Books Aren’t Killing Our Children
Why are we banning books rather than banning guns?
Some things are so painfully ridiculous they’re ironically funny
I just finished watching Wanda Sykes’ new Netflix comedy special, “I’m an Entertainer.”
While I enjoyed the entire special, one of my favorite lines is:
Until a drag queen walks into a school and beats eight kids to death with a copy of ‘To Kill A Mockingbird,’ I think you’re focusing on the wrong shit.
That line humorously expressed the anger I had been feeling in response to the banning of one of the most powerfully moving and inspiring poems I have heard or read in quite some time. After her poem, “The Hill We Climb,” was placed on a restricted list at a South Florida elementary school, National Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman posted the following words on Twitter:
Gorman’s poem (along with several books) was challenged by a parent of two students at Bob Graham Education Center in Miami Lakes, FL. The parent responsible for banning the poem appears to have attended Proud Boys rallies and has previously posted antisemitic memes online.
Florida Governor (and Republican Presidential nominee) Ron DeSantis apparently supports the woman calling for a ban on Gorman’s poem. This is not surprising considering that DeSantis has promoted a series of measures that have led to an upswing in banned or restricted books — not just in Florida schools but in an increasing number of other conservative states.
Gorman went on to say, “I’m gutted… Robbing children of the chance to find their voices in literature is a violation of their right to free thought and free speech.”
Amanda Gorman wrote the poem for President Joe Biden’s inauguration. If you don’t remember the poem’s content or didn’t hear her deliver it, I invite you to listen to it here. While listening to it, ask yourself if schoolchildren need to be protected from this poem as much as they need to be protected from assault weapons.
A rise in book bans
While book bans are not new, they are happening much more frequently, especially in Florida. DeSantis, who has entered the 2024 presidential race, has leaned heavily into cultural divides on race, sexual orientation, and gender as he gains support from conservative voters who decide Republican primary elections.
It is often asserted that arguments favoring gun bans (especially when made after mass shootings) are founded on “emotional appeals” rather than data. Rather than examining the merit of various arguments regarding gun use in America, I will simply state the obvious: “Guns have killed far more schoolchildren in America than books and poems ever have or ever will.”
While people have used AR-15s to wound and kill thousands of schoolchildren in America, no one has ever used a book to kill a schoolchild. Book bans are based on NOTHING but emotional appeals. Nevertheless, while there is absolutely no data supporting any of the arguments made for banning books, legislation has been passed across the USA banning books.
A report released in September 2022 by PEN America (a nonprofit organization that works to defend and celebrate free expression in the United States and worldwide) identified school districts in thirty-two states issuing more than 2,500 book bans during the 2021–2022 school year. Texas led the nation with 801, followed by Florida (566) and Pennsylvania (457).
Once figures for the calendar year 2022 are released, the American Library Association expects “attempts to ban or restrict library resources in schools, universities, and public libraries” to break the record set in 2021.
The fear of books versus the fear of guns
In a matter of months, countless states have passed legislation banning the teaching of so-called “divisive” curricula with no evidence that the banned material causes harm to children. In contrast, decades of efforts to ban the selling of assault weapons that have killed hundreds of thousands of people, many of them school children, have produced no current assault weapons bans.
While President Joe Biden signed into law what has been identified by some as “the most sweeping legislation aimed at preventing gun violence in 30 years”, that legislation stopped short of his call for Congress to ban assault weapons and to require background checks for all gun purchases, measures that are widely opposed by Republicans in Congress.
As of May 8, 2023, there have been more than 200 mass shootings in America. This is more than one mass shooting per day, which is a record pace.
While these statistics are alarming, mass shootings represent only a tiny fraction of the gun violence in America. According to the Gun Violence Archive, there have been almost 40,000 deaths and nearly 70,000 injuries related to gun violence this year. Many of those killed and injured have been school-aged children, yet many Americans are more concerned with banning books and poems than guns.
The argument often given for banning books is that book bans protect “the innocence of children.” According to Keith Flaugh, one of the founders of Florida Citizens Alliance, a conservative group focused on education,
This is not about banning books; it’s about protecting the innocence of our children… and letting the parents decide what the child gets rather than having government schools indoctrinate our kids.
While book ban advocates like Flaugh often moan about “indoctrination,” book bans seek to do nothing more than promote indoctrination. In simple terms, indoctrination consists of teaching someone to fully accept a particular group’s ideas, opinions, and beliefs and not consider other ideas, opinions, and beliefs.
Book bans are about preventing exposure to ideas, opinions, and beliefs. They’re about control. They’re about promoting indoctrination.
While I firmly believe the opposition to gun bans is driven primarily by a “profits over people” mentality, I also think the reason it’s easier to pass book bans than gun bans is that many Americans are more afraid of ideas that threaten their dominance, power, and sense of superiority than they are of weapons that threaten lives. They are more fearful of children learning than children being shot and killed.
Protection for whom and from what
While book bans are about protection, they’re not about protecting children. Instead, they are about protecting and promoting a dominant narrative and silencing all alternatives.
In her Twitter response, Amanda Gorman stated,
And let’s be clear: most of the forbidden works are by authors who have struggled for generations to get on the bookshelves. The majority of these censored works are by queer and non-white voices.
Book bans are about preserving and protecting dominance and control rather than protecting the innocence of children. Exposing children to gender identity issues does not put them at risk.
Banning LGBTQIA+-themed books such as My Fairy Godmother is a Drag Queen and Trans Teen Survival Guide from school libraries does not prevent indoctrination. Instead, it promotes indoctrination by exclusively teaching cisgender hetero-normative views and avoiding exposure to concepts like gender fluidity.
