10 ms·

1,626 Books Were Banned Across America Last Year We Reviewed All of Them

59 points by armanhq 3y ago

dshacker 3y ago
This is really interesting, I really like that the dataset is embedded in the page. Is there a general place where banned books are reported?
JumpCrisscross 3y ago
Book banning seems like a strange red line to have forgotten. If your kid is going to be corrupted by going into a library and finding a book that's naughtier than your taste, they're probably ahead of their similarly-corruptible peers who aren't in a library at all.
- peepeepoopoo9 3y ago
  [flagged]
- thfuran 3y ago
  I'm not in favor of banning books, but "it's not the worst thing that could possibly happen" isn't exactly a strong argument for supporting something.
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > "it's not the worst thing that could possibly happen" isn't exactly a strong argument for supporting something Point is if your kid has the initiative to go into a library and find a book, they're probably fine. If they're not, they're going to get far worse from the internet and their peers-the library isn't your problem. Raising them to believe libraries are unsafe is more likely to backfire in the specific aims you're pursuing. (Going out on a limb and assuming most of the people pursuing these book bans don't have kids in school and, if they do, they aren't in the top 90% of students checking out books from any library.)
- shakow 3y ago
  > Book banning seems like a strange red line to have forgotten Has book banning ever been a red line? Many Western countries, from Canada to France through US and New Zealand have banned many books for most of their existence.
  - krapp 3y ago
    Until relatively recently in the US, "banning books" was widely considered one of those morally reprehensible things that only authoritarian governments did, and people were outraged that the US did it at all. It is legitimately weird how quickly that seems to have changed within the culture in the light of the moral panic over transgender "groomers" and the antiwoke movement. That, and the sentiment that the government should regulate or nationalize social media, or even make it illegal... and half the country seems to be in a competition to see how fascist they can become before the Supreme Court actually calls them out. It's like someone flipped a switch and suddenly all this dystopian shit was just ok with everyone.
    - xyzzyz 3y ago
      > Until relatively recently in the US, "banning books" was widely considered one of those morally reprehensible things that only authoritarian governments did, and people were outraged that the US did it at all. This is why I loathe the “book banning” activists, because their entire goal is to confuse people by using deliberately misleading language. The fact of the matter is that nowhere in the US has any book been successfully banned by any government in recent memory, in the dystopian, authoritarian sense understanding of the term “book banning”. Activists simply decided to call removing books from school libraries “book banning” to deliberately induce misapprehension that this sort of dystopian, authoritarian shit is reality, when it simply is not the case.
      - krapp 3y ago
        Calls to remove books from libraries on the basis of ideology driven by a political party are a form of book banning, the distinction between it and a "ban by government" is one without a difference.
- burnished 3y ago
  Their findings are that the book bannings are really for the purpose of Virtue signal by people in positions of institutional power to voting-age parents interested in school choice, parental rights, and wedge social issues to the detriment of non-voting age students Reject and exclude topics that challenge a perceived status quo from the public discourse (e.g. non-heteronormativity, non-cis identity, non-traditional gender roles, and non-Judeo-Christian books are targeted and that Fortunately, book bans are widely unpopular amongst parents across the ideological spectrum. It would make sense though given that reading can be transformative for some people but realistically I think most folks are worried about everyday problems like teen pregnancy and substance abuse or getting into fights - and to your point if they are off reading unbearable moral philosophy in some library they aren't out screwing around.
pfannkuchen 3y ago
[flagged]
jiveturkey42 3y ago
"Banned in the United States" does not mean the same thing as "Removed from Middle School Libraries"
- arcticbull 3y ago
  Hm, seems pretty similar to me. Especially when the article itself identifies only 1.6% of the books as having a 17+ rating. [edit] Anyone who believes in freedom of expression and the first amendment should recognize this as a negative step, and a clear thin-edge issue. These are ideological decisions made by partisans with the goal being to shape the corpus of thinking of youth. "Will someone think of the children" is a well worn path. There's plenty of books about this kind of thing, like The Giver, but you know, it's probably on the list.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - didgetmaster 3y ago
    Hmmm...so it only counted 1.6% of the books as explicit because they had "publisher-provided" maturity ratings of 17+. I wonder how many books that had explicit material within them were not properly labeled as such by their publishers? This seems like a very subjective standard that would be very easy to manipulate.
    - JohnFen 3y ago
      I wonder what the people who want books removed from school libraries consider "explicit".
  - constantcrying 3y ago
