts you think might a Grinch-heart shrink,

and how you'd run a zoo, no one will ever know

When Mother gets home keep your gaze down low,

you had some funny fun with that odd cat you know,

but now's not the time for green eggs or ham,

nor fish one or two nor others red or blue,

or foxes in sockses or creatures named Sam

Cindy Lou Who's but a blond upstart,

she's so supremely White that to drop her would be smart,

the Lorax too's a loser, forget he ever spoke,

let your thoughts go to sleep and you can call yourself woke

Is Kid-Lit Too White?

 How long before “systemic racism” comes for children's literature, with its shamelessly sparkly-white characters such as Snow White, Caspar the Ghost, and Frosty the Snowman? Christmas is of course already beyond the pale (if one may use such triggering language) and children's literature has always been a target of censorship, but formerly for reasons of eroticism or fairy-tale gruesomeness. The attack on all things white-suggestive is new.

Comfort-characters such as the shy, polite and kindly Rupert Bear, and T. H. White's “Wart” (boyhood name of King Arthur), are no longer vouchsafed to children, and innocence (“in-nocere”, not-knowing) is equated with silence, which is now considered "violence".

Rupert the cheerful bear-child was once in fact a brown bear, but was made white by editors who wanted him to show up well in illustrations when the Rupert Annual was printed in colour. He set forth each day in his yellow sweater and plaid pants for Nutwood Forest, where he had adventures and Did Good Things. It's surprising there hasn't yet been a march demanding the publisher “Make Rupert Brown Again”. (1)

In T. H. White's youth novel The Once and Future King, Arthur upon becoming king took up nobility as a “glorious doom”. Originally, to be noble meant having a known name, plus character traits like magnanimity and moral excellence. We however are only interested in “inclusion, diversity and equity”, which aren't necessarily magnanimous, moral and excellent. To admit the existence of excellence would be to acknowledge that not everything is equal. Nobility has toxic connotations, today.

No wonder everyone's at loggerheads, adding to what Matthew Arnold in Dover Beach called the confused alarms of “ignorant armies that clash by night”. (2) Some might say that the violence lies in that – manifested as street rallies and online attacks – not in the wise restraint of silence. Only the kindly decency of a simple hero like Rupert could sort it all out -- but we've moved a long way from Nutwood.

1 For the story of Rupert's transformation from brown bear to white, see:

http://www.canterbury-archaeology.org.uk/tourtel/4590809564

2 For Matthew Arnold's poem see https://poets.org/poem/dover-beach