![]() Justice said Moms for Liberty isn’t against teaching slavery’s impact on American history but disagrees with how many of the narratives are presented. “Some laws do use the phrase ‘critical race theory.’ And some laws even go so far as to ban schools from discussing, using or reading the 1619 Project,” she said. With this level of control, school districts can censor books for any number of reasons they deem fit, Corn-Revere said.Īhead of this school year, 18 states have laws that ban the “consideration of divisive concepts” in schools - language, Caldwell-Stone said, that is most often used when describing race and gender. State governments have the authority to create curricula (including book choices) through their departments of education and local schoolboards that give them the ability to dictate what books are and aren’t taught and stocked in libraries.īecause states have this authority over school jurisdiction, “there’s less room for a First Amendment argument” to counter book bans. Robert Corn-Revere, a lawyer who specializes in First Amendment rights, said, “Speech is presumptively protected by the Constitution, and it is the government’s burden to prove in a series of well-defined and narrow exceptions when it isn’t protected.”īut First Amendment discussions get murkier when it comes to schools and school districts, said Corn-Revere, who is with the firm Davis Wright Tremaine. “The least interesting thing about a child should be their sexual orientation.” The First Amendment doesn’t always apply when it comes to banning books in schools “ is pseudoscientific nonsense in my opinion,” Justice said, going on to say that schools are more focused in turning students into “social justice warriors” than they are about raising literacy rates. She said the graphic novel - a coming-of-age memoir that explores the gender binary and includes drawings of oral sex - is inappropriate for schools, as is the topic itself. “I’ve yet to meet a person who, once they see it, believes ‘Gender Queer’ belongs in a classroom,” Justice said. According to the ALA, 39 percent of book challenges in 2021 were introduced by parents. In most cases, she said, these books should be inaccessible to students until they are out of high school and offer warning labels and age recommendations. Moms for Liberty, which claims to have over 100,000 members across 38 states, says removing titles from school libraries and classrooms protects childhood innocence,” Tiffany Justice, the organization’s co-founder, told Grid. Groups such as Moms for Liberty - an organization “dedicated to fighting for the survival of America” and advocating for “parental rights at all levels of government,” including the right to control what their kids read in school - resist the word ‘ban.’ who support banning books most often cite sexually explicit content (the most common complaint against books with LGBTQ relationships or depictions), offensive language and critical race theory as reasons to ban them. The argument for banning certain booksĪccording to Caldwell-Stone’s analyses, those in the U.S. Writers from around the world, many that are part of marginalized communities and from countries with fewer protections than the U.S., often face jail sentences and legal action cases, Karlekar said. it’s taking place on an international scale as well, said Karin Deutsch Karlekar, director of PEN America’s Free Expression at Risk Programs. And five of the top 10 were challenged specifically because of their LGBTQ content.įrom a broader perspective, of the 1,000-plus books banned from July 2021 to March 2022, 41 percent had main characters of color, 22 percent directly addressed race and racism, and 33 percent directly included LGBTQ themes and characters. Kendi, Jason Reynolds and Angie Thomas, according to the ALA. Among the 10 most-challenged titles of 2021 were those from prominent Black writers Ibram X.
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