Start throwing books on the pyre:
WICHITA, Kansas — The Goddard school district has removed more than two dozen books from circulation in the district’s school libraries, citing national attention and challenges to the books elsewhere.
The list of books includes several well-known novels, including “The Handmaid’s Tale” by Margaret Atwood, “The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison, “The Hate U Give” by Angie Thomas and “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” by Stephen Chbosky.
It also includes “Fences,” a play by August Wilson that won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1987, and “They Called Themselves the K.K.K.,” a historical look at how the white supremacist group took root in America.
Julie Cannizzo, assistant superintendent for academic affairs in Goddard, sent an email to principals and librarians last week with the list of 29 books.
“At this time, the district is not in a position to know if the books contained on this list meet our educational goals or not,” Cannizzo wrote in the email. “Additionally, we need to gain a better understanding of the processes utilized to select books for our school libraries.
“For these reasons, please do not allow any of these books to be checked out while we are in the process of gathering more information. If a book on this list is currently checked out, please do (not) allow it to be checked out again once it’s returned.”
Cannizzo said in the email that the district is assembling a committee to “rate the content of the books on the list” and to review the selection process. She did not say how long the process is expected to take.
Cannizzo said Tuesday that one parent objected to language he found offensive in “The Hate U Give,” a novel about the aftermath of a police officer killing a Black teenager. The parent then submitted a list of books he questioned, and district officials agreed to halt checkouts and complete a review.
Shortly after the election result in Virginia, a pair of conservative school board members in the same state proposed not just banning certain books deemed to be sexually explicit, but burning them.
As the Fredericksburg Free-Lance Star reported Tuesday:Two board members, Courtland representative Rabih Abuismail and Livingston representative Kirk Twigg, said they would like to see the removed books burned.“I think we should throw those books in a fire,” Abuismail said, and Twigg said he wants to “see the books before we burn them so we can identify within our community that we are eradicating this bad stuff.”
Abuismail reportedly added that allowing one particular book to remain on the shelves even briefly meant the schools “would rather have our kids reading gay pornography than about Christ.”
It’s easy to caricature a particular movement with some of its most extreme promoters. And there is a demonstrated history of efforts to ban books in schools, including by liberals. Such efforts have often involved classics such as “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” “To Kill a Mockingbird” and “Of Mice and Men” for their depictions of race and use of racist language more commonly used at the time the books were written. More recently, conservatives have often challenged books teaching kids about LGBTQ issues.
But advocates say what’s happening now is more pronounced.
“What has taken us aback this year is the intensity with which school libraries are under attack,” said Nora Pelizzari, a spokeswoman at the National Coalition Against Censorship.
She added that the apparent coordination of the effort sets it apart: “Particularly when taken in concert with the legislative attempts to control school curricula, this feels like a more overarching attempt to purge schools of materials that people disagree with. It feels different than what we’ve seen in recent years.”
[…]
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) issued an executive order calling on state education officials to review the books available to students for “pornography and other obscene content.” Abbott indicated before the order that such content needed to be examined and removed if it was found. He reportedly did not specify what the “obscene content” standard for books should be.
Abbott added Wednesday that the Texas Education Agency should report any instances of pornography being made available to minors “for prosecution to the fullest extent of the law.”
The effort builds upon a review launched last month by state Rep. Michael Krause (R), who is running for state attorney general. Krause is targeting books that “contain material that might make students feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress because of their race or sex or convey that a student, by virtue of their race or sex, is inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously.”
Krause doesn’t say what he intends to recommend about such books, but he accompanied his inquiry with a list of more than 800 of them, including two Pulitzer Prize winners: “The Confessions of Nat Turner” by William Styron and “Between the World and Me” by Ta-Nehisi Coates.
There has also been an effort by Republicans in Wisconsin not focused on books, but broadly on the use of certain terminology in teaching students. As the Hill’s Reid Wilson reported about the state GOP’s particular effort to ban critical race theory from schools:[State Rep. Chuck] Wichgers (R), who represents Muskego in the legislature, attached an addendum to his legislation that included a list of “terms and concepts” that would violate the bill if it became law.Among those words: “Woke,” “whiteness,” “White supremacy,” “structural bias,” “structural racism,” “systemic bias” and “systemic racism.” The bill would also bar “abolitionist teaching,” in a state that sent more than 91,000 soldiers to fight with the Union Army in the Civil War.The list of barred words or concepts includes “equity,” “inclusivity education,” “multiculturalism” and “patriarchy,” as well as “social justice” and “cultural awareness.”
Back in September, a school district in Pennsylvania reversed a year-long freeze on certain books almost exclusively by or about people of color. A similar thing happened in Katy, Tex., near Houston, where graphic novels about Black children struggling to fit in were removed and quickly reinstated last month. Many such fights have been concentrated in Texas.
There has also been a recent effort by a conservative group in Tennessee to ban books written for young readers about the civil rights struggle. Supporters cite the anti-critical race theory law the state passed earlier this year. And school officials in Virginia Beach recently announced they’d review books, including ones about LGBTQ issues and Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye,” after complaints from school board members.
Indeed, oftentimes the books involved are the same.
You will notice how the right has appropriated the snowflake language of the campus left to further their own cause now. They want to “contain material that might make students feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress because of their race or sex or convey that a student, by virtue of their race or sex, is inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously.” The feelings they are worried about in this case are the feelings of white, male children. Apparently they are just too dim-witted or cruelly uncaring to see those very concerns about kids of color, gay kids and girls in the standard curriculum they insist must be restored.
Book burning, film burning, anything like that should be anathema to any civilized society. And we see examples of this on both sides of the political divide these days. But the US is clearly not a civilized society so I wouldn’t be surprised to see some big bonfires coming our way. That seems to be the mood of our nation at the moment.