Race in the hat

A landmark at the university that my daughter attended is an odd-shaped building.

Source

It is the main library at the university: Geisel Library.

Geisel as in Dr. Seuss.

Dr. Seuss is in the news now because his estate has withdrawn a few books of his because of racist depiction.

As an immigrant, I didn't grow up with Dr. Seuss books.  I was unfamiliar with all things Seuss, and had to quickly catch up.  Like even the hat that a student was wearing when I was in grad school.  I had to ask what the deal was with that hat.  Turned out, you know, it was a Seuss hat!

As always is the case, it turns out that academics have looked into the messages in Dr. Seuss books.  One of them wrote in 2017 a book: Was the Cat in the Hat Black? In that book, the author Philip Nel "argues that the lanky and mischievous feline was inspired by blackface minstrelsy."

Interestingly, The Cat in the Hat is not one of the titles that is being discontinued.  Why so?  Not overtly racist.  Plus:

I would also say because it's the brand. Dr. Seuss isn't just a children's author. He is a brand. And for the Beginner Books series, which are the books designed for younger readers, written by him and many others, the logo for that is the Cat in the Hat. He's literally the corporate brand.

The hat that a student was wearing when I was in grad school is the Seuss brand.  You can't kill the goose that lays golden eggs!

Whatever it is, kudos to the estate for reconsidering Seuss' works.  In an interview with The Guardian, Philip Nel says:

Dr Seuss Enterprises has made a moral decision of choosing not to profit from work with racist caricature in it and they have taken responsibility for the art they are putting into the world and I would support that

Exactly.  It is a moral decision.  Good for them!

Perhaps you now have a thought that I had after the news broke.  Did blacks know that some of Dr. Seuss' stuff was racist?

At The Atlantic, Michael Harriot writes about this very question.  He writes about his mother who "went to enormous lengths to protect her family from negative stereotypes of Black people."  That meant that she banned Dr. Seuss at home.  Naturally, he and his sisters got into trouble when his mother found the copy of Green Eggs and Ham that Harriot thought he had hidden well from his mother!

Why did Harriot's mother adopt such a strict approach?

A few years ago, I asked my mother why she put so much effort into concocting this Caucasian-free cocoon. She informed me that our childhood was part of an experiment she had envisioned before we were even born. “A Black person’s humanity can never be fully realized in the presence of whiteness,” she explained. Not a single day has passed since in which I have not thought about that sentence.

That's powerful!

If you’re really worried about Dr. Seuss’ books being removed from shelves, we have just the book for you. #LSSC pic.twitter.com/OYizG8npDA

— A Late Show (@colbertlateshow) March 3, 2021

The poor you will always have with you

 In October 2009--yes, 2009--I wrote in this post:

When I was in India this past summer, as reports of swine flu came to dominate the news and conversations, I sincerely suggested to my parents that they should frequently wash their hands, and time it by humming the “happy birthday” song.

Wash hands and time it by humming the "happy birthday" song.  How familiar is that one now, right?  But, that was the public health advisory 12 years ago too.

In that post, I also wrote how absurd such a suggestion was:

As the words slipped out of my mouth, I knew it was a stupid and incongruous advice because of the water shortage in the city.  Apartment complexes were paying hefty amounts to private operators who supplied water by transporting them in special water-tankers.  When that was the condition for middle-class households, I cannot imagine the less affluent spending their precious money to wash hands in order to battle an invisible enemy.    Clean water is a super-luxury for the poor.

Which is why I suggested back then--yes, 12 years ago:

I do not mean to minimize the risks of a global pandemic, particularly if the swine flu virus were to mutate into a highly virulent form.  But, I do want to point out that the global focus on the swine flu, which we have rightfully managed to accomplish, should remind us that being a good citizen of the world also means that we ought to pay attention to the priorities of the rest of the world—in particular, the sufferings of the poor, who are almost always voiceless in the international arena.

Unfortunately, our track record has not been one that we can proudly hold up when it comes to supporting public health programs for the world’s poor.

