Burning book with legend "Banned. Challenged. Censored."

There has been a lot of news and controversy about books lately, mostly in schools.  Legislators, school boards, parents, teachers, and school librarians are arguing about books in the school curricula and books in the school libraries.  In the past few months, we've seen a massive and coordinated surge in book challenges, bans, and withdrawals across many states, and quite a few proposed bills of legislation that would restrict what may be taught in schools.  Note that while this particular effort comes from the right, censorship is a universal human impulse that has to be resisted from all sides.

 

Come in to the library (Main or CHC) and check out our display of books people are trying to censor right now -- take home a book somebody doesn't want you to read!   The Butte College Library owns quite a few of the books featured below, either in hard copy or in ebook format.

 

Here are just some of the news stories -- but buckle up, it's a long and wild ride.

An overview from the New York Times: Why Book Ban Efforts Are Spreading Across the United States.

Parents, activists, school board officials and lawmakers around the country are challenging books at a pace not seen in decades. The American Library Association said in a preliminary report that it received an “unprecedented” 330 reports of book challenges, each of which can include multiple books, last fall.

 

PEN America takes a look at the bills being introduced across the country: Steep Rise in Gag Orders, Many Sloppily Drafted.

  • Since January 2021, 122 educational gag order bills have been introduced or prefiled in 33 different states 
  • 12 have become law in 10 states
  • 88 are currently live

 

WHY is this suddenly a nation-wide fad?  Most of the challenges are for books dealing with race or sexuality.  There has been a lot of noise about "teaching Critical Race Theory" in schools, and I recommend John McWhorter's astute analysis for a good overview of the issue. 

The horror of slavery, the hypocrisy of Jim Crow, the terror of lynching, the devastating loss of life and property in Tulsa and in other massacres — no student should get through, roughly, middle school ignorant of these things...

David French also wrote an eloquent plea for freedom in schools.

So race is a big part of the furor, and LGBT-themed books have been consistently at the top of challenged-book lists for years.  It seems that as long as we're objecting to books, we might as well object to every book we can think of.   The group spearheading this movement is (the literally-Orwellian-named) Moms for Liberty, and Bookriot ran an informative article recently.

What makes them especially powerful besides their tremendous funding is their local level efforts: they operate by county, rather than city or state, meaning that action can be quick, organized, and targeted.

 

Bookcart full of books

A photo taken by a teacher shows a cart full of books as they were being removed from a North East ISD library in December.  Obtained by NBC News

Texas is a major player, with State Representative Matt Krause issuing a list of 850 books he wants taken out of Texas schools.  NBC has a run-down: Banned: Books on Race and Sexuality Are Disappearing From Texas Schools in Record Numbers.    Bookriot ran a great analysis of the list and points out that among the many unsettling things about this list, possibly the most unsettling is that books about students' constitutional rights are on it.

What does it say about an elected official that he would want books about students’ legal rights taken out of school libraries? Who considers it dangerous for kids to know their rights?

That's not all the news in Texas, though; here's a list of 50 of the 86 books that were challenged in Texas schools in 2021.

An Eanes parent asked administrators to get rid of this novel [A Good Kind of Trouble], about a 12-year-old girl who gets involved in the Black Lives Matter movement, because it might cause a white child to feel "confusion or distress."

 

A nationwide uproar occCover of the Complete Mausurred when a Tennessee school board voted unanimously to pull the Pulitzer-Prize winning graphic novel Maus from the 8th grade curriculum.  Maus was the anchor text for a study unit about the Holocaust.   Read the meeting minutes and see if you think it was justified.  Then see what you think of this Twitter thread about why 'nice' books about the Holocaust teach it badly.

"being in the schools, educators and stuff we don’t need to enable or somewhat promote this stuff. It shows people hanging, it shows them killing kids, why does the educational system promote this kind of stuff, it is not wise or healthy."  --School board member Tony Allman

A Tennessee pastor then decided to join in, and threw an entire book-burning.  It's impossible to say exactly what books were burned -- you can see people throwing bags of books on the fire in the video -- but we know that the Harry Potter and Twilight books were targeted.

[Pastor] Locke also said people aren't mad that they were burning books, but mad because of the books they were burning — implying that his critics, even other pastors, were devil and witchcraft supporters.

No, Pastor Locke, I promise that was not why.

Person throwing a book into a bonfire

Photo credit: Tyler Salinas

 

North East spokesperson Aubrey Chancellor... told the Texas Tribune in December that the district asked staff to review books on Krause’s list “to ensure they did not have any obscene or vulgar material in them.” “For us, this is not about politics or censorship, but rather about ensuring that parents choose what is appropriate for their minor children,” she said then.

Censors often claim that they don't want to censor books; they just want to protect people.  A parent can certainly tell their own child that they don't want them to read particular books, but that can't be enforced on other people's children, and therefore cannot be enforced in an entire classroom or school, much less a library.  Taking books out of classrooms and libraries is censorship.