*ATTENTION: The following podcast deals with topics including sexism, racism, religion, politics, gender and questions of banning and challenging books. Listeners are advised to use discretion* The opinions of the panel are not necessarily those of Randolph County Public Libraries or Randolph County Government. Banning books doesn't make sense. It takes away access to information that—even if we don't agree with it—stops a conversation rather than attempting to promote a discussion. While it is okay for parents to forbid their children to read certain books, it is never okay for groups, religious or political or school boards to prevent whole swaths of people from reading a book because the contents of that book might be offensive. In this episode, Sam, Savvy, Lexi and Dave take on the question of banning and challenging books, discuss their favorite books that draw the ire of the groups mentioned above and delve a little deeper into the question of why librarians must be forever vigilant against the impulse to ban in our society.
So, the book To Kill a Mockingbird describes issues of alleged rape, drunkenness, bigotry and even lynching. Despite the overarching tale of a world of friendship, familial respect, growing up and even racism from the view of a very small girl, this book has been challenged and banned countless times and retains its annual title of being one of the ten most banned books of all time. Anyone having read this book might sympathize with complaints about the language or subject matter, and yet would not decide to ban it. I.E. to remove it from the view of other readers. We hope.
In fact the greatest issue that exists with banning books (or, attempting to ban them) is the misguided assumption that any of us has the right to decide what can be read by others. If you don’t like a book’s contents, don’t read it. If you don’t want your children to have access to a book, tell them not to read it. Trying to get the local school board to remove the book from the school library, or trying to get the town or county council to remove a book from public libraries because of a complaint is the ethical equivalent of setting up a censor who can decide what all of us can and cannot read. We might expect there to be such a censor in a theocracy or part of the structure of a dystopian novel’s tyrannical regime, but certainly not in America in modern times.
And yet, thousands of books are challenged yearly and have been banned or have had bans attempted on them. Today, we will discuss just a handful of our favorites and we will discuss the precedent of trying to have books banned and we’ll show that in most cases, the wisdom of the American Library Association and librarians everywhere is to protect readers from bans and to make sure that all books are accessible at all times.
“The right of others to free expression is part of my own [right]. If someone’s voice is silenced, then I am deprived of the right to hear and learn. Moreover, I have not met nor heard of anybody I would trust with the job of deciding in advance what it might be permissible for me or anyone else to say or read. That freedom of expression consists of being able to tell people what they may not wish to hear and that it must extend, above all, to those who think differently is, to me, self-evident. The urge to shut out bad news or unwelcome opinions [or books] will always be a very strong one, which is why the battle to reaffirm freedom of speech needs to be refought in every generation.” -Christopher Hitchens.
If you want to know more about book banning across our nation, the American Library Association keeps detailed archives on current and past bans and challenges, which books are most likely to be banned and those that draw bans every year. We highly recommend you take some time and surf those pages here.
As always, if you have comments or questions about this or any episode, please do drop us a line at teenzone201@gmail.com
If there’s a topic you want us to cover, if you are interested in being a guest borrower or if you want to just say hello, send us an email and we’ll consider your request. Please keep your comments polite.
We look forward to having you back with us in October for Dave's 'deep dive' discussion with Jeremy Skidmore of RhinoLeap Productions and we thank you, our dear borrowers, for sharing this time with us. Tell your friends!