Make America Read Again, please (#30)
Recent book bans targeting books on racism and queerness in American schools aren't anything new.
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One of the things that I remember very clearly in the aftermath of the Black Lives Matter protests in Summer 2020 is people suddenly started buying books about racism en masse. It was pretty funny to me—and still is—the thought of a bunch of white people sweating bullets as they filled up their online shopping carts with anti-racism books at the same time. But, hey, there is no shame in wanting to better yourself when you know you’ve come up short. A for effort!
Really, though, at the time it felt like everybody who wasn’t Black was purchasing books on how not to be racist, as if competing over who could be the best (read: most educated) ally. Popular titles that were bought up included White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo; How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi; and The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander. Book stores were reporting backlogs and shortages because of the influx of orders and Black authors were dominating best-sellers lists. As Slate described it: “Books like How to Be an Antiracist and The New Jim Crow are outselling the new Hunger Games.” It was indeed Hunger Games-level pandemonium.
Fast forward to today, we’re now seeing the opposite: a wave of book bans pushed by conservative parents and lawmakers against anti-racist readings by Black authors. Books about the LGBTQ community and other literature featuring heavy life topics like sexual abuse and suicide are also being targeted. A recent investigative report by NBC News, through records requests to nearly 100 school districts in Texas cities like Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio, found “75 formal requests by parents or community members to ban books from libraries during the first four months of this school year.” To put things into context, last year there was just one—ONE!—library book challenge filed in those districts. Some districts that the publication looked at had more book challenges this year than in the past two decades combined.
But it’s not just Texas. Media reports show similar efforts to ban certain books have increasingly popped up in Florida, Illinois, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Washington among other states.
Both older famous books, like Art Spiegelman’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Holocaust graphic novel Maus—recently removed by a Tennessee school board from the school district’s eighth-grade language arts curriculum—and newer books, like George M. Johnson’s queer memoir All Boys Aren’t Blue—which conservatives have tried to ban in 14 states since its 2020 debut—have been targeted. But if there’s one thing these books have in common it’s that they make conservative white people very uncomfortable.
What’s happening now is alarming, but it isn’t exactly an anomaly. Historically speaking, pushback fueled by angry white people in the U.S. has always been the response to the country’s growing diversity and liberal progression. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination didn’t just happen in a vacuum—it was the result of white rage over the growing civil rights movement that he led. Donald Trump’s election and the MAGA movement were birthed by white supremacists in response to Barack Obama’s election as the first Black president. The January 6 Capitol insurrection came after Joe Biden’s election, whose victory was taken as a symbol of the nation’s persistent tilt away from Christian conservatism and whiteness. I could go on but I’m sure you get the idea.
Right-wing hysteria over “cancel culture” is, likewise, simply white backlash over the anti-racism efforts that have proliferated in the mainstream public after the BLM protests. That hysteria morphed into outrage over so-called critical race theory (CRT) which worked its way into the debate over public education on the false premise that American kids are being radicalized through school lessons containing CRT. Obviously, that’s untrue—CRT is a college-level theoretical framework so you won’t find it in a kindergartener’s school book. But furor over CRT had grown enough to push forth the idea anyway, laying the foundational myth that parents should have the right to force the removal of non-white and non-hetero history and perspectives from schools and libraries just because they don’t like it. Hence, the book bans.
As with everything the Right touches, the meaning of CRT has been muddied beyond recognition, to a point that when conservatives mention CRT it doesn’t even mean what it actually means anymore. According to Ebony Elizabeth Thomas, an associate professor at the University of Michigan School of Education, the meaning of CRT has been so distorted that it’s now just become a synonym for Blackness:
“There is an assumption that everything Black is critical race theory. The presence of diverse children is not liberal politics—diverse children exist in the world.”
Interesting, since conservatives argue that these book bans are really for the sake of the children, that they’re meant to keep them from being exposed to “dangerous” topics. That is such a terrible lie even Pinocchio wouldn’t use that line, and he is a notoriously bad liar!!
In Tennessee, a group of mostly-white parents who call themselves (of course) Moms for Liberty has protested the inclusion of anti-racist readings in their district’s public school curriculum, including a children’s book titled Ruby Bridges Goes to School. The book tells the true story of Ruby Bridges, the brave six-year-old who was the first to “integrate” an all-white school in the south as its first and only Black student in 1960. The unhinged mom group charged that a “large crowd of angry white people who didn’t want Black children in a white school” was too harsh for kids to learn about (even though that did actually happen to Black children, including to Bridges who was harassed by white mobs every day on her way to school). The group also said they were against educators using terms like “injustice,” “inequality,” and “segregation” in their lessons. To anyone with half a brain cell, it’s clear that these people aren’t really trying to protect their children (there’s been speculation that such “grassroots” campaigns are being funded by Big Money conservatives, like the Kochs). What these book bans are really about is reaffirming their white heterosexual identity and not wanting to feel bad about the terrible things that happen to people who do not fall into that category. What they want is a sanitized version of the real world, a “pajamafication” of reality, so to speak.
But did you know banning books has been a thing in the U.S. even before the recent hysteria over anti-racist readings? The American Library Association (bless ‘em) has been tracking and publishing a list of Top 10 Most Challenged Books every year since 1990, and the reasons cited behind their challenges. The lists are based on media reports and self-reports to the ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom (IF), which was established in 1967 to implement policies “concerning the concept of intellectual freedom as embodied in the Library Bill of Rights.” Here I’ve listed the top five most challenged books from 2020 according to ALA, along with a short description of each book:
George by Alex Gino: a young trans girl hatches a plan with her BFF so that she can play the lead actress role in the school play.
Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You by Ibram X. Kendi and Jason Reynolds: the children’s book version of Black scholar Ibram X. Kendi’s award-winning anti-racism book “Stamped from the Beginning.”
All American Boys by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely: two classmates—one Black, one white—are caught in a nationalized case of racism and police brutality after one of them is beaten by police and the other witnesses it.
Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson: a teenage outcast learns to speak up for herself after she is raped by a high school classmate.
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie: a Native American teen who grew up on a reservation struggles after he moves to attend an all-white farm town high school where he’s the only native student.
Just from the descriptions, you can get a sense of what kind of stuff is being targeted by these book ban campaigns—anything related to racism, being queer, or having to do with heavy topics like sexual assault or mental health. It’s not a coincidence, of course, that these are topics that trigger extreme discomfort among white conservatives and are often dismissed as “liberal politics” by right-wingers, as if these issues are just politics and have nothing to do with real life. The IF’s Office confirmed they’ve observed a “rising number” of challenges to books on racism and Black American history, with CRT cited as the reason in many of the complaints. While book banning campaigns aren’t anything new, the politics fueling recent efforts have definitely made it worse than before.
However, book-banning in the U.S. hasn’t been limited to right-wingers. There have been efforts to ban books that are explicitly racist in nature, for example. But banning books can be a dangerous game, no matter which side it comes from.
In 2019, lawmakers in New Jersey tried to ban Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn over its excessive use of racist language. In response, the late Black author Toni Morrison, whose own Nobel Prize-winning novel The Bluest Eyes is among the most frequently challenged books in the U.S., pushed back against calls to ban Twain’s book. She admitted that reading it upset her as a young girl but as an adult, she grew to appreciate its merits. Morrison also called the practice of book banning “a purist yet elementary kind of censorship designed to appease adults rather than educate children.” 🔥🔥🔥
Journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones, creator of the Pulitzer-winning The 1619 Project which has become a lightning rod for conservatives and been banned in several states, shared an email she received from a young white bisexual student at Indiana’s Purdue University, who had contacted her out of desperation:
It seems the true cost when books—particularly those about racism, gender identity, sexuality, depression, abuse, or any “uncomfortable” topic—are banned is that young people are robbed of opportunities for meaningful learning. Not only that, as Hannah-Jones’s tweet shows, a lack of access to certain books can negatively impact children from marginalized backgrounds. And despite these efforts, oftentimes censorship can have the opposite intended effect: what could be more alluring to adolescents than doing something that they’re told they’re not allowed to do? These book bans could, in fact, encourage students to seek out the books out of curiosity.
In the meantime, students, parents, librarians, and advocacy groups are already fighting back with their own campaigns to prevent or reverse the removal of books from local schools and libraries. For the sake of the kids—for real—let’s hope that they prevail.
What do you think about these book-banning campaigns? Is banning books ever justified in certain circumstances? Sound off in the post’s comments or reply to this email!
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TWEET OF THE WEEK: ON POLITICAL UNAWARENESS 👑
(The tweet is a reaction to this news out of Buckingham Palace.)
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THINGS TO CATCH UP ON
🔥 The labor shortage in the U.S. is pushing companies to poach tech talent from neighboring South American countries, heightening competition among start-ups and tech companies in the southern territory to retain workers. | Rest of World
🔥 A state of emergency was declared in the Canadian capital of Ottawa after anti-vaxxers and anti-mask mandate protesters have occupied and disrupted city activities since last week. The protests have drawn comparisons to the U.S.’s January 6 insurrection, with some calling the incident the “siege of Ottawa.” | The Week
🔥 Italy has made the protection of the environment part of its Constitution in a move hailed by lawmakers and environmental activists. The law dictates that the state must protect the environment, biodiversity, and ecosystem “in the interest too of future generations.” | Reuters
🔥 An 11-year-old kid reporter from Bushwick—known to her fans as Jazzy—is making a name for herself through her entertaining interviews with celebrities. She’s chatted up everyone from Jay-Z to David Beckham. Look out, Amanpour! | New York Times
🔥 Five historically Black colleges/universities (HBCUs) in Mississippi received bomb threats earlier this month, which is supposed to be celebrated in the U.S. as Black History Month. Fortunately, though, none of the threats have materialized. | Mississippi Free Press
🔥 A great conversation between my favorite NPR host Sam Sanders and author Wajahat Ali about his new book, Go Back To Where You Came From: and Other Helpful Recommendations on How to Become American, and growing up as a brown kid in post-9/11 America. Listen to it here. | NPR/It’s Been A Minute
🔥 Members of the Congressional Black Caucus demanded that a Republican lawmaker apologize to its chair, Rep. Joyce Beatty, after he told her to “kiss my a$$” following her request that he wear a mask in the Capitol. The lawmaker apologized two hours later after public backlash. | Associated Press
🔥 The GOP continues to be the worst after it put out a resolution that described the January 6 insurrection as “legitimate political discourse.” They tried to backtrack the statement but we know what they meant. | New York Times
🖊️ I wrote about the racism and sexism embedded in conservatives’ response to President Biden’s pledge to appoint a Black woman to fill retiring Justice Stephen Breyer’s seat on the Supreme Court. | Prism
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Until next time,
Natasha