Next to gender and sexuality, books dealing with race or racism are the most frequently targeted for banning. Contemporary titles such as The 1619 Project by Nikole Hannah-Jones and Stamped by Ibram X. Kendi have been banned because they portray America’s history of racism in ways that some white people find troubling.
According to the American Library Association, books most frequently targeted for banning have been by or about Black or LGBTQIA+ people. Books by Black authors are being disproportionately banned at alarming rates.
While advocates of book bans claim to be protecting children from “indoctrination,” banning books primarily by or about Black and LGBTQIA+ people promotes indoctrination. Ibram X Kendi articulates it best:
It’s so striking that when a book challenges notions of Black inferiority, it’s considered indoctrination. But then, when a book says nothing about Black people or reinforces notions of Black inferiority, it’s considered education.
Why is promoting black inferiority considered education and challenging white superiority considered indoctrination? Furthermore, if book bans are not protecting children, then who’s actually being protected, and from what?
A training video designed to help Florida teachers identify books to ban reveals that book banning is about promoting and protecting white hetero-normative innocence.
The training instructs media specialists to ban all materials suggesting that people are inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive; that anyone bears responsibility for past actions of their race or sex; or that anyone should feel “guilt, anguish, or other forms of psychological distress” related to race or gender.
This guidance is clearly intended to protect cisgender hetero-normative white people from feeling “guilt, anguish, or other forms of psychological distress.” Schools have never cared that school curricula in America make black people, women, or members of the LGBTQIA+ community feel “guilt, anguish, or other forms of psychological distress” because of their race, sex, or sexual orientation.
Black school children have consistently been taught that white people have accomplished every outstanding achievement globally. Black children are taught that black people have contributed virtually nothing to world civilization.
Public school curricula rarely teach anything about the accomplishments of black people. Traditional school curricula make it extremely difficult for black children not to feel guilt, anguish, or psychological distress because of their race.
Black and LGBTQIA+ children rarely see themselves positively presented in public school curricula. LGBTQIA+ children see themselves presented as “deviants,” while Black children see themselves presented as former “slaves” and/or people needing the help of benevolent white people. Neither are depicted as moral agents making significant contributions to society.
I live in Iowa, where former Iowa Senator Steve King publicly declared during a Republican National Convention that white Euro-American Christians are the ONLY people who have made significant contributions to world civilization.
Also, in Iowa, Governor Kim Reynolds has recently signed a sweeping education law banning books containing anything addressing gender identity or sexual orientation. Reynolds previously passed legislation prohibiting the teaching of “divisive concepts,” including that the United States or Iowa are (or ever were) fundamentally or systematically racist. Not surprisingly, Reynolds is a rising star in the Republican party.
It’s time to get serious about protecting schoolchildren
While mass shootings continue to generate arguments regarding gun control, gun violence and mass shootings continue to happen daily in America because people have easy access to guns.
While opponents of gun legislation constantly point to “mental health” as the reason for gun violence in America, a 2020 report from the Association of American Medical Colleges shows that mental health is not the primary cause of gun violence in America. According to the data, if serious mental illnesses suddenly disappeared, violence would decrease by only about 4%. More than 90% of violent incidents, including homicides, would still occur.
The report states that more American children and young adults died from firearm injuries in 2020 than from any other cause, surpassing car accidents as the leading cause of death for American children.
For much of America’s history, disease was the number 1 killer of children. Then, America became the land of the automobile, and by the 1960s, motor vehicle crashes were the most common way for children to die.
We live in an era of easy gun access, with more guns than people in the United States. If Americans are serious about protecting children, banning books is not the answer.
While American children are dying from gun violence at a staggering rate, politicians seem more concerned with protecting the gun industry than with protecting children.
Politicians continue to ignore people who are begging for gun control. They claim that they are protecting the right to bear arms. Sensible gun control legislation, however, is not about abolishing the so-called right to bear arms; it’s about trying to stop the increasing gun violence perpetrated against innocent men, women, and children in America.
In a fiery exchange with fellow Republican lawmakers after the Nashville school shooting, Democratic Rep. Jared Moskowitz said,
You know why you don’t hunt deer with an AR-15? Because there’s nothing left. And there’s nothing left of these kids when people go into school and murder them while they’re trying to read. You guys are worried about banning books? Dead kids can’t read.
Similarly, Rep. Maxwell Frost of Florida railed against colleagues prioritizing book bans over gun safety. From the House floor, Frost declared:
I rise today because I am furious. Angry that three kids died today in Nashville, Tennessee. Angry that hundreds of parents had to cry their eyes out today, not knowing if their child would come home from school. And angry that we have to live day after day when we turn on the news to see rampant gun violence claiming life after life. And all of this is because politicians in this chamber that have been bought and paid for by the NRA, that put profits over people, over human lives. Cowards who wasted our time last week passing a ‘parental bill of rights,’ not giving a damn about the rights of children to be able to go to their classroom without the fear of being gunned down due to senseless gun violence.
The statistics of mass shootings in the United States are horrific. However, rather than taking steps to make our country safe from violence, federal and state politicians are trying to ban books and drag shows that will expose their children to a lifestyle different than their own.
Book ban advocates appear more concerned with “protecting” children from views different than their own than they are with protecting them from gun violence. They seem more afraid of children learning than of being shot and killed.
Not only are they ignoring the safety of children, but they are acting like being gay, trans, or anything other than cisgender and hetero-normative is a crime.
While book-ban advocates fret and moan over the alleged damage done to students’ minds by learning that racism is real and that LGBTQIA+ people exist, it is painfully apparent that protecting young people from the real danger of gun violence is not a priority.
I conclude with the most appropriate response I can think of for everyone promoting book bans rather than gun bans:
“You’re focusing on the wrong shit!”
If you liked this article, check out “There is No ‘All Lives’ Without ‘Black Lives’, which is one of my favorite articles I’ve written.
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