Post by addisona on Feb 17, 2022 14:59:21 GMT
How the new banned books panic fits into America’s history of school censorship
It seems as though every few years, a new wave of panic sweeps across America about the books being taught in schools. They are too conservative, or too liberal; they’re being suppressed, or they’re dangerous; they’re pushing an agenda; attention must be paid. This winter sees America in the grips of the latest version of this story, with conservative-driven school book bannings heating up across the country. And experts say there’s a special virulence to this particular wave.
In Tennessee, a school board yanked Art Spiegelman’s graphic Holocaust memoir Maus from the eighth grade curriculum. Last fall, a Texas legislator launched an investigation into 850 books he argued “might make students feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress because of their race or sex,” including The Legal Atlas of the United States and Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery.” In December, a Pennsylvania school district removed the LGBTQ classic Heather Has Two Mommies from school libraries.
Laats argues that this sort of abrupt about-face from the right, too, is part of a larger historical pattern.
“The 20th-century pattern is pretty clear, if you take the 100-year perspective,” Laats says. “There has been progress on racial issues. It might feel depressingly stuck, but if you compare it to 1922 or even 1962, there has been progress. Same with LGBTQ rights. The difference is enormous. And with every stage of this broadening of who is considered a true American, there’s been a co-option of the winning terms by the losing side.” The anti-abortion movement is met by the pro-abortion movement; the LGBTQ rights movement on the left is met with claims of religious persecution from the right.
Laats points to Dinesh D’Souza and William F. Buckley as “masters” of this strategy. “It’s this style of conservatism that is intimately familiar with more progressive attitudes in society, in a way that more progressive pundits tend not to be as familiar with conservative ideas,” he says. “Because progressive ideas — though it might not feel like it, especially not for the last presidency — progressive ideas have become more and more dominant.”
Zimmerman and Nossel both say that conservatives’ success at banning books from schools should demonstrate that the left had become too willing to censor over the past decade.
“What I worry about is that free speech is losing its moorings on both the left and the right,” says Nossel.
“I‘m not equating the two, because this has the teeth of law, what we’re talking about now,” says Zimmerman. “A state legislature passing laws that you can’t make kids feel uncomfortable is different from Dr. Seuss getting a couple books taken off the internet.” But, he adds, there is enough of a continuity between the two cases on principle that he feels the left has put itself in a difficult strategic position. “You cannot protect Beloved if you’re purging Huck Finn,” he says.
Zimmerman says he still thinks it’s reasonable for citizens to respond to the books that are taught in schools, and even to protest them in certain cases.
“In the 1960s, there were history textbooks in this country, including in the North, that still described slavery as a mostly beneficent institution devised by benevolent white people to civilize savage Africans,” says Zimmerman. “You know why it changed? Because the NAACP and the Urban League created textbook committees that went into school boards and demanded that racist textbooks not be used.”
Zimmerman suggests that objecting to a book because of its potential to harm students, which is a subjective measure, is less effective than objecting to a book because of its untruthfulness. “Of course [the textbook committees] said the books were racist, because they were,” he says. “But they also said that they were false, which they were. To me, that’s a much more appropriate line of argument in these discussions.”
Laats argues that no matter what strategy liberals take, it’s unlikely people will stop arguing about the books we use in schools anytime soon.
“Whoever gets to control what kids are reading gets to control the definition of, quote-unquote, the real America,” he says. “That resonates with a lot of people.”
www.vox.com/culture/22918344/banned-books-history-maus-school-censorship-texas-harold-rugg-beloved-huck-finn-dr-seuss
It seems as though every few years, a new wave of panic sweeps across America about the books being taught in schools. They are too conservative, or too liberal; they’re being suppressed, or they’re dangerous; they’re pushing an agenda; attention must be paid. This winter sees America in the grips of the latest version of this story, with conservative-driven school book bannings heating up across the country. And experts say there’s a special virulence to this particular wave.
In Tennessee, a school board yanked Art Spiegelman’s graphic Holocaust memoir Maus from the eighth grade curriculum. Last fall, a Texas legislator launched an investigation into 850 books he argued “might make students feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress because of their race or sex,” including The Legal Atlas of the United States and Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery.” In December, a Pennsylvania school district removed the LGBTQ classic Heather Has Two Mommies from school libraries.
Laats argues that this sort of abrupt about-face from the right, too, is part of a larger historical pattern.
“The 20th-century pattern is pretty clear, if you take the 100-year perspective,” Laats says. “There has been progress on racial issues. It might feel depressingly stuck, but if you compare it to 1922 or even 1962, there has been progress. Same with LGBTQ rights. The difference is enormous. And with every stage of this broadening of who is considered a true American, there’s been a co-option of the winning terms by the losing side.” The anti-abortion movement is met by the pro-abortion movement; the LGBTQ rights movement on the left is met with claims of religious persecution from the right.
Laats points to Dinesh D’Souza and William F. Buckley as “masters” of this strategy. “It’s this style of conservatism that is intimately familiar with more progressive attitudes in society, in a way that more progressive pundits tend not to be as familiar with conservative ideas,” he says. “Because progressive ideas — though it might not feel like it, especially not for the last presidency — progressive ideas have become more and more dominant.”
Zimmerman and Nossel both say that conservatives’ success at banning books from schools should demonstrate that the left had become too willing to censor over the past decade.
“What I worry about is that free speech is losing its moorings on both the left and the right,” says Nossel.
“I‘m not equating the two, because this has the teeth of law, what we’re talking about now,” says Zimmerman. “A state legislature passing laws that you can’t make kids feel uncomfortable is different from Dr. Seuss getting a couple books taken off the internet.” But, he adds, there is enough of a continuity between the two cases on principle that he feels the left has put itself in a difficult strategic position. “You cannot protect Beloved if you’re purging Huck Finn,” he says.
Zimmerman says he still thinks it’s reasonable for citizens to respond to the books that are taught in schools, and even to protest them in certain cases.
“In the 1960s, there were history textbooks in this country, including in the North, that still described slavery as a mostly beneficent institution devised by benevolent white people to civilize savage Africans,” says Zimmerman. “You know why it changed? Because the NAACP and the Urban League created textbook committees that went into school boards and demanded that racist textbooks not be used.”
Zimmerman suggests that objecting to a book because of its potential to harm students, which is a subjective measure, is less effective than objecting to a book because of its untruthfulness. “Of course [the textbook committees] said the books were racist, because they were,” he says. “But they also said that they were false, which they were. To me, that’s a much more appropriate line of argument in these discussions.”
Laats argues that no matter what strategy liberals take, it’s unlikely people will stop arguing about the books we use in schools anytime soon.
“Whoever gets to control what kids are reading gets to control the definition of, quote-unquote, the real America,” he says. “That resonates with a lot of people.”
www.vox.com/culture/22918344/banned-books-history-maus-school-censorship-texas-harold-rugg-beloved-huck-finn-dr-seuss