The Kulturkampf is also being waged in US schools. Over the past year, more than 1,600 books have been banned from thousands of schools, thanks in part to the efforts of organizations linked to conservative groups. Arlington Public Library (Virginia) has said enough.
“I definitely respect a parent’s right to say, ‘Not for my son, that.’ What I don’t respect is a parent’s right to come and say, “Not that, for nobody,” explains Diane Kresh, the director of Arlington County Libraries, a small urban enclave cut by the waters of Washington’s Potomac River separated is Efe. .
Kresh is visiting Efe for Banned Book Week, an annual celebration this year in response to the country’s recent spate of parental censorship, which has mostly targeted stories with racial themes or featuring LGBT characters.
As part of the celebrations, Arlington Library is encouraging its readers to look at a book that is banned or contested in American schools. Texts like “The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, or “Gender Queer: A Memoir” by Maia Kobabe.
The message seems to have gotten through: this week all “banned” books in the library are out.
NOTHING NEW
In many cases, textbook bans are encouraged, promoted, or enforced by conservative politicians such as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis or Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.
Although it has intensified in recent years, the censorship associated with defending morality has always been a source of controversy in a country where the words “We trust in God” adorn dollar bills, public buildings and even schools.
According to PEN America, an NGO that fights against book bans, 40% of the more than 1,600 volumes censored in American schools in the last year have protagonists or supporting characters who are not white.
THE CRITICAL THEORY OF RACE
For Nikole Hannah-Jones, a New York Times journalist and author of The 1619 Project, a literary project on the history of slavery and its contemporary echoes, vetoing books is a practice that is always associated with some form of repression.
“Reading liberates. Reading opens your world and your perspective and leads you to question the existing hierarchies in a society,” author told Efe minutes before attending an event at Arlington Library.
Hannah-Jones’ project has been challenged practically since birth.
It was published in the pages of the New York Times in 2019 and immediately drew criticism from then-President Donald Trump, who went so far as to mandate an education commission to develop a “patriotic curriculum” in response to schools that were beginning to do the job of Using journalists to teach American history.
Some states, such as Florida or Texas, have enacted laws prohibiting the text from being taught in public schools.
At the heart of the controversy: Critical Race Theory, a wild card of sorts applied almost automatically to any historical work that examines the role of slavery and racism in the formation of the country’s institutions.
“Would anyone have thought ‘Critical Race Theory’ was something two years ago?” asks Kresh, half incredulously, half joking.
The term, which few are able to define accurately, has become a staple in debates about education and indoctrination, and is used again and again by conservative media and advocacy groups to single out teachers who address racism in their classes.
“The faculty in the United States is 80% white women. It defies logic to think that white women teach white children that they are oppressors,” says Hannah-Jones.
A STORY OF RESISTANCE
The history of reading challenges in America is inseparable from slavery and racism. The Southern states not only banned slaves from reading, they also prevented the publication of abolitionist literature and prevented whites from being exposed to anti-slavery ideas.
Similarly, the history of the African American resistance is inextricably linked to fighting for minority rights, both racial and sexual and gender-based.
In her book, Hannah-Jones argues that the civil rights movement’s example paved the way for gay rights in the country.
When it comes to book bans, a lot has to do with the portrayal of LGBT characters in children’s books.
According to PEN data, Gender Queer: A Memoir was the most banned book in US schools this year, an exploration of its author’s gender identity from adolescence to adulthood.
Perhaps that’s why Arlington Public Library decided to celebrate Banned Books Week with two events celebrating this history of African American resistance. The first, a lecture by Hannah-Jones in front of an amphitheater, which erupts in cheers every few sentences.
The second, a performance by Jubilee Voices, a group of African American singers rediscovering slavery-era songs and stories.
“No more book bans,” they intone in an updated version of the anthem “Oh Freedom,” as the audience claps and accompanies them with words of freedom written more than a century ago by freed slaves after the Civil War.
Despite the pleas, it looks like the bans will remain as American a reality as the references to God on dollar bills. Meanwhile, in Arlington, drums are beating and the battle rages on.