Rose Garden

 I apologize for the leading. My HTML-fu is weak.

Some thoughts for Banned Book Week (September 22-28).

As you may know, I served on the Little Rock, Arkansas, School Board from 2000-2006. During that time, I don’t recall their being a book banning fever in the US. I’m currently running again for the School Board.

The media frenzy in 2023 over banned books and Moms for Liberty (MFL) seems to have abated somewhat. However, slipping from the public eye can be a blow to free speech advocates. Our watchword should be “vigilance.” They haven’t gone far.

Banning books is not only in violation of the free speech guarantees of the US Constitution, it is antithetical to the Jeffersonian ideas of education and citizenship. Jefferson urged free, public education in order to instill in citizens the ability to reason critically about the public issues of moment in order to render an unbiased judgment at the ballot box. How can people have an idea of the appropriate or inappropriate nature of a book without reading that book from themselves? The MFL crowd seem to think it’s easy; just listen to them.

MFL argues that they are protecting not only their children, but yours as well; so what’s the problem? Unfortunately, telling the first truth: “I do not want you to protect my child” makes you come off as unconcerned about the MFL’s issues. And, you probably are. Unconcerned, I mean. My mother never policed my reading, and I, on only one occasion policed my daughter’s. She was about 10 and very much into manga and picked up a book from the CLAMP studio. It was that goofy kind of manga porn that passes as erotica: a robot, modeled to appear as a human female had an on/off switch in her vagina. I just took the book from her and told her it wasn’t for kids her age and that she could read in later on down the road. In all honesty, I don’t know what happened to the book (this was 25 years ago), and I don’t think she ever read it. But, I could wrong because by the time she was 12 I figured she could handle anything on her own. And that she would ask questions if something was troubling her.

And, here we come to the second truth: “Just because you and your kid aren’t close is no reason to take books out of the reach of kids who want to read them.” When I was around 11 or 12, I read one of those teen advice books (for the life of me, I can’t remember or figure out which one). I read it for the titillation; I hid it from my mother. But over the next few weeks, I felt her out on some of the topics, asking vague questions that she answered. The book was an excellent way to get me some of the answers from my mother to questions on petting and sex; which is what the MFL crowd wants: them giving information to their kids in what they feel is the proper time and place. If you’re honest with your kids, they’ll be honest with you.

And, speaking of honesty, we come to the third truth: “You hate and fear people different from yourself and you want us to hate and fear them, too, so you’ll feel safer.” The ground-level, organized book banners are not interested in banning books. They are interested in banning people who frighten them. And, in addition to the obviousness of this statement, there is a subtle aspect. Look at the authors of the books they want banned. Yes, yes, many of the authors are LGBTQ+ folks, so, as I said, it’s obvious they want those people banned. But, if you do a little digging, you’re going to find that black authors and Jewish authors are over-represented in the author lists that they make. And a great many of the comics they want banned are manga, Japanese comics. We’re just back to the same, old hateful anti-black, anti-Asian, anti-Semitic, white supremacy lies and fear-mongering. And this is one of the reason that anti-intellectualism, anti-public education, anti-free speech, et cetera, just won’t go away. We can’t root out the fear of the other that governs the thinking of too many Americans.

And the fourth truth: “The people at the top of your organization and the people that fund you, don’t give a good goddamn about the issues that drive you; they just want you driven.” The leaders on the right just want to create division by fanning the flames of cultural issues, any of them. And those of us on the progressive side just can’t help but take the bait. And so there are shouting matches at city board meetings and altercations at school board meetings that result in arrests. And the positions of the voters become ossified. And the leaders on the right then do a lot of pointing and claiming justification for the hatred they are attempting to inculcate in the populace.

If you read this expecting arguments against book banning, I’m sorry. Book banning, protesting against gay marriage, eliminating diversity, equity, and inclusion offices are all a part of the same cloth. On the left, we make arguments based on our beliefs in the decency of people, their ability to reason, and the Constitution of the United States. On the right, manipulators of voters and their duped supporters make arguments based on fear, which denies reason. We can’t change their minds on the details until we can change their minds on the larger issues, and that will still be a long time a’comin’.