Dr. Seuss and Philosophy - Jacob M. Held [113]
In the Jim Crow South, segregation by race was not merely a despicable social practice, it was also written into the law—laws that the African American population had no voice in forming. The objection was not to the law in general; if it had been, King and his followers would find themselves following the path sketched by Locke. Rather, the objection was to particular laws and practices unjustly targeting African Americans. As King puts it in his “Letter from the Birmingham Jail,” the objection was to a culture in which “vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will,” where “hate-filled policemen curse, kick, brutalize and even kill with impunity,” and where the color of one’s skin systematically limited opportunities for education and employment, leaving some citizens “smothered in an air-tight cage of poverty.”22 The social contract was simply not being honored. Essentially, King’s objection is to society’s demand that the disadvantaged group accept the same burdens as all other citizens while they are at the same time being denied society’s benefits. Resistance to these unjust laws took the form of civil disobedience (sit-ins, marches, boycotts, and the like)—activities that directly violated the unjust law and which would minimally result in the arrest of the lawbreaker. As King claims it, “An individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law.”23 This “respect for the law” is another way of saying respect for the social contract—a respect that demands it be fully honored by all and for all citizens.
King of the Mud
The laws to which King objected came to be for many reasons, but one of the more obvious is that these laws were formed without the consent of all of those to whom they would apply. The less representative the government, the more likely that unjust laws will be made. It is difficult to imagine oppressive racial segregation would be a legal fact in a society in which African Americans had their interests represented in government. While a representative government doesn’t guarantee perfect laws, it seems much more likely to avoid gross inequity and unfairness.
Could any form of government be less representative of the interests of the citizens of Sala-ma-Sond than a monarchy—a government by, for, and about the whims of one person? The turtles are hungry, they are tired, and they risk cracking their shells; still King Yertle lifts his hand to command more turtles for his throne. And a smallish turtle at the bottom of the stack, named Mack
Decided he’d had enough. And he had.
And that plain little lad got a little bit mad
And that plain little Mack did a plain little thing.
He burped!
And his burp shook the throne of the king! (Yertle)
With that great shake, Yertle the turtle king plummeted down into the mud of Sala-ma-Sond pond and his fellow turtles laughed, never to be oppressed again.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Whose Egg Is It, Really? Property Rights and Distributive Justice
Henry Cribbs
Horton the Elephant: “My egg! My egg! Why, it’s hatching!”
Mayzie the Lazy Bird: “But it’s mine! It’s my egg! You stole it from me!
Get off of my nest and get out of my tree!” (Hatches)
In Dr. Seuss’s Horton Hatches the Egg, the issue of whose egg it is seems settled when the shell finally cracks and an elephant-bird emerges. The spectators appear satisfied by this, even shouting “it SHOULD be like that!” (Hatches). They promptly send Horton the Elephant and the hatchling “home / Happy / One hundred per cent!” (Hatches). However, the issue is not as readily soluble as Seuss makes it out. The story could, and should, continue . . .
The hatchling’s half-elephant, but that’s not the last word.
It could still be half Mayzie’s. It’s also half-bird!
We can’t cut it in half, because that would be silly,
So we still should