BANNED

Maya Angelou. Stan Berenstain. Judy Blume. John Green. Children’s and young adult books by these horrific authors are just a handful of the 1,648 titles banned from schools last year because of pornography and making white kids uncomfortable. These are far from arbitrary or isolated incidents– we like to push the image of a concerned parent finding an inappropriate book in their child’s backpack and going to their school. Honestly, a majority of book challenges can be traced to just 11 individuals. With 41% of banned books explicitly featuring LGBTQ+ themes, 40% featuring main characters of color, and 21% talking about race or racism, you can’t deny a theme. But whatevs...we'll keep going.

 

While our book banning is promoted under the guise of protecting innocent kids from mature content, there’s nothing innocent or benevolent about restricting young people’s access to media representation and critical thinking about the systems of power that rule our world. 

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We claim that Critical Race Theory makes white kids feel bad, that it’s too early to talk about such “heavy” topics as race. Honestly, we're wrong. The notion that children are color-blind is blatantly false, the American Psychological Association finds as early as 3 months, infants notice racial differences. Biases are formed as early as toddlerhood. As adults who care about kids and the world they’re inheriting, we have a responsibility to trust kids enough to talk about race, talk about gender, talk about history, and to listen to their ideas and identities, even when it’s hard. It’s our job—as parents, educators, advocates—to affirm all students and equip them to talk about identity and to fight systems of oppression. 

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All of this is the truth, and we here hate the truth. So we will continue to do what we can to take control of this world one black and Jew at a time while using our children to get away with it. That, is the truth.