Banning Books on Race and Sexuality Are Crippling State Education — Taking Liberties

Banning Books on Race and Sexuality Are Crippling State Education

BY JOEL MCNALLY

An unprecedented tidal wave of book banning has removed more books from school libraries than in any previous year in recent American history in just the last nine months. Republicans are trying to stop educational institutions from providing factual information to students about either America’s racial history or human sexuality.

PEN America, the nonprofit organization of American writers advocating for free expression, documented removal of 1,586 books by more than 800 authors. In 98% of the cases, the group said, cowardly school administrators wary of public controversy covertly removed books without following established procedures to determine educational or literary value.

In this election year, rightwing Republicans are doing their best to keep their white supporters as riled up as they were under President Trump. Republican donors funded screaming parent groups disrupting school board meetings throughout the nation. They combined their party’s latest attacks on schools for accurately teaching U.S. history with their decades-old opposition to sex education.

RACISM? SEXISM?

Many parents may wish to prevent their children from learning about the existence of either racism or sex for as long as possible, but their kids are already learning about both all the time in today’s world. Republicans are futilely attempting to halt America’s rapidly increasing racial diversity to restore fading white supremacy. Their only sexual concern is to inflame more bigotry toward gay, lesbian and transgender Americans. They’re losing on all counts despite all the books they’ve thrown on their roaring bonfires in recent months.

One of the most challenged books of the past year was the children’s book Ruby Bridges Goes to School: My True Story by Ruby Bridges telling her experiences in 1960 as a 6-year-old Black child integrating an all-white school in New Orleans. It’s promoted as an inspirational story “celebrating the courage of a young girl who stayed strong in the face of racism.”

Bridges, now 67, testified before the House Oversight and Reform Committee on the historic wave of book banning. “My books are written to bring people together,” Bridges said. “Why would they be banned? When I share my experiences and my story in these books, I share our shared history, good, bad and ugly.”

The Bluest Eye, the first novel by Nobel Prize laureate Toni Morrison, was the fifth most banned book. The novel is about an 11-year-old Black girl who prays for her eyes to turn blue so she’ll be considered beautiful in America. It belongs in any school teaching children not to feel inferior for being different.

BANNING MLK AND DUKE ELLINGTON?

Forty-two children’s books on PEN America’s list of banned books were simply biographies of prominent people of color including civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, bandleader Duke Ellington, NASA mathematician Katherine Johnson, astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson, labor leader Cesar Chavez, South African President Nelson Mandela and Pakistani Malala Yousafzai, at 17 the youngest recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize for activism on behalf of female education. Why wouldn’t white Republicans want their children to read those books in their schools?

Possibly even more damaging to children who are afraid of being different is the frantic attempt to remove any books from school libraries dealing with LGBTQ issues. The top three books banned from school libraries were Gender Queer, a graphic novel about feeling nonbinary, neither neatly male nor female, All Boys Aren’t Blue, a memoir about growing up Black and gay and Lawn Boy, a young-adult novel that includes a description of a sexual encounter between two elementary school students.

Helping children understand their natural feelings as they develop is one of education’s most important roles. Understanding their own feelings and respecting those of others benefits all children at a time when emotions are supercharged. Gay and bisexual teens report being bullied twice as often as their peers and are three times more likely to contemplate suicide, according to the Centers for Disease Prevention Control.

Republicans despicably attack teachers dealing with questions about gender and sexuality as child predators “grooming” children for sexual abuse. Teachers are far more likely to be the trusted adults children can tell about sexual abuse by relatives in the home, which is where most child sexual abuse takes place.

The vicious Republican attacks on Wisconsin schools aren’t working nearly as well as Republicans pretend. Republican school board victories last month were in deep red places like Waukesha while Democrats won school board races in more competitive cities including La Crosse, Eau Claire, Appleton, Beloit, Fond du Lac and Oshkosh. Even in Waukesha, Mayor Shawn Reilly, who quit the Republican party after its violent attack on the Capitol trying to overthrow President Biden’s election, was re-elected with 64% of the vote.

Democrats will need every vote they can muster in November’s midterms to re-elect Gov. Tony Evers to veto the continuing attempts by Wisconsin’s gerrymandered Republican legislature to destroy education and democracy.

Joel McNally was a critic and columnist for the Milwaukee Journal for 27 years. He has written the weekly Taking Liberties column for the Shepherd Express since 1996.