Though the current project started as a series of posts charting my grief journey after the death of my mother, I am no longer actively grieving. Now, the blog charts a conversation in living, mainly whatever I want it to be. This is an activity that goes well with the theme of this blog (updated 2018). The Sense of Doubt blog is dedicated to my motto: EMBRACE UNCERTAINTY. I promote questioning everything because just when I think I know something is concrete, I find out that it’s not.
Hey, Mom! The Explanation.
Here's the permanent dedicated link to my first Hey, Mom! post and the explanation of the feature it contains.
A Sense of Doubt blog post #2976 - I Read Banned Books - more links and research to my Community Conversation for Thursday April 13, 2023
A Sense of Doubt blog post #2976 - I Read Banned Books - more links and research to my Community Conversation for Thursday April 13, 2023
Just another repository of mostly links and various resources for my banned books talk.
Presentation is tomorrow by the date of this post, but I didn't post it on the 12th and now it's the 14th.
The presentation went well, though I need to get better at figuring out just how much I can cover in 45 minutes. This is my weakness and yet also a strength. I over-prepare and then I have to skip things.
I made a bitly link for all my materials, some of which are here and in my other blog posts.
Poirot's description of another character as "a Jew, of course" in Christie's debut novel, "The Mysterious Affair at Styles," has been stripped out of the new version.
The changes to Dahl's books divided fans of works including "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" and "James and the Giant Peach," with some arguing that rewriting classic literature is a form of censorship.
- Removing "fat"
Roald Dahl classic editions will be released, following censorship concerns
A passage describing a servant as "black" and "grinning" has been revised and the character is now simply referred to as "nodding," with no reference to his race.
Publisher Puffin responded to the controversy by announcing that it would release two versions -- one amended and one classic -- to give readers "the choice to decide how they experience Roald Dahl's magical, marvellous stories."
After years of criticism of Dr. Seuss books for racist imagery, Dr. Seuss Enterprises has announced that it will stop publishing and selling six titles that the company says "portray people in ways that are hurtful and wrong."
Republicans in the North Dakota state House of Representatives have introduced a bill that would not only ban public libraries from carrying any books with "sexually explicit" content, but would also jail librarians for up to 30 days on felony charges (plus up to a $1500 fine) if they fail to remove such works within 30 days of a written request from anyone.
Just to make clear that the bill's authors are bigots, House Bill 1205 wouldn't just ban public libraries from owning books that include photos, pictures, or other "visual depictions" of various sex acts, but also "sexual preferences," "sexual perversion," sex-based classifications" (?!?), "sexual Idenitity" or "gender identity," although the bill doesn't define any of those terms.
The bill does at least generously include an exception for "works of art" with "serious artistic significance" and for books used in science classes, including "biology, anatomy, physiology, or sexual education classes." What a relief!
- books that describe virginity as a silly label or assert that gender is fluid.
- For instance, Let’s Talk About It: The Teen’s Guide to Sex, Relationships, and Being Human
- Harmful to minors
- a former school superintendent, Tom Tracy, called Let's Talk About It "legally obscene"
- no matter how much the bill's proponents call works about sex education or LGBTQ+ people "obscene" and "pornographic," that's not what those words actually mean. Among the killjoys was Cody Schuler of the ACLU of North Dakota, who testified against the bill.
“Nearly 50 years ago, the (U.S.) Supreme Court set the high constitutional bar that defines obscenity,” [Schuler said]
Obscenity is a narrow, well-defined category of unprotected speech that excludes any work with serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value, Schuler said. Few, if any, books have been deemed obscene, and the standard for restraining a library’s ability to distribute a book are even more stringent, Schuler added.
Banning ideas and authors is not a ‘culture war’ – it’s fascism
A wave of Republican enthusiasm for banning concepts, authors and books is sweeping across the United States. Forty-four states have proposed bans on the teaching of “divisive concepts”, and 18 states have passed them.
Florida’s “Stop Woke” Act - such as teaching kids about racism by making them feel guilty for the sins of the past, such as Nikole Hannah-Jones’s influential “1619 Project.”
These laws have already started to take effect. Administrators and teachers have been forced out of their positions on the suspicion of violating these laws, and what has started as a trickle may soon become a flood.
- Banned AP African American Studies courses
- Intended as “freeing from indoctrination”
Germany’s teaching of its Nazi past creates clear anguish and guilt in German children (and perhaps for this reason, Germany is the world’s most stable liberal democracy). If the German far right passed laws forbidding schools from teaching about the sins of Nazism, on the grounds that such teaching does in fact quite obviously cause anguish and guilt in German children, the world would not stand for it for one moment.
