Banning Books Should be a Crime. Speak Up, America!

Bench by the Road found in Gullah Museum in Hilton Head, SC. It honors Toni Morrison and her book Beloved.

Books were my salvation and my sanity as a child. Abandoned by both parents and constantly living in strangers’ homes, books of all subjects helped me see that the world was bigger than my hometown. The content of the books I read introduced me to the customs of other races and ethnicities, cultures, and religions other than Christianity. Who I am today and my love of travel and meeting new people come from the books I was allowed to read at school and at the glorious place of our community’s library.

When I read of the banning of classics like The Handmaid’s Tale, Harry Potter, To Kill a Mockingbird, Tom Sawyer, any of Toni Morrison’s works, Charlotte’s Web, and others, I cringe at the loss of the knowledge within these books for helping children, especially teenagers, understand people different from themselves. Today, we need that type of wisdom in the environment of hate and open hostility toward people of color and the embrace by many evangelical Christians of white supremacist notions of Christian nationalism.

As a sociology professor, I taught about race and society, prejudice and discrimination, hate and bigotry, and my students’ eyes were often opened. They were not harmed by learning of the universality of our humanity. I find it appalling that today many professors are afraid to mention race or to request students read Toni Morrison’s books for fear of losing their tenure or jobs for putatively causing white children to feel guilt or shame about their race. That is ridiculous! Race is real. It still divides us. It still helps win elections! It still justifies gerrymandering that weakens the voting power of people of color!

When you consider the harm done, such as the shooting of a 16-year-old black boy who rang the wrong doorbell, we need more real and authentic books on race, not the banning of classics that help us see that hate harms the one who hates and the ones hated. Books are not the enemy, but children’s friends everywhere, for they give children a wisdom greater than one can receive from parents or teachers alone.

Banning books is a form of controlling what people are allowed to learn that borders on fascism and nazism. It is a means of division that is cloaked in righteousness and the lie of doing God’s work. Parents do have the right to determine what their children read, but they do not have the right to usurp the rights of other parents who have no problem or even desire their children to read the books that helped them grow into sensitive and more loving people.

We have to speak out, no matter the costs. As a nation, we cannot sit idly by, wringing our hands and saying, “Woe is us!” while a minority of people take away our right in a democracy to read any books. Banning books violates free speech, as certain elements of the political Right seek to control the minds and hearts of our youngest people. We must protect their rights. For me, it is essential, for reading books of all kinds and subject matter is like drinking water for children, and as necessary. Books were, and still are, my saving grace!