As a Black Child in Houston, my Dr. Seuss Moment Was About Thomas Jefferson | Opinion
Thomas Jefferson was my Dr. Seuss.
As a Black kid in the fourth grade with a fairly voracious reading habit, I had read a couple of books by Theodor Seuss Geisel, who went by one of the most famous pseudonyms in modern literature: Dr. Seuss. But by and large, his books it did nothing for me.
Even at my elementary school age, I was looking for enlightenment. I grew up in one of the more criminally disturbed neighborhoods in Houston, and I was trying to transcend my surroundings. It wasn't something Dr. Seuss's books seemed like they could help me with; the Grinch would not have survived in my neighborhood, and the charming naïveté of Whoville was too much of a contrast to make my imagination sing.
Then I stumbled upon one of my older brother's high school books, and began reading. The book was about the Enlightenment period, the 18th century cultural movement that refocused the Western World's disposition on philosophy, politics and science. Philosophers at this time ushered in an era of transformative change, espousing the belief that reason—rather than tiresome conventional thinking—could improve the situation of humankind around the world. The book also spent a lot of time on Thomas Jefferson, the third American president, who was inspired by Enlightenment ideals like the sanctity of the individual and the consent of the governed.
These ideas spoke to me, even as a child. For weeks, I quoted Jefferson around the house like he was my favorite rapper. I soon anointed Jefferson as my intellectual idol.
And then, I learned he was a slaveowner.
Finding out that Jefferson, one of the founding fathers of our nation, owned enslaved Africans sunk my world as a kid. He owned over 600 enslaved people over the course of his lifetime, some of them probably his own children, born to Sally Hemings, an enslaved person owned by Jefferson.
This information broke my heart. I found new authors to like, though. And I learned an important lesson: No man is a god. Someone can do very good things and very bad things. Humanity is complicated.
The news this week about Dr. Seuss has us all now wrestling a bit with this lesson. On Tuesday, Dr. Seuss Enterprises announced it would stop publishing six Dr. Seuss books because of racist imagery. In a statement, the company expressed that the books "portray people in ways that are hurtful and wrong." In And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street, for example, Asian characters have two slits drawn for eyes. And the book And If I Ran the Zoo contains drawings of two African men, bare-chested and barefoot wearing only grass skirts.
I truly understand how some people over the years felt troubled by some of Dr. Seuss' books, and educators and pundits have applauded Dr. Seuss Enterprises for its decision in a time of fervent calls for social justice. But shouting back at those pundits are some conservatives, blaming "cancel culture" for another overzealous reach at a sacred cultural icon.
And I think that may be the real problem: treating people like Thomas Jefferson or Dr. Seuss and his books as sacred.
As a theologian, I've seen how people apply the concept of sacredness to people and things that may be entertaining, uplifting or even genius—but they are not really sacred.
Conservatives may have a point about the move to cancel those Dr. Seuss books. Racism is one of the worst evils in human history, but we can choose the good we wish to see in the world. We can choose what book to discover or put down. We can teach our children to be better than our past.
If our ideals as a society live up to our better angels, then those ideals can be sacred because they lift up humanity. And that's how we become enlightened.
James C. Onwuachi is a theologian, an Upper School Dean at The Kinkaid School in Texas, and a doctoral candidate at Vanderbilt University.
The views in this article are the author's own.
