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Censure the Censors [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-01-07
This title is kind of a play on words. That title was used for a paper written for a college English class. I didn’t keep the paper but remember the reason it was written was because it is worthwhile to analyze the reasons put forth in efforts to ban books. Most of the time those seeking to ban books should be ignored.
A censor is the person who scrutinizes something for offensive or inappropriate content or for security threats. Some people are hired to act as censors but there are others who take it upon themselves to decide what they think should be kept out of print, out of libraries and out of schools. There are very vocal people are looking to set themselves up as censors. They wish to act as judge and jury in deciding what books our young people (or sometimes anyone) are allowed to see.
Usually, the general public decides what books are acceptable. A person won’t buy a book or check one out of the library if it is one they don’t like. However, there have been many books that people say should be kept out of the public’s sight.
I recall hearing that someone wanted the popular children’s book, “Sylvester and the Magic Pebble” be removed from their school’s library. The book received the Caldecott Medal and is considered a classic by many people. In the book, Sylvester and his parents are donkeys. When Sylvester can’t be found, his parents look all over and ask neighbors if they’d seen him. Those neighbors are various barnyard animals like horses, dogs, cats, chickens, and such. The book sparked some controversy for its portrayal of the police as pigs. As a result, it was not stocked by public schools and libraries in parts of the United States.
Some people have called for the Bible to be censored because of the adultery, killing, incest, and other things it describes. In fact, right now there is a school district that has gotten a request to ban the Bible from their school libraries. We have recently seen a spate of book banning. Most of the requests for banning have been from a small minority of people.
There was an analysis of book challenges filed in the 2021-2022 school year in 153 school districts. It found that the majority of the 1,000-plus book challenges were filed by just 11 people. Just a few banned books Each of these people brought 10 or more challenges against books in their school district. One man filed 92 challenges. All together, these serial filers constituted only 6% of all book challengers — but were responsible for 60% of all filings.
It looks like that despite all the coverage in the media about book banning, it is mostly favored by a few extremist cranks. I suspect that they are the type of people who yell at kids who happen to walk on their lawns and like to criticize people for the way they dress. Those kinds of people are better off being ignored and not be given the power to remove anything from our bookshelves, screens and other sources of distribution
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