Since September 2021, groups of Texas parents and politicians have pushed for the ban of hundreds of books from school libraries. The majority of such titles are those that deal with race, gender and sexual orientation.
Last October, Texas State Representative Matt Krause urged Texas School Districts to investigate a list of 850 books with 97 of the first 100 titles being written by “women, people of color or LGBTQ authors,” according to The Dallas Morning News.
At the local scale, parents in Eanes Independent School District, Austin, requested four books discussing racism to be replaced with copies of the Bible.
Similarly, novels that depict coming-of-age stories of queer youth, including “Jack of Hearts” and “All Boys Aren’t Blue,” have been removed from Katy Independent School District in Texas, following pressure from parents and politicians who claim that these books are pornographic.
Zachary Scalzo, adjunct professor in the Department of Humanities and Politics at NSU said, “There is a trend to conflate depictions of non-straight sexual orientations as pornographic.”
Unlike pornography, sexual content in these books serve the purpose of character development or addressing topics such as abuse.
Regardless of this distinction, Texas Governor Greg Abbott has called for criminal charges against school staff members who provide children with young adult novels that may be accused of being pornographic. Fear of prosecution has led many school librarians to remove books from shelves even before complaints are made.
Gabriela Mendez, an associate professor in the Fischler College of Education and Criminal Justice at NSU suggested that this issue is part of a larger problem across the nation, citing Texas’ ‘Critical Race Theory Law and Florida’s Don’t Say Gay Bill.
“It’s not an isolated event, these books being forbidden. It’s in the context of political division in which some groups want to silence others,” said Mendez.
The national scale of this issue is displayed in how, late last year, Oklahoma’s state senate introduced a bill to prohibit books on sexual or gender identity from school libraries, and in January 2021, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Holocaust novel “Maus” was removed from schools in McMinn County, Tennessee.
A consequence of gatekeeping the literature available to students is that it may harm children’s ability to be inclusive of people from different backgrounds or to even feel safe in their own identity.
“Banning these books… to minimize the representation and discussion of non-heterosexual sexual orientation and diverse gender identities, or non-white constructions of race, means that the information that is left is severely limited and is passed off as representative,” said Scalzo.
Mendez questioned whether it was justified to exclude certain groups of people from the literature provided to students.
“We have students who have two moms, or two dads and they never see themselves in books. Or we have kids who are transitioning. How many books do we have about that? If we don’t have those books, who is excluded? What makes us think that some people are better than others and that we can exclude?” said Mendez.
Scalzo contended that this censorship will harm the ability of these youth to become effective and compassionate voters and members of society.
Censoring school libraries could pilfer the ability of children in marginalized communities to be included and develop their sense of self.
“We need to have books that are like mirrors that allow us to see ourselves… Forbidding these books is a way of making sure that many kids do not have the opportunity to see themselves,” said Mendez.