We know well how much the 45th President of the US loved supporting the rest of the world, especially its poor.  His America First policy extended to global public health during the pandemic too.  He couldn't care to work with the world's countries on vaccine development and distribution because he hated the World Health Organization.

The Biden administration has been doing things to re-integrate into the world, and to participate in fighting the world's challenges.  The US rejoined WHO on day one of Biden's presidency.

Further, Biden put our money where our mouth is:

In a reversal of his predecessor's U.S.-centric approach to tackling the coronavirus pandemic, President Biden is ramping up pressure on America's wealthiest allies Friday to get COVID-19 vaccine doses into poor and developing countries. Mr. Biden told his fellow G7 leaders during a virtual summit that the U.S. would contribute up to $4 billion to COVAX, the World Health Organization-backed initiative aimed at ensuring equitable access to vaccines around the world.

Virus knows no borders.  And we have a moral responsibility to help out the poorer countries:

So far, richer countries have been able to buy far more Covid jabs than poorer ones.

Covax hopes to deliver more than two billion doses to people in 190 countries in less than a year.

In particular, it wants to ensure 92 poorer countries will receive access to vaccines at the same time as 98 wealthier countries.

Often, people don't care for moral arguments. As a fellow-graduate school student put it once, material incentives beat moral incentives!

Even the dollars-and-sense approach shows that it is in the rich countries' interest to subsidize vaccines for the poorer countries:

[Unequal] vaccine access among countries will likely lead to a “total cost for the world” between $1.8 trillion and $3.8 trillion, with up to half the losses paid for by wealthier nations. In contrast, the cost of vaccinating one-fifth of the world’s vulnerable population, as the World Health Organization’s covax initiative aims to do, would cost less than forty billion dollars, with expenses decreasing over time. 

If only we understood that we are all in this together!

Say his name

When we were young, mother took us to grandma's village for the annual summer holidays--we were too young to travel on our own.

Those were the days before cellphones and emails. There was no landline at most homes, and one went to the nearest post office in order to place "trunk calls"--long distance calls.

So, the day that we arrived at grandma's, mother would promptly write a letter to my father informing him that we had arrived safely.

When we were of a certain age, we realized that our mother, who never addressed father by his name, would have trouble writing a letter to him.  In the old tradition, the wife was so subservient to the husband that she dare not treat him as an equal and call him by his name.

So, how did my mother address my father in those letters?

We would badger her; but mother always shooed us away.  I don't think she even showed us the letters.  To this date, I have no idea how that letter-writing was done!

Even when talking to father, mother could not use the disrespectful "you" (நீ) but had to use (நீங்க.)

It was all par for the course.

But then things changed in a hurry.

My siblings' marriages were arranged along the traditional, orthodox lines.  My sister addressed her husband by his name, and my brother's wife called him by his name.  And the  நீங்க was tossed away for good.

Changes have happened.  But, these have been mostly in the southern part of India where families and governments have invested in female literacy and empowerment.  In the Hindi heartland, in particular, the lives of women continue to be highly dependent on the whims and fancies of men.  Even the Chief Justice of India's Supreme Court!

Justice Sharad Arvind Bobde, the head of India’s Supreme Court, asked a 23-year-old man accused of raping a minor whether he would marry his victim, who is now an adult. 

The victim, who under Indian law can’t be identified, has accused the man, a distant relative and a civil servant with the Maharashtra State government, of repeatedly stalking and raping her starting when she was 16. 

The judge’s comments provoked new demands that people in power, and particularly men, do more to improve how women and girls are treated in India.

There is more from the same judge:

In a separate case, according to the letter and media reports, Justice Bobde appeared to condone rape in the context of a consensual relationship. 

“When two people are living as husband and wife, however brutal the husband is, can the act of sexual intercourse between them be called rape?” Justice Bobde asked while hearing a petition filed by a man accused of rape by a woman who had been his live-in partner.

In the old country, the more things change, the more they seem to say the same, which is a tragedy and disservice to women :(