Banning Diverse Books is a Denial of Reality

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February 27, 2022

“‘Diversity’ should just be called ‘reality.’ Your books, your TV shows, your movies, your articles, your curricula, need to reflect reality.”
—Tananarive Due, author and American Book Award winner

Book banning is nothing new. It’s been happening in the United States since we were just a few colonies under the Crown. And just like now, back in the mid-1600s when the first known book was banned in the colonies, it was to censor countering opinions that made some uncomfortable or questioned their views.

However, in recent months, with the growing rise of the “parental rights” movement endangering the educational system and our students, challenges to books in school libraries are becoming unusually rampant. They claim it is all in the name of protecting the innocence of children or to prevent them from obtaining so-called “pornographic” material. Yet when you look at the list of books being challenged there is an obvious recurring theme. It’s not that the books are genuinely pornographic or vile in other forms. No, because if it were, there would be so many other books on those lists, including the Bible, but of course that isn’t the case.

Instead, what is happening is that parents and elected officials alike are taking it upon themselves to object to books that offend their own personal religious viewpoints and overt or latent racism. They are using terms such as “pornographic” and “sexual” and “racist,” or that they may make white students “uncomfortable” in order to justify removing books from school libraries and selfishly deny marginalized teens the representation they deserve. In some of the most absurd claims, objectors insist that books on systematic racism, police brutality, or the struggles POC individuals face are somehow in themselves racist. They claim that books with positive representations of LGBTQIA+ individuals sexualize their children or that it’s somehow going to cause their child to become gay. However, none of these allegations are supported by science or common sense. Rather, they all have the underlying message to marginalized people that they are somehow less than or bad.

The simple notion that a book is sexual in nature for no other reason than it positively portrays LGBTQIA+ characters—note, in the same way other books portray heterosexual characters without challenge—is outright preposterous and offensive. It’s as if the mere existence of a portion of the population is somehow harmful, when it’s that very assertion that’s harmful. The same goes for books by and about people of color. It’s not about protecting children, it’s about narrowing the scope of what children have access to read to control a narrative. It’s about control, it’s about refusing to progress and put outdated and harmful notions in the past where they belong, and it’s a refusal to accept that while the past can hurt, our system and history is flawed.

However, more important is that these self-righteous crusades to ban books are vastly detrimental to the well-being of young lives. The following books have been banned despite their many accolades: The Bluest Eye by Nobel Prize winning author Toni Morrison; Heather Has Two Mommies by Lesléa Newman, which was published over thirty years ago; bestselling book Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe; Amazon Teacher’s Pick They Both Die at the End by Adam Silvera; and New York Library and Chicago Library Best Book of 2020 All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M. Johnson. When books like these are taken off the shelf, it removes a child’s ability to see themselves in a story like so many others can, or to understand themselves more fully. The absence of these books tells a child that they are unnatural, second-class, and that somehow they are less than their peers. It also fails non-marginalized communities by allowing old stereotypes and bigoted thinking to persist and embolden bullies, promote racism, and foster homophobia. And worse, it increases the chances of youth taking their own lives because it takes away a rare affirming space, especially in school, which studies have shown decrease the chances of an LGBTQIA+ person attempting suicide simply by providing a place or a resource that shows them how loved and natural they are.

Yet, there are so many people who cannot understand the importance of representation in the media, including these books. They think it doesn’t matter, that marginalized communities are just being whiny or too needy, that they should just settle for the overtly cis straight and white media they’ve been bombarded with all their lives. And most of the time this comes from cis straight and white individuals, the same people who dominate most stories and have never had to struggle for their right to exist or to be heard (and no, Christians in America are not being persecuted, that’s imaginary at best). Unlike marginalized communities, nearly every story is about them, while POC and LGBTQIA+ people have to search and scour for books and movies that they can see themselves in.

As author, and American Book Award winner, Tananarive Due said, “Your books, your TV shows, your movies, your articles, your curricula, need to reflect reality.” However, book banning is a fear of diversity, which is a denial of reality. It’s one of those things that says a lot to us without ever having to say a thing. The sheer absence of diversity says plenty, and then the outcry against what little exists as if it’s horrid to even be there, finishes the blow.

I say all of that, and I know it was a lot, to say book banning isn’t the answer, and that it’s damning and harmful to our youth. In a time when teens need to be loved and their identity reinforced, we are telling them that anyone who doesn’t fit into the pre-approved categories of being cisgender and white is second-class. It’s disgusting and it has to stop, if for nothing else than for the 40% of LGBTQIA+ teens who have seriously considered suicide. Their lives are worth more than this unfounded debate.

So with that, increase your empathy and grow your knowledge by reading a banned book.

Jordon Greene, Publisher & CEO

Originally published at www.JordonGreene.com/media/36