
The Hidden Racism of Children's Literature - DanBC
https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2017/08/reading-racism-in-dr-seuss/536625/?utm_source=atlfb&amp;single_page=true
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fern12
>The emotional experience of dealing with racism is tough, especially if
you’re the target. I think what’s worse, though, is not dealing with it and
not being given any tools for dealing with it—to experience the injury and
then not know how to deal with it.

This. I am of mixed South/Southeast Asian descent, but I frequently get
confused for being Hispanic. Growing up in SoCal, one would think this is not
a problem. My best friend was a Persian-American Jew, and my first crush was a
Japanese-American boy. Ironically, the times when I felt most out of place
were when I was around either side of my parents' relatives who were not
mixed, and more culturally homogeneous.

And yet, I will never forget the summer I spent on Catalina Island, during the
early 1990s and the heyday of Gov. Pete Wilson and the anti-illegal immigrant
rhetoric of Prop. 187. I wandered into a gift shop, and was just walking
around looking at items, and the white store owner's first words to me were,
"If you're just browsing, please be aware that we have cameras all around."

I remember not knowing how to process what she said. It was only later that I
realized that she had misjudged me. It was deeply hurtful, but I swept it
under the rug, not knowing how to deal with it. 10 years later, I would
experience the same type of hurt in my high school geography class, hearing my
classmates mimic South Asian accents and ridiculing the names of places like
Lahore. And I still did not know how to deal with it. Sometimes, even growing
up in an ethnically diverse environment is not enough to steel one's self
against the insidious nature of racism. Thanks for posting this.

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meri_dian
These are the sort of absurd conclusions people draw when they allow their
worldview to be dominated by a single theme. In fact I'd argue all extremism
derives from a conception and understanding of the world which bends around a
single theme, so that even things which in reality have nothing to do with
that theme are assumed to have a connection to it.

Look at the ugly era of McCarthyism in 1950's America. McCarthy saw Communists
everywhere because he wanted to see Communists everywhere. Were there Soviet
style Communists in America? Certainly so. But not to the extent that he
believed.

Remember: history doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme.

~~~
DanBC
These are not absurd conclusions. You're just a massive racist.