    >These are ideological decisions made by partisans with the goal being to shape the corpus of thinking of youth. You support neo-nazi propaganda not being in school libraries, so certainly you too believe that it is the duty of school libraries to curate the content. It is just incredibly dishonest to pretend that you are upset at this for any reason other than that you want these particular books available to children, which is exactly as partisan as demanding their absence.
npstr 3y ago
> it’s important to note that they are to the end of positive social change The end does not justify the means. Name me one single objectively bad political movement which internally thought of themselves as bad or negative. There isn't one. They all claim and for the largest part of their membership believe to serve the greater good. Therefore I find this argument of the author extremely weak. Surely they can come up with some less naive arguments?
- femiagbabiaka 3y ago
  To move away from sophistry and towards some concrete understanding, which of the sample books they provided for that blurb would you say is "true negative"? Others which aren't explicitly highlighted would also be acceptable. - Enough! 20 Protesters Who Changed America - Gays and Mental Health: Fighting Depression, Saying No to Suicide - I am Martin Luther King, Jr. - Peaceful Fights for Equal Rights - Tomorrow Will Be Different: Love, Loss, and the Fight for Trans Equality
  - npstr 3y ago
    I did not communicate my point well enough. I'm sure a lot of these "bans" are not well justified, and good arguments can be found against them. Why use something weak like "we are the good guys and the ends justify the means"?
    - femiagbabiaka 3y ago
      I see, I misunderstood the point you were making, apologies. I agree, I think that's one of the weaker points of the article. The data itself makes a much stronger case.
  - paulddraper 3y ago
    [dead]
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 3y ago
version_five 3y ago
[flagged]
- doingmaths 3y ago
  Not sure why virtue signal is being used ironically? Every political and social group is capable of virtue signaling. Plenty of folks left, right, and center who Virtue Signal their beliefs. IMO, it's a useless term, since it's essentially saying, "someone did something they didn't genuine believe in", but there's little to no ability to demonstrate someone's actual intent. Call people hypocrites (if that matters from you) or unauthentic.
slackfan 3y ago
[flagged]
gmiller123456 3y ago
Sadly, the word "ban" has been used all too inapropriatley lately. And this website doesn't seem to help as nowhere did I see exactly what they meant by banned, who banned them, or exactly what the ban entails.
- femiagbabiaka 3y ago
  Banning, in this case, means removal from libraries. Sometimes it is by state order, sometimes it is via independent action taken by the school district (although that is usually also in an attempt to adhere with state board of education guidelines). The linked data source cited for this article provides ban classifications for each and every book they list as banned.
  - gmiller123456 3y ago
    Where did you see that? I saw where they explicitly state that is not what they mean: >Namely, they are not and have not been about the physical removal of a book from a shelf.
    - femiagbabiaka 3y ago
      It's in the linked dataset: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vRKM3peCW-NDebCq8KJ1UqdB5JahauG1lYzaqmiU89N9HuJs1fxWuVhf8Ed4hU9lNMLZu9AItmkcmyY/pub?output=xlsx https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vRKM3peCW-ND... They're not being literal in that comment, they're alluding to the fact that such broad bans, which even DeSantis has called overreach in some cases, are moreso about aligning to an ideological narrative than actually caring about which books are in school libraries. But the books are also being removed, from school libraries and from classroom libraries.
- hotpotamus 3y ago
  It is fascinating to watch the progress from "don't be hysterical, no one is going to ban books" to "we're offended that you're calling it a ban".
constantcrying 3y ago
>We Reviewed All of Them Am I blind? Where are the reviews? The website is also utterly broken on my device... What I always find interesting is what exactly "banned" means. Certainly there is no government which punishes distribution, printing or reading of those books.
- doingmaths 3y ago
  > Certainly there is no government which punishes distribution, printing or reading of those books. Yes, state and municipal level governments have banned books in the US? Here's a list of some example laws in, e.g., education: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Tj5WQVBmB6SQg-zP_M8uZsQQGH09TxmBY73v23zpyr0/edit#gid=267763711 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Tj5WQVBmB6SQg-zP_M8u...
  - constantcrying 3y ago
    >https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Tj5WQVBmB6SQg-zP_M8uZsQQGH09TxmBY73v23zpyr0/edit#gid=267763711 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Tj5WQVBmB6SQg-zP_M8u... Why are you posting google doc links? These things are made to track you. Do not ever click such a link or share it. Absolutely one of the worst ways to share information. In any case, when was the last time a book printer faced criminal charges for printing a book? A book reader for reading a book? A shop for selling a book?
    - doingmaths 3y ago
