Racist Art on My Desk?

I don't really think so.  Here is the image that sits there.  I have talked about it before here on the Wall, but if that post predates some of you let me give you its history.  Like millions of folks around the world, my folks read Dr. Seuss books to me as a child and I read them to my kids.  The "Ran Lab" image above resulted from a bit of correspondence I had with the good Dr. Seuss.  One of his many books is "If I Ran the Zoo."  Which begins:

"Its a pretty good Zoo,"

Said young Gerald McGrew.

And the fellow who runs it

Seems proud of it too.

But if I ran the zoo,

Said young Gerald McGrew,

I'd make a few changes,

That's just what I'd do . ."

Dr. Seuss, 1950

And Seuss goes on to describe and illustrate those changes.  Well, with imitation being the most sincere form of flattery, and cloning being all the rage at the time.,  I wrote "If I Ran the Lab" around 2000. It began:

“It’s a pretty good lab,” said weird Harold McNab,

“Though the egghead who runs it is really a crab.

And the work that they turn out’s not quality work,

‘Cause the Project Director’s a bit of a jerk.

But if I ran the lab, said weird Harold McNab,

I’d splice up some genes not halfway so drab

As the genes they’ve been splicing ‘round here up ‘til now.

When it comes to strange genotypes, I’d show them how!!

    Dr. Schrag @ 2000

And I go on to describe those "strange genotypes." At the risk of offending someone somewhere, I would be glad to send you a copy of the full manuscript. But anyhow, I sent a copy off to Dr. Seuss's publisher and a few weeks later the image above arrived in the mail. I thought it quite cool. I also sent a copy to Gary Larson asking if he would like to do the illustrations. Alas, without similar success. In his defense he was in is "retired phase" at the time. No doubt if I sent it to him now . . . anyhow.

So you can imagine, I am not among those applauding the recent announcement that several of the Seuss books will be pulled from  publication for containing racist images.  My objections do not spring from my brief contact with the author, but rather from a Distilled Harmony view of art and culture in general.

Let me explain. Again a brief synopsis of Distilled Harmony. It is a world view that rests on four tenets of descending dominance. First, foster harmony the dominant tenet which demands that we seek the most harmonic path in our lives, decisions and behaviors. Second, enable beauty, which calls upon us to create, or support the creation of, beautiful entities in the traditional realms of the arts. Third is distill complexity, seeking the clearest view of and or explanation of the issues we confront in our lives. Einstein once asserted that if you could not explain something clearly to a child, you did not truly understand it yourself. This tenet admonishes us to seek that clarity. And fourth, oppose harm. In 1867 John Stuart Mill opined, " Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing" Or in the version often attributed to Burke and Churchill; "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." Either way you get the idea - when harmony is attacked by evil, one is compelled to act.

The current Seuss kerfuffle is simply the latest touch point among many which, I believe, result in large part from differing perspectives of cultural history. What one group sees as an offensive reminder of long standing cultural abuse, another group defines as a precious, or at least insightful, cultural artifact. One group's Foster Harmony confronts another's Oppose Harm.

You see, I am confused. I don’t quite understand the rules of contemporary cultural sensitivity. And to stretch it a bit if we try to eliminate all the “negative” depictions of cultural differences from all cultures in all eras, don’t we eventually arrive at a “Stepford Wives” cookie cutter model of humanity and culture? Like the Roswell big-headed grey entities with big eyes who sit in as a model for all aliens? And who gets to decide what is “a cultural artifact” and what is “demeaning stereotype”? Why does a young Dolly Parton get away with choosing the town tramp as her role model - as she tells it in her autobiography - when a girl growing up now with that model in mind would be seen as the tramp? So is “cultural legitimacy” merely code for commercial success?

Apparently not. I did some reading regarding the purging of the Dr. Seuss books. Talk about commercial success! Wikipedia cites 600 million books in 20 different languages. Furthermore, his Butter Battle Book and The Lorax are both books with pro-social messages from which all kids would benefit. So do we just get to pick the low-hanging fruit? If I go back over the 20-odd year history of the Wall, I can find a bunch of bits I'd like to change or edit out. But ethically, I feel obligated to leave them in. They are who I was then - if that make sense.  They reflect my history.

And speaking of history, I'm thinking this whole debate would benefit from a consideration of history. Consider a cultural "truism." This one is attributed to a variety of sources - Santayana, Burke, Churchill - and goes something like this,  “Those who do not learn from their history are doomed to repeat it.” It seems to me equally true that those who are kept in ignorance of their past are likely to repeat it. If we keep scrubbing away all evidence of the cultural wars and social differences in our history, it will be as if they never happened, and hence there will be nothing left from which to learn. What Civil War? Who was this King guy? Timothy McWho? Neil Armstrong? Wasn't he a quarterback for the Browns? Ada Lovelace? Wasn't she some porn star?

Let us consider a couple of "texts:" The images that led to rescinding the "sullied six" Seuss books and the beloved hymn Amazing Grace. The first were written and illustrated by Theodore Seuss Geisel in the early days of the 20th century (1937), who later went on to write and illustrate, throughout the century, various sensitive, prosocial books (e.g. The Butter Battle Book (1984), The Lorax (1971), Oh, The Places You'll Go, (1990). Amazing Grace was written in the late 1700s by John Newton, a notorious slaver who sold hundreds, if not thousands of Africans into slavery, and continued to do so for a while after the famous "conversion" that lead to his penning the single hymn.

Perhaps you can sense the source of my confusion. Three self-proclaimed guardians of social visual purity take it upon themselves to pass judgement on a decades long career that did far more to foster harmony among the young people of the world than the relatively unknown works of the artists who called for the cancelling. Yet, the racist author of Amazing Grace gets a pass, one assumes because of the work's religious affiliation and widespread popularity.  Wouldn't it seem more logical to ban all performances of the racist penned hymn Amazing Grace and leave Seuss alone? Realistically both restrictions, on the "sullied six" and a proposed ban on Amazing Grace are foolish manifestations of the divisions currently strangling our nation.

We need to reign in some of the excesses of the current culture police, for it is their supercilious over-reaching that gives comfort to radicals like Proud Boys and Oath Keepers who attacked the Capital, and who - with x-president Trump leading the way - are already using the banning of the "sullied six" to "prove" their claims that left-wing radicals want to chip away at "real American freedoms." 

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