I don’t know, the most banned books these days are for younger readers and the banners are concerned with “the occult” and its effects on children - Harry Potter, The Hunger Games, R.L. Stine, etc.
Yes, I agree. I’d prefer to see room for both, but if you had to boot one I’d lean toward booting the white author. And I did actually think for a while about adding an “as well”. I think there are plenty of authors who are fine writers who are not part of the cannon mostly because they aren’t white.
“You would be wrong about that. It used to be the right that wanted to ban books, but these days it tends to be those on the left.”
Definitely not in my neck of the woods. The ones causing all the headaches at school board meetings about wanting books banned are the conservatives. They are a very vocal minority. They also think the IB curriculum is a leftist conspiracy.
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One of the silliest non-sequitors I have read in a long time. This concept that high school parents who try to ban books also complain about safe spaces has no basis in anything.
You are free to point out where and how this is proved to be the case. Did you talk to these high school parents and find out what they think about safe spaces? Or, are you making this up to for your world-view? I am going to guess, as usual, you are assuming this to fit your world-view and just made it up. Hey, if that makes you sleep better - go for it.
On a more serious note, based on the substance of the various book banning attempts, I think there are two main groups of book banning-enabled parents: 1) identity-based, as with Huck Fin, the racially-centered type, and 2) religious-based.
However, what the various people in each group believes re safe spaces is just a manufactured, fake statement.
EDIT: I should add one more group based on a post I just read above: 3) The parents who disagree with the presentation of history and other in the curriculum. Again, no way to assume where they come down on safe spaces.
“I don’t know, the most banned books these days are for younger readers…”
There was a children’s book that I thought a horrible example of (s)mothering and which (to me) hinted at something far outside of acceptable mother-son relationships which was widely well-received in many circles, Robert Munsch’s * Love You Forever. *
I read that book one time, got to the last page, where the senior-aged mother climbs a trellis and rocks her adult son in her lap in a rocking chair which I believe was in the nursery in his home which he shared with his wife and children, and my mouth flew open. Geez, I thought, who the heck is reading this to their kids?
Don’t know if I would sign a list to ban the book, but I would never give it as a gift to anyone, never read it to children, and never own it.
LOL @Waiting2exhale I felt exactly the same way about that book! Creepy. The Giving Tree was just as bad. What a horrible message.
I live in a more conservative area. The parents who attempted to get the books banned in my area were part of the Tea Party (I know this because that is the party they self-identified with when they ran for, and lost, a place on the board). The one in the district over was also a conservative parent. The other famous ones I know of, including a challenge by a former VP candidate, are from the right as well.
I have never heard of a leftist trying to ban a book but I’m open to any links and they’re just as in the wrong.
By the way, a legitimate challenge to a “canon” is NOT the same as demanding a book be banned.
@harper8 "1966–Harper Lee wrote this note to a school board when they banned TKMB.
http://www.businessinsider.com/harper-lee-letter-to-a-school-board-trying-to-ban-mockingbird-2016-2 "
We live in that county. Since 1966 it has gone from rural to a bedroom community of Richmond. I found it funny when I read that letter but I would expect that in 1966. We’re the next county from Caroline where the Loving case was unfolding during that time. My son did read Mockingbird in AP English. I find the case in Accomac county ridiculous. It’s a very poor rural area if that explains anything. I would think the school board would be familiar with other book banning attempts, though.
According to first hand reports and local news reports, it is self-described conservatives in my state objecting to safe spaces, political correctness, and have been the only ones calling for any book to be banned in the last decade, which is as long as I’ve been living here.
However, if I google book banning, I get a bunch of self-described, right leaning, news sites full of headlines that it is liberals banning books. Another thread sort of touched on the idea our reality is shaped by where we get our news.
I do think some liberals have advocated changing the canon. Until recently, the canon has been the result of white men telling everyone else what to read in school. The books may be good books, important books, but they are only well-known because someone picked them for school books. Other good and important books, now taught in schools, were out of print for decades till someone decided to teach them.
Well, we agree that book banning is wrong whichever side does it, but do you think that this case is by a person on the right?
Based on the info provided, @hebegebe, it would be pure speculation and your post just indicates your own political thought process and leanings.
It’s highly likely the parent could be apolitical. Given that 46% didn’t vote in the recent election, that appears to be the majority these days.
There are clearly two different issues being discussed here, which are being conflated; however, they are not remotely the same.
Specifically, there is a fundamental difference between attempting to ban a book based on one being offended or opposed to it on religious grounds AND with wanting a book banned because it is not accurate. I do not see people taking that proper distinction here.
I have been in one issue that provides context. I backed an effort (well, my company did) to get rid of a World History book from a local school. The group in charge did not ask for the book to be banned, but edited, and since publisher refused, then it turned into getting the book banned. The movement was successful. Now, why would I be in favor of banning a book from a school, especially a book written by 2 Phds?