      > Why are you posting google doc links? Because that's the way the organization makes the information available. Is Google docs on topic? > In any case, when was the last time a book printer faced criminal charges for printing a book? A book reader for reading a book? A shop for selling a book? You forgot: "A book owner for owning a book." School librarians in the US face prison time for owning books in parts of the US. Has anyone actually been prosecuted for those laws? Not yet, they are new laws. Has anyone decided to stop owning books because those laws exist? Yes, absolutely. The government telling you what books you can own, and if you do not comply, threatening you with prison is absolutely a thing that's factual in the US.
panick21_ 3y ago
Its kind of funny to ban books when so few specially kids actually read. Clearly these policies are far more symbolic, an act of signaling. People feel powerless and have no actual control, but going after the local book-shelf gives a feeling of accomplishment. Not at easy to ban content from TikTok or Youtube.
version_five 3y ago
[flagged]
sys32768 3y ago
~975 are "Banned Pending Investigation" which is hyperbole for "Under Review".
- teachrdan 3y ago
  If the books are unavailable while under review, then they are effectively banned.
xyzzyz 3y ago
> Irregular bans are ideologically driven. > They are supplemental to and fall outside of the standard book exclusion process at schools and libraries. Standard exclusions prevent books that promote violent, hateful, or mature/17+” topics from being placed on school bookshelves while irregular bans do not have robust processes and can be influenced by interest groups or local officials. Seems like when the book is removed from library using an opaque, bureaucratic process, it’s called “standard exclusion”, and when it is removed using different, more public and democratic process, it’s called “banning”. Otherwise, there is no difference in the actual outcome: whether it is “standard exclusion” or “banning”, the end result is simply that book is removed from library (or prevented from being added) all the same. Therefore, I agree that the “bans” are “ideologically driven”, because the reason this democratic process of excluding books from libraries is called “banning” is indeed very much ideological. This might also be useful to non-Americans, who aren’t necessarily intimately familiar with US politics and language games: no book have actually been banned in US in the standard meaning of this word. Every single book on the banned list is completely legal and typically easy to obtain and possess. Even in the schools where these “banned” books were removed from libraries, I believe that the students are entirely free to possess and read these “banned” books: I never heard of schools actually treating these books as contraband. This whole “banning” narrative is simply describing removal of books from libraries through democratic instead of bureaucratic process, and the choice of the word is meant to invoke mental connotations of some sort of authoritarian/totalitarian state.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > whole “banning” narrative is simply describing removal of books from libraries through democratic instead of bureaucratic process Put another way, through a political versus administrative process. That's rightfully problematic. It's not a ban, but we purposely ring-fence libraries from politics.
  - xyzzyz 3y ago
    I do not believe there is any sort of “ring fence” between schools and politics. The entire point of public school boards and elections thereto is to enable voters to exercise the political control over the branch of government that is providing public educational service. If your argument indeed is that the public schools should be fully and wholly independently ran by nonelected bureaucrats entirely as they please, with no input from voters whatsoever, while being publicly funded, then well, let me just say that I am adamantly opposed to that, and so is most everyone else. You cannot just claim that “we ring fence schools from politics” and expect people to acquiesce to relinquishing control of the public service they fund and make use of.
paulddraper 3y ago
> Irregular bans are ideologically driven. > Standard exclusions prevent books that promote violent, hateful, or mature/17+” topics from being placed on school bookshelves while irregular bans do not have robust processes and can be influenced by interest groups or local officials. Overgeneralized. For example, Lord of the Flies is on the list. The standard "violence" filters weren't enough to filter that one out, apparently. One of the books is literally titled "Sex & Violence." Again, "standard exclusions" didn't filter that out.
mynameishere 3y ago
I wonder what the methodology is. If I mail a copy of "The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History" to some NYC school, and they decline to devote library space to it, does that mean it's "banned"? Or does it require an existing inclusion, and subsequent politically-motivated "banning" by upset parties? Glancing at the list, it looks like quite a bit of the usual leftist propaganda, but also some bland stuff like "14 Cows for America". No one is really "banning" that in a sincere way. You want "banned" look for some David Irving down at your public school library.
friend_and_foe 3y ago
I wonder how the authors feel about restrictions on books such as The Bell Curve or others. I don't particularly like or agree with those sorts of ideas, but I am curious of there is a double standard or if these people are generally interested in and/or opposed to the banning of books generally.
aSithLord 3y ago
nothing is being "banned". every one of these books can be purchased.
tmaly 3y ago
The graphic is cool, but I would like to see some visual information that could give me a category of why the book was banned. Are half the books banned for references to sexual material? It is hard to tell.

