A "neurotic hypersensitivity": It is hard to think of a more harmlessly benign gesture than Melania Trump's

Tear your hair, groan at the glum tale of Melania Trump versus the school librarian

writes Libby Purves from across the pond in the Times.

Weep at the compassion fascism which can only value human experience when it involves newsworthy suffering, and which meets merriment and fantasy with a pious reproof.

Poor Melania Trump, trying to get her head round the role of first lady, sent a gift of books to elementary schools in 50 states for National Read a Book Day. … It is hard to think of a more harmlessly benign gesture, even if the poor woman is married to Donald Trump.

But that could not be forgiven by one school librarian in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Liz Phipps Soeiro. In a long open letter she thanked the first lady — with a sneer about the wasteful postage — but said that while her students liked the “beautiful bookplates with your name and the indelible White House stamp” they would not keep them. First, because more deprived schools have greater need, though even hers struggles “to retain teachers of colour and dismantle the systemic white supremacy”. Second, because Melania’s favourite is “a cliché, a tired and worn ambassador for children’s literature. Dr Seuss’ illustrations are steeped in racist propaganda, caricatures and harmful stereotypes.”

She patronisingly gives another list, books about “children who stand up to racism and oppression . . . trying to connect with parents who are incarcerated simply because of their immigration status”. … They may be excellent, and there is an honourable place in children’s literature for hardship, injustice and resilience. From Serraillier’s The Silver Sword to The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas there are historical examples, and modern miseries have a place too.

But the left-liberal piety of the list and Ms Soeiro’s letter have a grim and quelling quality. Fair enough to swipe at unequal educational chances, but there’s a real sneer in her “it was a wonderful gesture, if one that could have been better thought out”. No sisterhood for Melania!

The Seuss-is-racist angle needs unpicking. Real American racism, especially after Charlottesville and Ferguson, creates a neurotic hypersensitivity. The fashionable targeting of Seuss is part of that, even though Michelle Obama read him to her daughters. Theodor Seuss Geisel was originally an advertising cartoonist in the 1940s who, like many others, used “blackface” and other ethnic shortcuts in his work. So last week the magazine Business Insider leapt on the bandwagon, bewailing his “deeply disturbing” drawings and warning of “sad, racist ads”.

So I looked at them. Most are for the insecticide Flit. … Oh, and there’s a cartoon of Hirohito, snag-toothed and slit-eyed. But hell, it was the 1940s. People were scared. And his Adolf Hitler is grossly unflattering too. Anyway, in no time at all Seuss was drawing the famous piano cartoon of Uncle Sam saying: “Look, maestro, if you want to get harmony, use the black keys as well as the white!”

His children’s books, merrily scanned recitable fun, include benign messages. In one, a boy who meets a frisky pair of empty green trousers is scared because they are different, but the animated pants begin to cry so he realises that they are “just as scared as I!” and makes friends.

Seuss said he never started with morals — “kids can see a moral coming a mile off” — but noted that all stories had one. His Yertle the Turtle mocks fascist leadership, as the over-ambitious turtle is capsized trying to reach the moon. The Grinch and Lorax condemn materialism and pollution. They’re dated but fun: not “harmful” propaganda. Seuss should frolic alongside newer authors, because once you learn to read you are made free of everything, whether you pick up Auntie Yang and “A Story of Immigration and Separation” or JK Rowling and Jacqueline Wilson, Dahl and Sendak and Nesbit, Alice in Wonderland and Just William and the Beano. Even Little Lord Fauntleroy.

The librarian’s rejection was hastily disowned by her school board, but there is a wider battle to fight. A battle for fantasy and nonsense, for different perspectives; for entering into other lives and attitudes past and present. When you’re two, the very joy of words and jokes connects you to another’s imagination and thence to the wider world. When you’re six, stories about medieval knights or Victorian explorers can obliquely help your own struggles. Black or white, boy or girl, wizard or muggle, you need many doors to many worlds.

Among the readers who reacted were Mrs Croc, Mr David Devore, CM, RECH, and Jane in Amsterdam.

Mrs Croc:

Well I'm glad none of my children went to that school. What a harpy of a librarian, and didn't she give a fantastic example of stereotyping and race and class hatred in the way she condescendingly replied to Mrs Trump.

Mr David Devore:

I see that Libby Purves, herself, has fallen into stereotyping by referring to Ferguson, MO, as a place of real racism. May I point out that a grand jury accepted that the officer who shot Michael Brown did so in self defence. Furthermore, the main conclusion of  the Dept of Justice report into the administration of justice in Ferguson was not that the system was racist but that it was driven by the desire to raise revenue through fines.  This affected poor people severely, and in Ferguson, poor people tended to be Black. The leaders of Ferguson had been insensitive to this.

The books that the Cambridge librarian recommends instead (and remember...this is for elementary school children), reflect a highly politicised outlook on life. What is shocking is that the Cambridge Public Schools tolerate indoctrination of young children. This woman should be sacked!

RECH:

I imagine I will be shot down for this, but the unthinking condemnation of stereotyping is itself another example of PC.

The fact is that people do conform to stereotypes because we are all members of multiple groups to which we conform to a greater or lesser extent, but more importantly when we meet someone we are not, however liberal we think we are, a blank slate.  We inevitably start out with a broad brush impression of that person derived from stereotypes, and then move on to a greater understanding of the individual as an individual as we winnow out more information about them.  The degree to which we are liberal, in my opinion, determines how open minded we are in terms of allowing that deeper understanding to develop. 

 Jane in Amsterdam:

Perhaps it's just me, or maybe social media and the digital age allows them more prominence, but I feel that society seems to have developed a rich vein of the professionally and permanently indignant.  Just like those who can read something and take issue with the grammer but ignore the content,  there seem to be many who expend an enormous amount of energy deliberately looking for something they can deem to be bigoted, racist, fascist, sexist et al, just so they can feel satisfyingly offended for the day.

And this is how real, important issues get lost in the noise.

CM:

I wonder if lefties realise what terrible bores they are, and that no one can stand them?