Analysis Example: Banning Books or Banning People?
This is a short essay that I wrote about book bans. It's not perfect — it only loosely engages the concepts from the readings from class, doesn't build very rigorously on primary sources about the book challenge laws in Florida, and could probably more elegantly integrate my own lived experience in relation to book — but it's pretty good. I'd probably give it a 3.7. I think if I'd spent more time iterating on it by getting feedback from others and doing more research on the details of the laws in Florida.
Banning Books or Banning People?
Amy J. Ko
Over the past year, Florida school districts have banned more than 300 books from its schools (NBC News Links to an external site.) The books banned are primarily those that address youth experiences with race, gender non-conformity, and religions other than Christianity.
At some level, this kind of censorship is not new. Countries throughout history have always censored knowledge. Authoritarian governments censor books in order to control the public, shaping what they know and what they believe. Some democratic governments, like Germany, censor books like Mein Kampf, due their role in fomenting genocide and war. And the United States has had a long tradition of empowering local communities to decide for themselves what is in their school libraries and what is not. “Banning”, therefore, has a long history, sometimes driven by goals of oppression and sometimes driven by goals of public safety. Whether bans are good are bad is a complicated question; what we can say, is that they are a demonstration of the power of information (Foundations of Information, Chapter 1 Links to an external site.).
What is different, especially for me personally, is Florida citizen’s goals in these bans. The citizens and organizations who have led these book bans have been quite clear: their goal is not merely to remove information from school libraries, or to even to prevent students from developing knowledge about the topics of gender and race in these books. Their goal is to ensure that trans and gender non-conforming people are erased from public awareness, that people of color and their experiences are made invisible, and by extension, that all of these intersecting groups do not exist at all. For example, Brian Camenker, Executive Director of MassResistance, a “pro-family” group that Southern Poverty Law Center has described as a hate group, said in an interview:
“The LGBT issues, this is not necessarily a healthy behavior for libraries to be promoting on kids. And, and all of them, every one that I see involves sexuality,” he said. “The question isn’t really, who would want to ban these books, but the question is, who would want them?”” (Education Week Links to an external site.). Links to an external site.
What these groups have done is weaponize the public process for library censorship against me, my trans community, and the trans youth who already struggle to feel safe in a transphobic world, especially those of color. I’ve already been disinvited from school visits in Florida. I’ve been excluded from conferences. My writings have been banned from college classrooms. These bans are just one tool that Christian nationalists are using to try to mandate that the world live within their values and self-imposed limits.
Why is this weaponization possible? It comes down to how library censorship systems work in Florida, and how they interact with state law. Let’s consider, Tallahassee school districts, for example. All a parent needs to do is submit a challenge to the local school board and then the school board is obligated to review the challenge. Challenges must be grounded in things like violations of state law, or also local customs and norms around “decency”. In Florida, where talking about sex, gender, and race in school is now illegal, the Tallahassee school boards had multiple reasons why they felt obligated to ban the books — not only were they afraid that the books violated new state laws, but also that the broader public felt the books put children in “danger”. All it takes, then is for one concerned citizen to submit a challenge, and for a school board to fear violating state law, for a book to be banned.
This weaponization is one example of a broader aspect of information systems like libraries and law: policies, processes, and rules are often written with some prosocial goal in mind, like empowering the public or protecting a marginalized group. But people are creative, and often find ways of using policy and processes to do the opposite. These book bans, and the new legal structures that enable them, are exactly what is happening here: a small group of people from a dominant group, exploiting laws, processes, and information systems to reinforce their dominance.
It’s not immediately obvious what to do about these bans. Because as much as these bans are a byproduct of who has taken power, they are also just a symptom of a deeper vision for the United States: one in which everyone must be Christian, everyone must conform to particular Christian ideals of what it means to live a good life, and than anyone who deviates shall be shamed and erased from public live. We can stop book bans, and we can repeal laws, but what will remain is a country full of people who indicate no desire to understand and affirm the many beautiful ways of being human. Perhaps then, that is the appropriate response: to show, unapologetically, that we are beautiful, that we are not ashamed of ourselves, and that the immense power of that love and respect for our differences will always win.