59 points by armanhq 3y ago

This is really interesting, I really like that the dataset is embedded in the page. Is there a general place where banned books are reported?

JumpCrisscross 3y ago

Book banning seems like a strange red line to have forgotten. If your kid is going to be corrupted by going into a library and finding a book that's naughtier than your taste, they're probably ahead of their similarly-corruptible peers who aren't in a library at all.

peepeepoopoo9 3y ago
[flagged]
thfuran 3y ago
I'm not in favor of banning books, but "it's not the worst thing that could possibly happen" isn't exactly a strong argument for supporting something.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > "it's not the worst thing that could possibly happen" isn't exactly a strong argument for supporting something Point is if your kid has the initiative to go into a library and find a book, they're probably fine. If they're not, they're going to get far worse from the internet and their peers-the library isn't your problem. Raising them to believe libraries are unsafe is more likely to backfire in the specific aims you're pursuing. (Going out on a limb and assuming most of the people pursuing these book bans don't have kids in school and, if they do, they aren't in the top 90% of students checking out books from any library.)
shakow 3y ago
> Book banning seems like a strange red line to have forgotten Has book banning ever been a red line? Many Western countries, from Canada to France through US and New Zealand have banned many books for most of their existence.
- krapp 3y ago
  Until relatively recently in the US, "banning books" was widely considered one of those morally reprehensible things that only authoritarian governments did, and people were outraged that the US did it at all. It is legitimately weird how quickly that seems to have changed within the culture in the light of the moral panic over transgender "groomers" and the antiwoke movement. That, and the sentiment that the government should regulate or nationalize social media, or even make it illegal... and half the country seems to be in a competition to see how fascist they can become before the Supreme Court actually calls them out. It's like someone flipped a switch and suddenly all this dystopian shit was just ok with everyone.
  - xyzzyz 3y ago
    > Until relatively recently in the US, "banning books" was widely considered one of those morally reprehensible things that only authoritarian governments did, and people were outraged that the US did it at all. This is why I loathe the “book banning” activists, because their entire goal is to confuse people by using deliberately misleading language. The fact of the matter is that nowhere in the US has any book been successfully banned by any government in recent memory, in the dystopian, authoritarian sense understanding of the term “book banning”. Activists simply decided to call removing books from school libraries “book banning” to deliberately induce misapprehension that this sort of dystopian, authoritarian shit is reality, when it simply is not the case.
    - krapp 3y ago
      Calls to remove books from libraries on the basis of ideology driven by a political party are a form of book banning, the distinction between it and a "ban by government" is one without a difference.
burnished 3y ago
Their findings are that the book bannings are really for the purpose of Virtue signal by people in positions of institutional power to voting-age parents interested in school choice, parental rights, and wedge social issues to the detriment of non-voting age students Reject and exclude topics that challenge a perceived status quo from the public discourse (e.g. non-heteronormativity, non-cis identity, non-traditional gender roles, and non-Judeo-Christian books are targeted and that Fortunately, book bans are widely unpopular amongst parents across the ideological spectrum. It would make sense though given that reading can be transformative for some people but realistically I think most folks are worried about everyday problems like teen pregnancy and substance abuse or getting into fights - and to your point if they are off reading unbearable moral philosophy in some library they aren't out screwing around.