These laws have been represented by many as a “culture war”. This framing is a dangerous falsification of reality. A culture war is a conflict of values between different groups. In a diverse, pluralistic democracy, one should expect frequent conflicts. Yet laws criminalizing educators’ speech are no such thing – unlike a culture war, the GOP’s recent turn has no place in a democracy.
What’s the opposite of “woke?”
Problematic use of the word “radical,” such as “the radical left” or “radical woke mob”
“The book censors are resorting to various underhanded and illegal tactics to force their own narrow interpretation of the freedom to read on everyone else. They will eventually run out of tactics. But we will still be here.”
~ Jamie Gregory, school librarian in South Carolina, won the “Oscar for Librarians” granted by the American Library Association for fighting censorship.
- unprecedented threat of censorship,
fueled by a blend of hard-right politics
and Christian nationalism
that, in some areas, is backed by intimidation from local armed groups.
- Librarians who reject book banning have been threatened, harassed, sued, fired and labeled “groomers” and “pedophiles” on social media.
- banning “age-inappropriate content”
- “woke” indoctrination - meaning anything to do with racial diversity and/or sexual identities
- grassroots take over - book bans are only a first step, followed now by legislation to weaken librarian control over collections, moves to strip libraries of legal protections and, in some examples, efforts to defund libraries altogether.
- Frequently and regularly, librarians are receiving violent or death threats.
- One in Idaho resigned last year after a bullying campaign that included armed men standing in the back of board meetings.
- Co-founder Tiffany Justice of Moms For Liberty, the main action group behind pushes for book bans said: “I do not endorse any type of harassment tactics,” Justice said. “But the truth of the matter is, if you have activist teachers or you have librarians that are acting in defiance of state law, or federal obscenity law, and they are keeping books in libraries, I do hope they get fired.”
Florida is leading the charge in its fight against what it calls the “woke mob” and its “woke ideology or agenda.”
Led by 2024 presidential hopeful governor Ron DeSantis
Basically, the term is a catch-all weaponized aganinst all things
they don’t like, such as climate change policies, socially responsible investing, transgender rights, critical race theory and the Black Lives Matter movement.
“What we’re seeing is a kind of standard practice of conservatives and conservative reactions to Black political movements — to weaponize the words and concepts they’ve used to undermine efforts of social movements,” said Candis Watts Smith, an associate professor of political science at Duke University and co-author of “Stay Woke: A People’s Guide to Making All Black Lives Matter.” “History shows that you can rally voters around issues of difference, issues that suggest that people are losing power, issues where their values are being challenged.”
Much like the “cancel” of “cancel culture,” “woke” is another word that originated in Black culture before being co-opted by White people.
How effective is it as a strategy to attack wokeism among people who don’t particularly understand it?” he said. “I am looking for evidence that attacking wokeism is a strategy that converts people to that candidate’s side.”
- BACKLASH
- MISDIRECTION
- PROJECTION: Repression and denial, projection, transference
from - https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/02/21/wokeism-republicans-liberals/
Wokeism, Cruz said, “is the left seizing institutions of transmission of ideas and that includes education — K-12 and universities. It includes journalism. It includes entertainment — Hollywood, movies, TV, sports, music, video games. And it’s characterized by demanding one uniform view on any particular topic, engaging in brutal punishment for any who disagree, including most simply being canceled.”
In the past two years, the number of book challenges has skyrocketed, going from sporadic individual complaints to organized campaigns that dispatch parents to confront their local libraries with lists of dozens of titles they demand be restricted or removed from circulation. In 2021, at least 729 censorship attempts targeted 1,597 books, the most recorded in 20 years of record-keeping by the ALA, the oldest and largest trade group for library workers. The numbers for 2022 are expected to be even higher, according to a partial tally that recorded 681 attempts involving more than 1,650 titles in the first eight months of last year; full results will be released during National Library Week in April.
Further, the majority of books being banned are published for young adults, while picture books and chapter books were also among the most commonly banned.
PEN also found that 96% of the book bans enacted did not follow the best practices guidelines for book challenges as outlined by the American Library Association or the National Coalition Against Censorship.
Book Banning Groups
In what’s likely an underestimate–thanks in part to the challenge of documenting and tracking down accurate counts–PEN reports that there are at least 50 groups working to get books banned in schools and public libraries in the US. Within those 50 groups are eight which operate regional or local chapters, numbering somewhere over 300 (think Moms For Liberty and their county-by-county groups).
