Library group takes stand against book banning in US schools

ARLINGTON, 27 Sept 2022:

A culture war has moved into US schools as during the past year, more than 1,600 books have been banned in thousands of schools – thanks, in part, to the efforts of organisations linked to conservative groups.

But the Public Library in Arlington, Virginia, has said “enough.”

Diane Kresh, library director for Arlington County – a small urban enclave separated from Washington DC by the Potomac River – said she respects the right of a parent to say, in effect, “Not for my child” regarding being able to check out certain books that may be in a school’s library.

Kresh spoke during the Banned Books Week – an annual awareness campaign promoted by the American Library Association and Amnesty International – which celebrates the freedom to read, draws attention to banned and challenged books and highlights persecuted individuals.

This year, the event comes in response to the recent wave of parental censure around the country directed, above all, at certain narratives with racial or LGBT themes.

As part of Banned Books Week, the Arlington Library is encouraging readers to take out a book that has been banned or challenged in US schools. These include texts such as The Bluest Eye, by Nobel Literature Prize Winner Toni Morrison, and Gender Queer: A Memoir, by Maia Kobabe.

The message seems to have resonated with the public given as all the “banned” books in the library have been checked out for this week.

In many cases, the banning of books in schools is being encouraged, promoted and carried out by conservative politicians like Florida governor Ron DeSantis and his Texas counterpart, Greg Abbott.

Despite the fact this practice has intensified in recent years, censorship linked to the defence of morals has always been a source of controversy in the US – including disagreement over including “In God We Trust” on all US currency, public buildings and even schools.

According to figures compiled by PEN America, a non-governmental organisation that fights against book banning, 40% of the more than 1,600 books censured in US schools during the past school year have protagonists or secondary characters who are not white.

For Nikole Hannah-Jones, a reporter for The New York Times and the author of The 1619 Project – a literary project on the history of slavery and its contemporary echoes – banning books is a practice that always crops up in association with some kind of repression.

“Reading is liberating. Reading expands your world and your perspective. It leads you to challenge the existing hierarchies in the society,” the writer said minutes before participating in an event at the Arlington library.

Hannah-Jones’ project has been challenged almost from the time it was launched.

In 2019, it began to be published in The New York Times and immediately is attracted criticism from then-president Donald Trump – who ordered an educational commission to develop a “patriotic curriculum” in response to the fact that schools were beginning to use the journalist’s work to teach US history.

Some states, like Florida and Texas, have even passed laws prohibiting the text of The 1619 Project from being taught in public schools.

At the centre of the controversy is “critical race theory,” a catch-all phrase that is being applied almost automatically to any historical work that examines the role of slavery and racism in the development of the country’s institutions.

Kresh asked – half jokingly and half seriously – if two years ago, anyone ever would have thought that something like critical race theory even existed.

The term, which few know how to define precisely, has become a constant feature of the debates about education and indoctrination – and it is continually used by conservative media and pressure groups to designate teachers who are teaching about the issue of racism in their classrooms.

Hannah-Jones said about 80% of US teachers are white women, adding that it defies logic to think white women are teaching white children that they are oppressors.

The history of the challenges to reading in the US is inevitably linked to slavery and racism. The southern states not only prohibited slaves from learning to read but also prevented the publication of abolitionist literature, thus blocking white from being exposed to ideas contrary to acceptance of slavery.

By the same token, the story of African-American resistance is inevitably linked to the fight for the rights of minorities, whether they be racial, sexual or gender minorities.

In her book, Hannah-Jones argues the example established by the Civil Rights Movement cleared the way for the demands for greater rights and recognition by the country’s gay community.

Regarding the ban on certain books for schoolchildren, a large number of those books include LGBTI characters.

According to PEN figures, the most frequently banned book this year in US schools has been Gender Queer: A Memoir, in which the author explores her sexual identity from the time she was a teen through adulthood.

Perhaps that is why the Arlington Public Library decided to include in Banned Books Week this year two events featuring the history of African-American resistance.

The first, a chat by Hannah-Jones to an audience that broke out in cheers repeatedly during her remarks and the second a performance by Jubilee Voices, an African-American singing group that has collected songs and stories from the time of slavery.

Despite efforts to fight it, everything points to the prospect of more book banning in the US, although in Arlington the battle to counter book banning continues.

– EFE