pfannkuchen 3y ago

[flagged]

jiveturkey42 3y ago

"Banned in the United States" does not mean the same thing as "Removed from Middle School Libraries"

arcticbull 3y ago
Hm, seems pretty similar to me. Especially when the article itself identifies only 1.6% of the books as having a 17+ rating. [edit] Anyone who believes in freedom of expression and the first amendment should recognize this as a negative step, and a clear thin-edge issue. These are ideological decisions made by partisans with the goal being to shape the corpus of thinking of youth. "Will someone think of the children" is a well worn path. There's plenty of books about this kind of thing, like The Giver, but you know, it's probably on the list.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- didgetmaster 3y ago
  Hmmm...so it only counted 1.6% of the books as explicit because they had "publisher-provided" maturity ratings of 17+. I wonder how many books that had explicit material within them were not properly labeled as such by their publishers? This seems like a very subjective standard that would be very easy to manipulate.
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    I wonder what the people who want books removed from school libraries consider "explicit".
- constantcrying 3y ago
  >These are ideological decisions made by partisans with the goal being to shape the corpus of thinking of youth. You support neo-nazi propaganda not being in school libraries, so certainly you too believe that it is the duty of school libraries to curate the content. It is just incredibly dishonest to pretend that you are upset at this for any reason other than that you want these particular books available to children, which is exactly as partisan as demanding their absence.

npstr 3y ago

> it’s important to note that they are to the end of positive social change The end does not justify the means. Name me one single objectively bad political movement which internally thought of themselves as bad or negative. There isn't one. They all claim and for the largest part of their membership believe to serve the greater good. Therefore I find this argument of the author extremely weak. Surely they can come up with some less naive arguments?

femiagbabiaka 3y ago
To move away from sophistry and towards some concrete understanding, which of the sample books they provided for that blurb would you say is "true negative"? Others which aren't explicitly highlighted would also be acceptable. - Enough! 20 Protesters Who Changed America - Gays and Mental Health: Fighting Depression, Saying No to Suicide - I am Martin Luther King, Jr. - Peaceful Fights for Equal Rights - Tomorrow Will Be Different: Love, Loss, and the Fight for Trans Equality
- npstr 3y ago
  I did not communicate my point well enough. I'm sure a lot of these "bans" are not well justified, and good arguments can be found against them. Why use something weak like "we are the good guys and the ends justify the means"?
  - femiagbabiaka 3y ago
    I see, I misunderstood the point you were making, apologies. I agree, I think that's one of the weaker points of the article. The data itself makes a much stronger case.
- paulddraper 3y ago
  [dead]
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
deleted 3y ago

version_five 3y ago

[flagged]

doingmaths 3y ago
Not sure why virtue signal is being used ironically? Every political and social group is capable of virtue signaling. Plenty of folks left, right, and center who Virtue Signal their beliefs. IMO, it's a useless term, since it's essentially saying, "someone did something they didn't genuine believe in", but there's little to no ability to demonstrate someone's actual intent. Call people hypocrites (if that matters from you) or unauthentic.

