Turns out free speech is only for them. Surprise.
Right wingers are always going on about how they are being silenced and oppressed. So they are banning books and curtailing free speech. In their view the first amendment is the freedom not to allow other people to say things they don’t like.
Texas banned more books from school libraries this past year than any other state in the nation, targeting titles centering on race, racism, abortion and LGBTQ representation and issues, according to a new analysis by PEN America, a nonprofit organization advocating for free speech.
The report released on Monday found that school administrators in Texas have banned 801 books across 22 school districts, and 174 titles were banned at least twice between July 2021 through June 2022. PEN America defines a ban as any action taken against a book based on its content after challenges from parents or lawmakers.
The most frequent books removed included “Gender Queer: A Memoir” by Maia Kobabe, which depicts Kobabe’s journey of gender identity and sexual orientation; “The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison; “Roe v. Wade: A Woman’s Choice?” by Susan Dudley Gold; “Out of Darkness” by Ashley Hope Pérez, which follows a love story between a Mexican American teenage girl and a Black teen boy in 1930s East Texas; and “All Boys Aren’t Blue” by George M. Johnson, a personal account of growing up black and queer in Plainfield, New Jersey.
“This censorious movement is turning our public schools into political battlegrounds, driving wedges within communities, forcing teachers and librarians from their jobs, and casting a chill over the spirit of open inquiry and intellectual freedom that underpin a flourishing democracy,” Suzanne Nossel, PEN America’s chief executive officer, said in a statement.
Across the country, PEN America found that 1,648 unique titles had been banned by schools. Of these titles, 41% address LGBTQ themes or have protagonists or prominent secondary characters who are LGBTQ. Another 40% of these books contains protagonists or prominent secondary characters of color.
Summer Lopez, the chief program officer of free expression at PEN America, said what’s notable about these book bans is that most are on books that families and children can elect to read, not any required reading.
Florida and Pennsylvania followed Texas as the states with the most bans, respectively. Florida banned 566 books, and 457 titles were banned in Pennsylvania, where a majority of books were removed from one school district in York County, which is known as being more conservative.
Lopez said her organization could not recall a previous year with as many reported book bans.
“This rapidly accelerating movement has resulted in more and more students losing access to literature that equips them to meet the challenges and complexities of democratic citizenship,” Jonathan Friedman, director of PEN America’s free expression and education programs and the lead author of the report, said in a statement.
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In Oklahoma you can’t even tell your students how to access books in a library that allows some of these banned books:
Wendy Suares, an anchor at KOKH FOX 25, reported on Twitter that a teacher at Norman High School in Norman, Oklahoma, was fired for speaking to students about the Brooklyn Public Library’s initiative to make books—especially frequently-challenged books—accessible to students around the country. She also shared the above QR code from the library, which leads to more information about the project, Books Unbanned.
The Brooklyn Public Library announced the initiative in April following reports from around the country that school districts were pulling books on LGBTQ identity and race from libraries, a phenomenon that has been denounced by PEN America, the American Library Association, and many others. It made free eCards available for anyone in the country between the ages of 13 and 21, giving them access to tens of thousands of books and online databases.
Suares reported that the same school district was also pulling books off the shelves of classroom libraries “that don’t have 2 research articles demonstrating their value. Teachers were given virtually no time to accomplish this so students returned to classes with empty bookshelves.” (What constitutes a “research article” in this instance is unclear.)
She ended up having to resign. I’m sure other teachers in Oklahoma won’t be making tht mistake.
When you hear these whiners going on about being oppressed and cancel culture remember who’s doing the oppressing and the cancelling. And the banning.