When PEN America released its latest national report on book banning, the state with the worst record was Florida. If you hear any bragging about test scores in Florida, think twice. Educated people typically don’t fear books; uneducated people do.
Chris Tomlinson, columnist for The Houston Chronicle, reports that book banning is getting more absurd in Texas. Why do school board members think they can censor ideas and images that are widely available on the Internet? At the same time, the state has barred public universities from administering programs that promote “diversity, equity, and inclusion.”
Tomlinson writes:
The Fort Bend Independent School District superintendent would have to ban department store catalogs and National Geographic magazines if the school board goes through with its latest book ban measure.
My colleague Elizabeth Sander reports that school trustees debated giving the superintendent sole authority over library books and textbooks, mandating that none “stimulate sexual desire” among students.
Have none of them encountered an adolescent? The only books left would center on mathematics; even then, geometry would be iffy.
Fort Bend ISD is not the only public school system in which activists have seized control. Parents are challenging books at Lake Travis ISD, and a citizen panel will review books at Montgomery County public libraries, not librarians.
Nationwide, PEN America, a nonprofit that advocates for free expression, this week reported more than 4,000 instances of book banning during the first half of the current school year, more than in the entire previous 2022-23 school year.
Conservative book banners continue to shock and dismay with their absurdity, anti-intellectualism and renunciation of reality. Before there was online porn and young adult books about LGBTQ love, there was Sears Roebuck selling lingerie and National Geographic photographing semi-nude indigenous women.
Book bans don’t stop at nudity and sexuality; extremists are also targeting ideas they don’t like. For example, teachers may not discuss anything that might make a child uncomfortable lest they face a penalty under state law.
If my fourth grade teacher were subject to the same law, she could have lost her job for telling me enslavers brutalized the African Americans they held in bondage, contradicting my grandfather, who taught me our ancestors were “good slaveholders.”
Lately, it seems any state employee who acknowledges racism in our nation’s history or our present will lose their jobs. The University of Texas is cleaning house, firing dozens of educators dedicated to helping people from disadvantaged communities succeed in higher education.
UT-Austin President Jay Hartzell says the ideological purge is necessary to protect the long-term outlook of the institution. His shameful cowardice in the face of fascist bullies will forever mark him as a collaborator, not a hero.
Free speech and decades of progress toward a more honest assessment of who we are and where we come from are under attack. The wannabe oppressors are organized and winning, and yet, too many of us still don’t take the threat to our liberty seriously.