slackfan 3y ago

[flagged]

gmiller123456 3y ago

Sadly, the word "ban" has been used all too inapropriatley lately. And this website doesn't seem to help as nowhere did I see exactly what they meant by banned, who banned them, or exactly what the ban entails.

femiagbabiaka 3y ago
Banning, in this case, means removal from libraries. Sometimes it is by state order, sometimes it is via independent action taken by the school district (although that is usually also in an attempt to adhere with state board of education guidelines). The linked data source cited for this article provides ban classifications for each and every book they list as banned.
- gmiller123456 3y ago
  Where did you see that? I saw where they explicitly state that is not what they mean: >Namely, they are not and have not been about the physical removal of a book from a shelf.
  - femiagbabiaka 3y ago
    It's in the linked dataset: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vRKM3peCW-NDebCq8KJ1UqdB5JahauG1lYzaqmiU89N9HuJs1fxWuVhf8Ed4hU9lNMLZu9AItmkcmyY/pub?output=xlsx https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vRKM3peCW-ND... They're not being literal in that comment, they're alluding to the fact that such broad bans, which even DeSantis has called overreach in some cases, are moreso about aligning to an ideological narrative than actually caring about which books are in school libraries. But the books are also being removed, from school libraries and from classroom libraries.
hotpotamus 3y ago
It is fascinating to watch the progress from "don't be hysterical, no one is going to ban books" to "we're offended that you're calling it a ban".

constantcrying 3y ago

>We Reviewed All of Them Am I blind? Where are the reviews? The website is also utterly broken on my device... What I always find interesting is what exactly "banned" means. Certainly there is no government which punishes distribution, printing or reading of those books.

doingmaths 3y ago
> Certainly there is no government which punishes distribution, printing or reading of those books. Yes, state and municipal level governments have banned books in the US? Here's a list of some example laws in, e.g., education: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Tj5WQVBmB6SQg-zP_M8uZsQQGH09TxmBY73v23zpyr0/edit#gid=267763711 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Tj5WQVBmB6SQg-zP_M8u...
- constantcrying 3y ago
  >https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Tj5WQVBmB6SQg-zP_M8uZsQQGH09TxmBY73v23zpyr0/edit#gid=267763711 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Tj5WQVBmB6SQg-zP_M8u... Why are you posting google doc links? These things are made to track you. Do not ever click such a link or share it. Absolutely one of the worst ways to share information. In any case, when was the last time a book printer faced criminal charges for printing a book? A book reader for reading a book? A shop for selling a book?
  - doingmaths 3y ago
    > Why are you posting google doc links? Because that's the way the organization makes the information available. Is Google docs on topic? > In any case, when was the last time a book printer faced criminal charges for printing a book? A book reader for reading a book? A shop for selling a book? You forgot: "A book owner for owning a book." School librarians in the US face prison time for owning books in parts of the US. Has anyone actually been prosecuted for those laws? Not yet, they are new laws. Has anyone decided to stop owning books because those laws exist? Yes, absolutely. The government telling you what books you can own, and if you do not comply, threatening you with prison is absolutely a thing that's factual in the US.

panick21_ 3y ago

Its kind of funny to ban books when so few specially kids actually read. Clearly these policies are far more symbolic, an act of signaling. People feel powerless and have no actual control, but going after the local book-shelf gives a feeling of accomplishment. Not at easy to ban content from TikTok or Youtube.