Simply, there were factual errors throughout the book that misrepresented history. I will list but a few of the errors and deliberate implications that were just plain wrong:
- It stated the First Thanksgiving saved the Pilgrims from starving because the Native Americans gave them food. 100% wrong. The First Thanksgiving was because there was so much food that spring and summer that the Pilgrims shared the bounty. This is clearly stated in the letters and correspondence from that time.
- It presented this false picture that the Pilgrims found a peaceful nation of Native Americans living at one with the land. No mention of the warring tribes, inter-tribe slavery, and the massacres that were the norm between tribes.
- The book separated the development of government into the histories of the republican and democrat parties. However, the issue of slavery, the KKK, and Jim Crow were discussed in the republican section. Wrong - those institutions were democrat created and controlled institutions. The book also never mentioned that the republican party was created in an effort to end slavery. In short, the book left the impression the Republicans were in charge of slavery etc. The fact the teachers did not even know this was not correct was even more disturbing and this was coupled with parents who thought teaching this was just fine.
- It discussed the former Soviet Union in romantic terms about making life equitable for everyone and being a necessary counter-weight to the United States, never explaining the ruthless nature of its government. Stalin, the killing of 20 million people, and the invasion of Eastern Europe were never presented.
Also stopped an environmental science book from being ordered (a preemptive strike) because it just was ideological pablum. being scientist, I prepared the challenge for the school board and they could not even answer why basic things in the science book were wrong. So there you go, an ignorant school board ordering science books.
I could go on here, but my point is made - the book was not suitable for teaching history.
In my view, asking that a textbook with factual errors be taken out of a school is quite different than asking a book be banned because one is offended by a racial slur or by a religious issue presented in the book.
To Kill a Mockingbird and Huckleberry Finn are unique in that they are not history books, per say, but they are historical and accurate. No one I know of has questioned the accuracy of the history portrayed in these books. However, to ban these books because one is offended by the factual language and history therein is, by default, denying students the learning of true, factual history.
So whatever the reasons for other people to ask for books to be banned in other contexts, the story linked in the OP is about a parent who wants a book banned because of racial slurs.
Isn’t that the typical reason these 2 books are often the subject of bans? Other books might be singled out by other groups, but this parent seems not to be a likely candidate to be a conservative complaining about safe spaces.
Hm…your math seems a bit off, as well as your sociological deduction.
The 46%, who did not vote, includes the young voters who did not show up. Those young voters do not have kids in school. Therefore, no way near a majority of adult voters with kids in school did not vote.
Additionally, in terms of political action, the person who would go after a school to ban a book strikes me as more similar in nature to the person who votes.
Not voting indicates apathy about the process and a belief of one’s inability to effect change. I find it difficult to believe a person thinks his vote does not count, but would then be active in getting a book banned. Getting a book banned is indicates the opposite of an apathetic character and is incongruous with disregarding the power of one’s vote.
@awcntdb - I’m curious as to what grade that text book was for. We do feed our children that Thanksgiving myth, and talk of massacres would be too much to bring up in the very low grades, but if it’s the same book covers the history of the US including political parties, it is likely for a higher grade.
Slavery is not a democrat or republican creation. Slaves arrived in Jamestown in 1619, in St. Augustine in 1565. Those parties didn’t exist then.
Recently there was controversy with a Texas text book and it’s false depiction of slavery. Maybe pressure against books like these is what people call “leftists” banning books.
“Slaves arrived in Jamestown in 1619…”
This is going to lean away from the intended discussion for a minute, but, man, just seeing the above passage really hurts. A people enslaved arrived in Jamestown in 1619 is what I have always told my kids. I know that in the end one has to face the truth that the new term for these people was ‘slave,’ but, really, that really, really is painful to see.
Back in line with the discussion…when history books and high school and middle school teachers have instructed the students in the classroom of which my children were members, that those arriving in Jamestown and enduring the hundreds of years of chattel slavery after, were ‘African-American,’ then I step in, and shut it down.
Such language surely must be used to assuage some deep and painful realities on the other side of the was enslaved/did the enslaving coin, but it is historically incorrect and wipes from the mind the hundreds of years of labor and effort to attain American citizenship and to be held as fully human that was the journey of the American Black.
Such lessons, such language, and such books are not to be talking points, or reference points, for my children.
Waiting2exhale: Thank you for posting in this thread.
The first time I heard a historical interpreter use “enslaved” rather than “slave” was a revelation to me. I had to ask her to explain. She was very kind and patient. Like you.
Language matters so much. And that goes back to the concerns of the mother in the news article in OP, I believe.
@alh I tried googling too and got a bunch of links about the most banned books and whatnot. That’s why I said I was open to links 
Sorry to have caused you any pain @Waiting2exhale - I’m never quite sure of what words to use and you are right about them.
Oh, @greenwitch, I do not need an apology, as this very arena of ideas, and the exploration herein is precisely the point of the thread, the forum, and why we all send our children to school. I thought I’d just say that it came close to me today, in that moment.
Thank you, @alh, for considering my voice here. I read all that each of you at CC write, and deeply consider it, and very often have to admit I am made more aware of things because of it.