20 Feb 2022 9:29 pm
excerpts from: Banning books definitely doesn’t count as cancel culture and I don’t know why you’d say it does | The Independent
Percolating around all of this destruction of our forests in the name of inflated egos is the current cause du jour of book banning among concerned parents and hysterical talk show screamers. These folks, who politically lean heavily to the right of right, will argue with a straight face that this form of censorship is not to be confused with “cancel culture,” you know, when one of their own gets banned from Twitter or YouTube for claiming that a butterfly sanctuary in Texas is, in fact, a center of human trafficking.
No, tossing books out of public libraries is definitely not cancel culture. In Texas (it’s always Texas, isn’t it?) the obviously well-read Republican State Representative Matt Krause has compiled a list of 850 books that he wants school districts to identify, and then for them to reveal how much they paid for these corruptive treatises.
But, wait, there’s more! Krause wants school districts to ferret out “material that might make students feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress because of their race or sex or convey that a student, by virtue of their race or sex, is inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously.” Among the 850 books are “What is the Black Lives Matter Movement?”, “Black Lives Matter: from Hashtag to the Streets,” “Race and Policing in Modern America,” “A Kids’ Book about Racism,” “The Black Power Movement and Civil Unrest” and, to perhaps best sum up his biases in one 268-page volume, “Things that Make White People Uncomfortable.” Hmm, do I sense a pattern here? ... Elsewhere, a Tennessee pastor led a literal book-burning event on Wednesday night.
Books contain ideas. Ideas cannot be erased. The violent history of American race relations, the history of this nation’s genocide of Indigenous peoples, the acceptance of LGBTQ+ culture and rights, and the pushback against police brutality need to be seen in the full light of day.
Percolating around all of this destruction of our forests in the name of inflated egos is the current cause du jour of book banning among concerned parents and hysterical talk show screamers. These folks, who politically lean heavily to the right of right, will argue with a straight face that this form of censorship is not to be confused with “cancel culture,” you know, when one of their own gets banned from Twitter or YouTube for claiming that a butterfly sanctuary in Texas is, in fact, a center of human trafficking.
No, tossing books out of public libraries is definitely not cancel culture. In Texas (it’s always Texas, isn’t it?) the obviously well-read Republican State Representative Matt Krause has compiled a list of 850 books that he wants school districts to identify, and then for them to reveal how much they paid for these corruptive treatises.
But, wait, there’s more! Krause wants school districts to ferret out “material that might make students feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress because of their race or sex or convey that a student, by virtue of their race or sex, is inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously.” Among the 850 books are “What is the Black Lives Matter Movement?”, “Black Lives Matter: from Hashtag to the Streets,” “Race and Policing in Modern America,” “A Kids’ Book about Racism,” “The Black Power Movement and Civil Unrest” and, to perhaps best sum up his biases in one 268-page volume, “Things that Make White People Uncomfortable.” Hmm, do I sense a pattern here? ... Elsewhere, a Tennessee pastor led a literal book-burning event on Wednesday night.
Books contain ideas. Ideas cannot be erased. The violent history of American race relations, the history of this nation’s genocide of Indigenous peoples, the acceptance of LGBTQ+ culture and rights, and the pushback against police brutality need to be seen in the full light of day.