version_five 3y ago

[flagged]

sys32768 3y ago

~975 are "Banned Pending Investigation" which is hyperbole for "Under Review".

teachrdan 3y ago
If the books are unavailable while under review, then they are effectively banned.

xyzzyz 3y ago

> Irregular bans are ideologically driven. > They are supplemental to and fall outside of the standard book exclusion process at schools and libraries. Standard exclusions prevent books that promote violent, hateful, or mature/17+” topics from being placed on school bookshelves while irregular bans do not have robust processes and can be influenced by interest groups or local officials. Seems like when the book is removed from library using an opaque, bureaucratic process, it’s called “standard exclusion”, and when it is removed using different, more public and democratic process, it’s called “banning”. Otherwise, there is no difference in the actual outcome: whether it is “standard exclusion” or “banning”, the end result is simply that book is removed from library (or prevented from being added) all the same. Therefore, I agree that the “bans” are “ideologically driven”, because the reason this democratic process of excluding books from libraries is called “banning” is indeed very much ideological. This might also be useful to non-Americans, who aren’t necessarily intimately familiar with US politics and language games: no book have actually been banned in US in the standard meaning of this word. Every single book on the banned list is completely legal and typically easy to obtain and possess. Even in the schools where these “banned” books were removed from libraries, I believe that the students are entirely free to possess and read these “banned” books: I never heard of schools actually treating these books as contraband. This whole “banning” narrative is simply describing removal of books from libraries through democratic instead of bureaucratic process, and the choice of the word is meant to invoke mental connotations of some sort of authoritarian/totalitarian state.

JumpCrisscross 3y ago
> whole “banning” narrative is simply describing removal of books from libraries through democratic instead of bureaucratic process Put another way, through a political versus administrative process. That's rightfully problematic. It's not a ban, but we purposely ring-fence libraries from politics.
- xyzzyz 3y ago
  I do not believe there is any sort of “ring fence” between schools and politics. The entire point of public school boards and elections thereto is to enable voters to exercise the political control over the branch of government that is providing public educational service. If your argument indeed is that the public schools should be fully and wholly independently ran by nonelected bureaucrats entirely as they please, with no input from voters whatsoever, while being publicly funded, then well, let me just say that I am adamantly opposed to that, and so is most everyone else. You cannot just claim that “we ring fence schools from politics” and expect people to acquiesce to relinquishing control of the public service they fund and make use of.

paulddraper 3y ago

> Irregular bans are ideologically driven. > Standard exclusions prevent books that promote violent, hateful, or mature/17+” topics from being placed on school bookshelves while irregular bans do not have robust processes and can be influenced by interest groups or local officials. Overgeneralized. For example, Lord of the Flies is on the list. The standard "violence" filters weren't enough to filter that one out, apparently. One of the books is literally titled "Sex & Violence." Again, "standard exclusions" didn't filter that out.

mynameishere 3y ago

I wonder what the methodology is. If I mail a copy of "The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History" to some NYC school, and they decline to devote library space to it, does that mean it's "banned"? Or does it require an existing inclusion, and subsequent politically-motivated "banning" by upset parties? Glancing at the list, it looks like quite a bit of the usual leftist propaganda, but also some bland stuff like "14 Cows for America". No one is really "banning" that in a sincere way. You want "banned" look for some David Irving down at your public school library.

friend_and_foe 3y ago

I wonder how the authors feel about restrictions on books such as The Bell Curve or others. I don't particularly like or agree with those sorts of ideas, but I am curious of there is a double standard or if these people are generally interested in and/or opposed to the banning of books generally.

aSithLord 3y ago

nothing is being "banned". every one of these books can be purchased.

tmaly 3y ago

The graphic is cool, but I would like to see some visual information that could give me a category of why the book was banned. Are half the books banned for references to sexual material? It is hard to tell.