Book Banning

I thought the days of banning books were long gone. Sadly, that isn’t true. Book banning is thriving. It’s been used throughout the ages as a way to censor what we can access by removing, suppressing or restricting information based on what the censor perceives is morally objectionable. One or more individuals using their beliefs to define what is acceptable for everyone.

It was first used to ban Thomas Morton’s, New English Canaan, in 1637 because it was considered a harsh and heretical critique of Puritan customs and power structures.

Charles Darwin’s, On The Origin Of Species, published in 1859, unleashed a controversy still raging today. It was banned in many parts of the U.S. in the 1920’s when the theory of evolution was incorporated into the American high school curricula. The famous “Scopes monkey trial” was sparked by the Tennessee ban when John Thomas Scopes dared to teach the concepts of evolution. It remained in effect until 1967 when the U.S. Supreme Court declared it conflicted with the first amendments right to free speech.

“From July 2021 to June 2022, 40% of the banned titles had protagonists or prominent secondary characters of color, and 21% had titles with issues of race or racism”, according to PEN America, a non-profit tracking book ban data. “Book banning has increase 28% in the last six months. It is more common in Republican-run states. seven districts in Texas were responsible for 438 instances of individual book bans, and 13 districts in Florida were responsible for 357. Of the 1,477 books banned this school year, 30% are about race, racism or include characters of color, while 26% have LGBTQ+ characters or themes.”

The recent surge in book bans has even swept up literary masterpieces like J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye, The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, Catch-22 by Joseph Heller, Brave New World by Aldous Huxley and both Animal Farm and 1984 by George Orwell. All classics taught in most schools across the country for decades.

But all it takes in some places is for one person to be angered or upset by content that makes them feel discomfort about a historical event, race, nationality, or gender. Slavery upsets you? Ban the books that teach our history. The Holocaust is too painful to discuss? Ban books that relate its horrors. 

In Florida, it only took one parent’s complaint to ban Amanda Gorman’s breathtaking inaugural speech, The Hill We Climb, from elementary schools. She claimed it wasn’t educational and had “indirect hate messages that would cause confusion and indoctrinate students.” She also voiced similar concerns about The ABCs of Black History, two books about Cuba and Love to Langston– 14 poems written by Tony Medina honoring significant events or themes in Langston’s life as he struggled to become a writer/ poet.

Amanda Gorman was 17 when she became the country’s National Youth Poet Laureate. She read her original poem at President Biden’s inauguration when she was 22 years of age. She begins by asking,

“Where can we find light/ In this never ending shade?”

Then proceeds to answer that question.

When day comes we ask ourselves,
‘where can we find light in this never-ending shade,’
the loss we carry,
a sea we must wade?
We’ve braved the belly of the beast.
We’ve learned that quiet isn’t always peace,
and the norms and notions
of what just is
isn’t always just-ice.
And yet the dawn is ours
before we knew it,
somehow we do it.
Somehow we’ve weathered and witnessed
a nation that isn’t broken
but simply unfinished.
We, the successors of a country and a time
where a skinny Black girl
descended from slaves and raised by a single mother
can dream of becoming president
only to find herself reciting for one.
And yes, we are far from polished,
far from pristine,
but that doesn’t mean we are
striving to form a union that is perfect.
We are striving to forge a union with purpose,
to compose a country committed to all cultures, colors, characters, and
conditions of man.
And so we lift our gazes not to what stands between us
but what stands before us.
We close the divide because we know, to put our future first,
we must first put our differences aside.
We lay down our arms
so we can reach out our arms
to one another.
We seek harm to none and harmony for all.
Let the globe, if nothing else, say this is true:
That even as we grieved, we grew;
that even as we hurt, we hoped;
that even as we tired, we tried;
that we’ll forever be tied together, victorious,
not because we will never again know defeat
but because we will never again sow division.
Scripture tells us to envision
that everyone shall sit under their own vine and fig tree
and no one shall make them afraid.
If we’re to live up to our own time
then victory won’t lie in the blade
but in all the bridges we’ve made.
That is the promise to glade,
the hill we climb
if only we dare it,
because being American is more than a pride we inherit —
it’s the past we step into
and how we repair it.
We’ve seen a force that would shatter our nation
rather than share it
would destroy our country if it meant delaying democracy.
And this effort very nearly succeeded.
But while democracy can be periodically delayed,
it can never be permanently defeated.
In this truth,
in this faith we trust,
for while we have our eyes on the future,
history has its eyes on us.
This is the era of just redemption
we feared at its inception.
We did not feel prepared to be the heirs
of such a terrifying hour
but within it we found the power
to author a new chapter,
to offer hope and laughter to ourselves.
So while once we asked,
‘how could we possibly prevail over catastrophe,’
now we assert,
‘how could catastrophe possibly prevail over us?’
We will not march back to what was
but move to what shall be:
a country that is bruised but whole,
benevolent but bold,
fierce, and free.
We will not be turned around
or interrupted by intimidation
because we know our inaction and inertia
will be the inheritance of the next generation.
Our blunders become their burdens.
But one thing is certain:
If we merge mercy with might,
and might with right,
then love becomes our legacy
and change our children’s birthright.
So let us leave behind a country
better than the one we were left with.
Every breath from my bronze-pounded chest,
we will raise this wounded world into a wondrous one.
We will rise from the gold-limned hills of the west,
we will rise from the windswept northeast
where our forefathers first realized revolution,
we will rise from the lake-rimmed cities of the midwestern states,
we will rise from the sunbaked south.
We will rebuild, reconcile, and recover
in every known nook of our nation and
every corner called our country,
our people diverse and beautiful will emerge,
battered and beautiful.
When day comes we step out of the shade,
aflame and unafraid.
The new dawn blooms as we free it.
For there is always light,
if only we’re brave enough to see it,
if only we’re brave enough to be it.

 Where is the hate or indoctrination?

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-https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/apr/20/book-bans-us-public-schools-increase-pen-america

-https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/books/story/2023-05-15/15-most-banned-books-2022-2023

-https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_censorship_in_the_United_States

-https://www.npr.org/2023/04/25/1172024559/book-bans-spike-biden-culture-wars-lgbtq-gender-queer-libraries

-https://www.pbs.org/newshour/arts/book-ban-attempts-reach-record-high-in-2022-american-library-association-report-says

-https://www.pbs.org/newshour/education/amanda-gormans-inauguration-poem-banned-by-florida-school#:~:text=FORT%20LAUDERDALE%2C%20Fla.,Gorman%20vowed%20to%20fight%20back.

-https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/monkey-trial-begins

-https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2021/01/amanda-gormans-inauguration-poem-the-hill-we-climb/