Apparently, President Biden removed Dr. Seuss’s mentions of “Read Across America Day” amid a scrutiny of the alleged “racial backgrounds” in the whimsical children’s tales.
March 2 is even celebrated as “Read Across America Day,” founded by the National Educational Association in 1998 as a way to promote children’s reading.
In his presidential proclamation, Biden noted that “for many Americans, the path to literacy begins with story time in the school classroom,” USA Today reported.
But unlike his two predecessors, former presidents Donald Trump and Barack Obama, Biden did not mention Dr. Seuss.
The step comes when Dr. Seuss’s work has generated controversy after a study that highlights the lack of diversity among the author’s characters.
“Of the 2,240 (identified) human characters, there are forty-five colored characters representing 2% of the total number of human characters,” according to a 2019 study by the Conscious Kid’s Library and the University of California that examined 50 of the Dr. Books by Seuss.
Last week, a Virginia school district ordered its teachers to avoid “connecting Read Across America Day with Dr. Seuss,” due to recent research that has “revealed strong racial overtones” in many of the author’s books. .