Just two weeks after its 2016 publication, Jonah Winter’s children’s book “A Birthday Cake for George Washington” was canceled by Scholastic. Images depicting smiling slaves in the book sparked outrage online and led to a petition calling for its revocation. It was irrelevant that the artist was black or that the editor was a giant in the children’s book industry and also black.
Since its publication on January 5, 2016, the book has been heavily criticized for its images. The drawings are based on an imagined description of Hercule’s afternoon, the enslaved chef of George Washington.
In his editorial, Winters explains that if George Washington had wanted to, he could have brought in the best chefs in the world. Instead, he trusted Hercules to oversee the preparation of the family’s meals, state banquets, and other formal occasions. Hercules had unmatched talent through apprenticeship and self-study.
However, a social-media mob forced a large publisher to stop distributing the book. He explains that progressive activists on social media have been rising and calling for cancellation. Children’s book publishers are constantly on edge because these campaigners may be seen as challenging to their puritanical principles.
A new social rule is that a book’s subject matter should correspond with the author’s identity. Whites should not write about Blacks. Straight males should not write about gay women, and so forth.
Activists also think certain books are bad for kids and should be removed from shelves. If the goals of the right-wing activists seem suspiciously similar, that’s because they are. The main distinction is that the left-wing version wants the destruction of the texts they oppose, while right-wing activists just seek the removal of certain books from specific schools.
Reading While White is a blog that placed Winter on a blacklist. There is no proof that Winter or any of the other white writers were racist, but the contributors, liberal whites who condemn other liberal whites for racism, nevertheless made baseless accusations.
Winter believes non-white and gay writers, who have often self-canceled in response to online harassment, are among the many casualties of cancel culture too. Ironically, these are the exact demographics cancel culture’s perpetrators claim to be fighting for. But as is evidenced time and time again by their actions, their main goal is power.
