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Jonathan Zimmerman, Opinion contributor Published 1:09 p.m. ET March 11, 2021 | Updated 1:38 p.m. ET March 11, 2021

Dr. Seuss can open the discussion of racism with your children.

In 1951, childrens author Jerrold Beim published a short book called "The Swimming Hole." It described two groups of boys one white, one Black who frolic together in the water. Refusing to swim with the Black boys, a white kid receives a nasty sunburn and eventually a stern rebuke from his peers. Suppose we would refuse to play with you now because your face is red? they ask him.

"The Swimming Hole" sparked outrage across the segregated South, where it was frequently banned from schools. So was "The Rabbits Wedding" which described the nuptials of a Black hare and a white one and even a new edition of "The Three Little Pigs." The revised edition portrayed a Black pig as better than a white one, which offended the delicate sensibilities of white people below the Mason-Dixon line.

Ive been thinking about this history during the recent debate over Dr. Seuss, born Theodor Seuss Geisel. Recently, the company that oversees his estate announced that it would end publication and licensing of six books by Dr. Seuss that portray people in ways that are hurtful and wrong.

But its hurtful to remove them from the public square, which is the goal of censors everywhere.They think we can't recognize the "problematic" aspects of Dr. Seuss, so we must be shielded from him. And they're wrong about that.

Books by Theodor Seuss Geisel, aka Dr. Seuss, including "On Beyond Zebra!" and "And to Think That I Saw it on Mulberry Street," on March 2, 2021, in Chicago.(Photo: Scott Olson/Getty Images)

Yes, his booksinclude blatantly racist caricatures and stereotypes: an Asian person holding chopsticks, barefooted Africans wearing grass skirts, and so on. Before he died in 1991, Seussactually altered some of the drawings to make them less objectionable. In the Asian illustration, for example, he removed the figures pigtail, changed its yellow skin tone, and altered the accompanying text to read Chinese instead of Chinaman.

But the illustration still offends, which raises an obvious question: why didnt the publishers alter it again or simply remove it? We dont know, but we can guess the answer: to satiate Dr. Seuss critics. Censors dont aim to strike a word here, and a picture there; they want to obliterate a work of literature altogether, so nobody sees it.

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And that never works in America, where authors often become more popular when someone tries to shut them down. A few days after the announcement that six Dr. Seuss books would no longer be published, four of themshot into Amazons list oftop 20 best-sellers.All told, 13 of the 20 books were by you guessed it Dr. Seuss.

The moral of the story?Americans dont want to be told what they can and cant read. And, most of all, they want to make up their own minds instead of letting someone else do it for them.

Thats the deepest fear of the censor, in all times and places: that readers will get the wrong idea. In the segregated South, whites worried that kids who encountered The Swimming Hole would decide that racism was wrong. And now theres a fear that children who read Dr. Seuss will become racists themselves.

But children and their parents are wiser than that. Writing last year, African-American blogger Danielle Slaughter argued that Dr. Seuss her young son's favorite authorwould help her teach him about racism. Dr. Seuss wrote books that indicted discrimination (most famously, "The Sneetches")but he also engaged in his own forms of it, Slaughter noted. It was complicated. And so is America, especially when it comes to race.

Choosing to throw away his books doesnt make you any less racist, Slaughter wrote, explaining why she continued to read Dr. Seuss with her family. It does, however, make you the type of person who insists on talking about racism in hushed tones.

The real question is whether we trust each other enough to have that talk out loud. Last week, the childrens author Deborah Hautzig acknowledged the racismin Dr. Seuss books but insisted that theyshould remain available to everyone. Hautzig recalled that her first novel, "Hey, Dollface," was banned in schools and libraries across the South when it appeared in 1978 because of its frank exploration of teenage female sexuality.

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Children are smart, Hautzig wrote. They have every right to see, examine, challenge, and reject racism for themselves, and to have it pointed out and vehemently rejected by the adults who read to them.

No matter its source or its goal, censorship always betrays a lack of faith in human beings. We don't have to tuck Dr. Seuss away in a corner. We can talk about him, the good and the bad: his light spirit of whimsy, and the dark racism that marred it. We are better than the censors think we are.

Jonathan Zimmerman teaches education and history at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the co-author (with Signe Wilkinson) of Free Speech, and Why You Should Give a Damn, which will be published next month by City of Light Press.

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Why we shouldnt censor Dr. Seuss: Parents and their children are wise - USA TODAY