IF I RAN THE ZOO (or “Yankin’ the Yink”)

MARCH 3, 2021 -The big news on an otherwise slow news day: six Seuss classics banned for life. My reaction?  Hmm. I’m an acknowledged American “leftist” (the equivalent of center-right in much of good ol’ Europe), and anyone reading my posts knows how I feel about the need for racial justice in the Disunited States of America. But count me among the people who oppose the decision by Dr. Seuss Enterprises to yank the yink that writes with pink ink. I think it stinks like a rink full of Krinks that blink.

Why am I incensed by something that makes no sense? If I ran the zoo, I’d say:

FIRST, censorship of Seuss plays straight into Fox News scripts. I haven’t the stomach with which to hear what Smucker Carlson, Laur-Ha! Ingraham or Shameless Hannity had to say about this latest example of “cancel culture,”  but surely for them the news was read meat . . . er . . . red meat. Wanna whip up Fox followers? There’s no better way than to accuse Dr. Suess of America’s greatest sin. Just read about the trashy rant of you-know-who, Jr. at CPAC—the crowd cheered when that cat, whom we’d hoped would never come back, boasted he’d memorized The Cat in the Hat.

SECOND, yankin’ Suess loose sends us down a slippery slope, ironically because the race to erase what denigrates race is . . . an uphill battle. Sensors will tell censors that racists abound all around, inside out and with an upside pout. Just show me a time and a place in our past that wasn’t replete with what now takes heat.

Sorry, sorry, sorry. I got carried away in a Puritanical way . . .

STOP, ALREADY, I say—before I get bopped by a thing that hops!

Seriously, if we want to remedy racial injustice—as all of us should—we need to read more, not less. Learners of all ages should read more of and about the past to understand clearly, the origins of discrimination and the depths of its imprint on our national soul. Burning history ensures nothing but ignorance of it, and ignorance is what leads to attitudes and actions that we should all wish to avoid.

THIRD—and this is what disturbs me most—the people who would sanitize the past, assuming that in doing so, they are on the vanguard of righting wrongs or proving that they themselves are anti-racist, are doing little thereby to change generations of public policies. The cumulative effect of those policies is the broad marginalization of African Americans. Where are the Seuss censors in working for affordable housing, accessible transportation/health care/education/economic opportunities, and above all, accessible voting? These critical concerns form the long, rigid shaft behind the spearhead gleaming with racism and spear tip of devastating police shootings. Break the shaft, and you’ll bury the tip.

Yankin’ the yink makes for big news on a slow news day, and gives white liberals a nice pat on the back, but in the cause for which the yink is yanked, the yank is not good, I say—no, no way.

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© 2021 by Eric Nilsson