Dr Suess

[sirelkcandy]

I will be cancelling my account after hearing of this Dr Suess nonsense!!!! Ebay will carry extremely offensive materials, but not Dr Suess!!! I will not support this decision.

[royellis1973]

Because Ebay's Offensive material policy doesn't say anything about satire. I'm black as well and these were my favorite books as a kid. I don't agree with trying to erase history. 

[chapeau-noir]

Talk to the Dr Seuss Foundation - eBay is publicly traded corporation that focuses on the bottom line, not some arbiter of culture.

[pburn]

@royellis1973 

Not too hard to understand why YOU want the ban on those six Dr. Seuss books lifted. Capitalism at its finest, eh?

[royellis1973]

As far as I know, the Dr Seuss Foundation said they will no longer print the books and nothing about forbidding the selling or reselling of these books. I didn't know the Dr Seuss Foundation dictated eBay policy. And yes, I can read between the lines of their policy. It's just irritating that they pick and choose based on politics, and then pretend that it's their policy to not allow any offensive material. Just say due to the controversy surrounding these books, we've determined that it's not in our best financial interest to allow these books on our selling platform.

[bonjourami]

As noted, with your $2000 price tag on one of the banned books.

[royellis1973]

You're trying to tell me that eBay believes that those Dr Seuss illustrations are offensive, but not Bamboozled? An entire movie dedicated to blackface? It's ridiculous. 

[pburn]

----------GENERAL REPLY----------

If anyone runs across an item listing they feel violates eBay's prohibited items policy, especially, for example, if the seller has intentionally misspelled the title of the book in order to avoid detection by the bots, here are the steps to report the listing:

1. Click on the "Report item" link on the listing (to the far right of the Description/Shipping and Payments tab on the desktop version).

2. Make the following selections from the dropdown menus:

• Report Category: "Prohibited and restricted items"
• Reason for Report: "Offensive or violent material"
• Detailed Reason: "Racially or ethnically offensive language and items"

3. Click on "Submit report" button

[pburn]

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@bonjourami wrote:

I saw those images, and consider them racist and hurtful to a child.

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Excerpt of a study by the APA:

Although many parents wait to address issues of bias with their children, research has shown that kids as young as 3 are susceptible to racial and gender biases, and that these biases can become fixed early in childhood.

“Research has shown that 3-month-old babies prefer faces from certain racial groups, 9-month-olds use race to categorize faces, and 3-year-old children in the United States associate some racial groups with negative traits,” the American Psychological Association said in an August statement. “By age 4, children in the U.S. associate whites with wealth and higher status, and race-based discrimination is already widespread when children start elementary school.”

[rdbobcat]

That may be the best way to fight this.

Be on the right side of history.

Report an item or listing | eBay

Should we report any item that is not explicitly anti-racist?

[royellis1973]

That's all fine, but children are not buying these books on eBay. Adults are. What if I want these books for my personal collection? What if a parent wants to educate their child about how racial stereotypes are wrong? 

[rdbobcat]

You may recall, there was this little dust up called WW2.

[bayp26]

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@royellis1973 wrote:

That's all fine, but children are not buying these books on eBay. Adults are. What if I want these books for my personal collection? What if a parent wants to educate their child about how racial stereotypes are wrong? 

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If you want these books for your personal collection, no one is stopping you from paying $400-$8000 for a copy somewhere else. Is ebay the only place you shop?

If a parent wants to educate their child about how racial stereotypes are wrong, then you can do a little research and show them the hoards of racist drawings and cartoons by "Dr Seuss" that he created before he publicly renounced his racist past.

Hope I solved your problems.

[chapeau-noir]

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@royellis1973 wrote:

That's all fine, but children are not buying these books on eBay. Adults are. What if I want these books for my personal collection? What if a parent wants to educate their child about how racial stereotypes are wrong? 

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Like most large corporations, eBay isn't subtle.  If a publisher pulls books, they pull books as the secondary market.  They may dress it up with rhetoric, but it's still simply a reaction to property ownership.  No one is burning these books, and they're actually some of the comparatively more obscure titles but still easily found. I'd still direct any complaints to the Dr. Seuss foundation.  There will be as many people complaining that eBay still carries these books as people who complain that they've also dropped them from their catalog. eBay is not going to get into the morass of public perception because there's no money in it.

[rdbobcat]

Hard science LOL.

Must we send them to the Gulags at 3 months, 9 months, 3 or 4 years old?

Or we can avoid all that by purchasing pre-approved works from The Conscious Kid Social Justice Library. 

[rdbobcat]

Most of the periodicals and books listed on ebay are no longer in publication.