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Book Banning Battles Hit North Carolina Schools Conservatives Target Works Dealing With Race and LGBTQ Themes BY GREG CHILDRESS | CONTRIBUTING WRITER
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arents of sixth graders in a gifted language arts class at Marvin Ridge Middle School received an email from their children’s teacher last month warning them that a book selected for the class’ unit on African American literature would at times be “uncomfortable.” The teacher at the Union County school, Cason Treharn, was confident, however, that her academically advanced students were mature enough to handle Melba Pattillo Beals’s autobiographical account of the Little Rock Nine’s integration of Central High School in Arkansas in 1957. Beals was one of nine Black students who stared down angry mobs of white racists and segregationists to attend the previously all-white school. The students were taunted by classmates and their parents, threatened by mobs and attacked with lit sticks of dynamite. It was an ugly time in America but also a seminal moment in the struggle for civil rights, coming as it did in the aftermath of Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling that deemed “separate but equal” schools unconstitutional. Beals documented the harrowing experience in “Warriors Don’t Cry: A Searing Memoir of the Battle to Integrate Little Rock’s Central High.” According to an email shared with Policy Watch, Treharn thought the book would provide valuable insight into how segregation, racism and discrimination shaped the South during the 1950s. “Although this content may be intense or uncomfortable at certain times, I encourage all students to understand these ideas, so that they can better navigate the news and the world around them,” Treharn wrote to parents. But some parents objected to the book, contending that some of the themes are inappropriate for sixth graders. Beals, for example, shares that she was the victim of attempted rape. She described the rape attempt in Chapter 2. “I crept forward, and then I saw him—a big white man, even taller than my father, broad and huge, like a wrestler. He was coming toward me fast […] My heart was racing almost as fast as my feet. I couldn’t hear anything except for the sound of my saddle shoes pounding the ground and the thud of his feet close behind me. That’s when he started talking about “niggers” wanting to go to school with his children and how he wasn’t going to stand for it. My cries for help drowned out the sound of his words, but he laughed and said it was no use because nobody would hear me.”
“Please cancel in the culture war. your book order to ‘Warriors Don’t Book bans Cry,’ due to the appear to be a nature of the natural extencontent,” Treharn sion of conservawrote. “Although tives’ attempt to we are using an use Critical Race approved AIG Theory (CRT) to [Academically further divide the or Intellectually nation. CRT is an Gifted] book, feedobscure academic back from some discipline that students, parents examines how and teachers has American racallowed more inism has shaped sight into creating law and policy. a different book Critics complain choice.” educators use CRT Shortly after to teach impresthat, Union sionable children Janice Robinson, North Carolina program County Public that America and director for Red, Wine & Blue, says that most Schools notiwhite people are of the books being banned are on African fied parents that inherently and irAmerican history, about race or LGBTQ isTreharn had been redeemably racist. sues. Photo: Adobe Stock mistaken. The Janice book had not Robinson, the been banned. North Carolina Instead, others were included as part of program director for Red, Wine & Blue, the required reading assignment to give an Ohio-based group that helps to steer options to parents and students who suburban mothers toward progressive found Beals’s book objectionable. political candidates, is helping parents “The information that was sent out fight book bans. to parents was sent out in error, saying “We believe that this is just a smokethe book was banned and it was not,” screen for the anti-CRT, the anti-LGBTQ explained Tahira Stalberte, assistant rhetoric that’s been going around the superintendent of communications and country,” Robinson said. “It’s the right wing community relations for UCPS. really pushing their political agenda at the The optional books include: “Roll of expense of our kids.” Thunder, Hear My Cry,” “The Kidnapped Robinson said conservatives are atPrince,” and “The Secret of Gumbo Grove.” tempting to “whitewash” history by targetA parent of a Marvin Ridge middle ing books about Blacks. schooler said the protest against Beals’s “When you look at the books bebook was surprising because it has been ing banned, they’re books on African on the district’s approved reading list for American history, about race or LGBTQ more than five years. Parents did not issues,” she said. “Parents have a right to complain about an earlier book that had be concerned, but there is a process that similar content to that found in Beals’s schools and school libraries have in place book, the parent said. to address those concerns. The problem is “These issues have never been that people are going around the process brought up until this year when we all and pulling books off the shelf because know, CRT, hot topic, is happening all one parent has an issue with it.” across this country, so the parents chose Most educators say CRT isn’t taught in this year to bring up complaints about K-12 schools. Nevertheless, it has become it,” the parent said. an effective tool for conservative politiThe parent asked that her name not cians looking for wedge issues to fuel be used for this story because she fears their candidacies. In Virginia, for example, discussing the issue publicly would follow Republican Glenn Youngkin, a political her child throughout the remainder of newcomer, defeated Democrat Terry the school year. Such fear has become McAuliffe, a former governor, in a tightly increasingly common among parents and contested race in which CRT and educaeducators who stand against efforts to tion became key issues. ban books and push back against opponents of vaccines and masking. A growing list of complaints
Contradictory messages, fears of reprisal
A pushback against censorship
A day after her first email, and just as the nation prepared to turn its attention to Black History Month, Treharn sent a second message instructing parents to cancel their Amazon.com orders for Beals’s book.
The email exchange between Treharn and parents, as well as the adoption of optional reading materials to appease parents, show the difficulties for teachers and school districts navigating the latest battle
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Parents have now begun to follow-up on the anti-CRT campaign by filling school board meetings to protest books they claim are too vulgar or explicit for schoolaged children. In December, a group of angry parents attended a Wake County school
board meeting to complain about library books featuring LGBTQ characters. And in Moore County, parents have filed a complaint calling for the book “George” to be removed from libraries based on the allegation that it contains sexually graphic material. The book is also one of three that Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson has criticized based on the same complaint. In fact, the book, which tells the story of a young transgender girl, does not contain sexually graphic content. It does include a pair of references that, in addition to the identity of the protagonist, have drawn complaints from some parents. This includes a passage in which the central character’s brother wonders whether she has been looking at “porn,” and another in which there is discussion of clearing the internet browsing history on a computer. At a recent Union County Public Schools Board of Education meeting, Heidi Cristaldi, a district parent, criticized her daughter’s required reading — “Into the Wild” by John Krakauer — complaining that the teacher pushed the idea that the book about a suburban college student’s trek to the wilderness is really about white privilege. “Our kids should not be shamed for the color of their skin or be told that they are oppressed or oppressors because of something they have no control over,” Cristaldi said. She also parroted a popular conservative lament that today’s students know too much about their teachers’ political affiliations, social justice causes and sexual orientation. “Our children are not social justice warriors and they should not be indoctrinated in schools to become one,” Cristaldi said. She urged the school board to “punish” teachers who stray from the approved curriculum. Stacey Swanson, a member of the district’s Policy and Curriculum Committee, reminded the school board that parents have always had the right to opt out of an assignment and to request an alternative one. “I encourage you and my community to not shy away from the value of discomfort but to lean into it, to have difficult conversations and to keep literature of value accessible to all,” Swanson said. She said parents should be more concerned about the content children read and view on social media than approved books that have gone through a rigorous vetting process. “Is there the same collective outrage for Tik Tok challenges and Twitter and the inappropriate content that lives there?” Swanson asked. “Do we monitor what children receive or their cell phone, Snapchat? I assure you there is horrendous content there as well.” This story originally appeared on NC Policy Watch, ncpolicywatch.com. : :
