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American parents demand anti-racist books removed from schools

By April 17, 2021Literature, News

American parents are demanding that anti-racism books are removed from schools, according to the American Library Association.

The ALA’s top 10 most challenged books includes many more anti-racism titles for the first time in 2020.

Usually the list contains pro-LGBTQ+ titles, including a regular top placement by Alex Gino’s George, a touching and insightful story of a fourth-grade transgender girl.

A book on the history of racism, Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You by Ibram X Kendi and Jason Reynolds, made it to second place on the list in 2020 with parents complaining that Stamped was “selective storytelling incidents” and “does not encompass racism against all people”, according to the ALA.

The author, and a historian of race issues, Kendi responded saying how proud he is of the work that he and Reynolds had done but was “not at all surprised” when he heard it made it to the list.

“It is ironic that our book is being challenged since it documents how generations of Americans have challenged the idea that the racial groups are equals and have fought to suppress the very truths contained on every page of Stamped. The heartbeat of racism is denial, and the history in Stamped will not be denied, nor will young people’s access to this book be cancelled,” he said in a statement to School Library Journal.

According to the ALA, a New Jersey teacher had resigned after being harassed by parents via email and on the phone about the inclusion of the book Stamped. The book was retained by the school, however, after two library associations in the state protested the ban. No teacher is now using the book in class though.

All American Boys, written by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely, about an act of police brutality towards a young Black teenager, and the white teenager who witnesses it, had complaints against it from parents who “thought to promote anti-police views” and “too much of a sensitive matter right now”.

Other books accused of being “promoting anti police views” are Something Happened in Our Town: A Child’s Story About Racial Injustice in which the police shoot a Black man, and Angie Thomas’s award-winning novel The Hate U Give, where a girl sees a police officer murder her friend.

Classic novels are not immune to complaints either- Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird made the list once again, along with John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, and Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye.

Laurie Halse Anderson’s novel Speak, was accused of having a “political viewpoint” and being “biased against male students” for depicting the story of a teen girl in the aftermath of her rape at a high school party.

“Claiming that a book about surviving sexual assault is biased against male students completely ignores that boys/men/males can be victims. To avoid discussion of sexual violence breeds ignorance, fosters perpetrators, and guarantees countless more victims,” said Anderson in response. “Most of the other books in the Top 10 are censored for discussing racism. Seems like book banners want to hold on to systematic racism and rape culture, doesn’t it?”

It seems, according to the ALA, that whatever social justice issue is being heavily discussed in society at that moment- those are the books that are being complained about by parents.

‘Cancel culture’ seems to be a foot soldier of the heteronormative authoritarian patriarchy, if these ALA lists are anything to go by…

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