seuss seuss sudio

it’s not a secret that i grew up in a librarian’s home…

…and i’ve also openly discussed that my family always waited a while to have kids and, as a result, there were some racist shit that went down that i, possibly out of complete naivety, label under that almost excusable “they ere from another time” kind of racism.

like my first birthday cake being a chocolate cake, with green frosting around the sides and pink frosting on top, with chocolate chips in the pink frosting so the whole cake looked like a big ol’ slab of watermelon since my birthday’s on juneteenth. mom would fight you on this saying that wasn’t racist, but she wouldn’t draw the logical conclusion that juneteenth and watermelon would be associated strictly because of racial stereotypes because, you know, my whole white-ass family celebrated juneteenth with watermelon as they had for generations?

bullshit.

uncle remus. little black sambo. all considered racist as shit now, were just “good clean fun” to my mom’s generation. i get that. and of course there was doctor seuss. LOTS of dr. seuss. but of the six titles recently banned for racial sensitivity or what not i only remember one of them ever being in the house, and i might still have it somewhere. in fact, most of the recently banned titles are books i’ve never heard of. in my eyes this is no harm, no foul.

for all my conservative friends who are going off on “cancel culture”, it amuses me that when you try and cancel shit YOU don’t like that’s fine, it’s when your shit gets gone after you freak out. it all takes me back to a family meal, many years ago, where my uncle (who’s gay but of that generation where it’s not ever talked about) and my mom (who died twenty-five years ago last month) were talking about how minstrel shows should never have been banned because they were “just good old fashioned entertainment” and that i was wrong (as if i was alone in my views) for labeling them “racist” or “offensive”. as in this shit…

and when i calmly pointed out to to my uncle that, if you went back a generation more, lynchings were called “good old fashioned entertainment” his response was, “well, sometimes i think they should bring those back as well”, to which i responded, “yeah, if they did, they’d probably hang the gays first!”

and silence filled the table.

two basic rules folks – number one, you can’t be part of a minority and bash the other ones without a little splash getting on you, and two, if we can all accept that we evolve as the years wear on we have to realize that evolution is not just biological, but also sociological. what WAS acceptable might not be any more. that’s why “fuck” in barely in the top five offensive words for os’s generation.