The vast majority of these groups have formed since 2021–73%–and PEN reports that 20% of the book bans in the last year being directly related to the efforts of these groups. An additional 30% of book bans are likely influenced by them as well, given the language and use of tactics that mirror those groups.
PEN’s report is available to read in full on their website, and it is well worth the time to better understand the wide scope of book bans, who is behind them, and the tactics these groups are using to find, challenge, and ban titles which do not fit their agenda.
all above from - https://bookriot.com/pen-america-banned-books-report-2022/
The most banned book titles include the groundbreaking work of Nobel laureate Toni Morrison, along with best-selling books that have inspired feature films, television series, and a Broadway show. The list includes books that have been targeted for their LGBTQ+ content, their content related to race and racism, or their sexual content—or all three.
Gender Queer: A Memoir by Maia Kobabe (41 districts)
All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M. Johnson (29 districts)
Out of Darkness by Ashley Hope Pérez (24 districts)
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison (22 districts)
The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas (17 districts)
Lawn Boy by Jonathan Evison (17 districts)
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie (16 districts)
Me and Earl and the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews (14 districts)
Crank by Ellen Hopkins (12 districts)
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini (12 districts)
l8r, g8r by Lauren Myracle (12 districts)
Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher (12 districts)
Beloved by Toni Morrison (11 districts)
Beyond Magenta: Transgender Teens Speak Out by Susan Kuklin (11 districts)
Drama: A Graphic Novel by Raina Telgemeier (11 districts)
Looking for Alaska by John Green (11 districts)
Melissa by Alex Gino (11 districts)
This Book Is Gay by Juno Dawson (11 districts)
This One Summer by Mariko Tamaki and Jillian Tamaki (11 districts)
The 19th-century English philosopher John Stuart Mill discussed the pitfalls of cultural censorship. In this context, there isn’t a government authority repressing anyone’s speech; nevertheless, the outcome can be worse than government censorship.
In On Liberty, Mill’s 1859 canonical defense of free expression, he warned of “a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression.” He characterized it as a collectively enforced conformity that “leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself.”
The ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom tracked 729 challenges to library, school, and university materials and services in 2021. Of the 1597 books that were targeted.
The ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom tracked 156 challenges to library, school, and university materials and services in 2020. Of the 273 books that were targeted.
PEN America counted school book bans in the 2021-2022 school year and found an alarming 1,648 titles banned somewhere in the United States — the most comprehensive count of book bans to date. With some titles restricted in multiple places, the total count of book bans is more than 2,500.
“Access to knowledge is the superb, the supreme act of truly great civilizations. Of all the institutions that purport to do this, free libraries stand virtually alone in accomplishing this mission. No committee decides who may enter, no crisis of body or spirit must accompany the entrant. No tuition is charged, no oath sworn, no visa demanded,” said Morrison. “Of the monuments humans build for themselves, very few say 'touch me, use me, my hush is not indifference, my space is not a barrier.' If I inspire awe, it is because I am in awe of you and the possibilities that dwell in you.”
“[I] contemplate with dread the erasure of other voices, of unwritten novels, poems whispered or swallowed for fear of being overheard by the wrong people… that thought is a nightmare. As though a whole universe is being described in invisible ink,” Toni Morrison wrote of the prospect of censorship.
“Beloved” has been challenged in many places across the United States. Challenges cite violence, sexual content, bestiality and racism as reasons for removing the Pulitzer Prize-winning work from curricula.
“Song of Solomon” was banned from (then reinstated in) the curriculum of a public high school in Michigan on social and sexual grounds.
“The Bluest Eye” has consistently landed on the list of most challenged books, cited reasons including, sexually explicit material, graphic descriptions, disturbing language and an underlying socialist-communist agenda.
“Paradise” was banned from the libraries of Texas prisons. The reason cited for banning was that it, “Contains material that a reasonable person would construe as written solely for the purpose of communicating information designed to achieve a breakdown.”
MAUS
According to the Anti-Defamation League, antisemitic incidents reached an all-time high of 2,717 in the U.S. in 2021 -- an average of more than seven incidents per day and a 34% increase year over year. It's the highest number on record since the ADL began tracking antisemitic incidents in 1979.
- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2304.12 - 10:10
- Days ago = 2840 days ago
- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I plan to continue Hey Mom posts at least twice per week but will continue to post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
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