Book Banning has been quite the problem people like to talk about on social media lately. I sat down with UConn Journalism professor Mike Stanton to talk about book banning from the perspective of a journalist and author. Listen down below.
https://www.riaclu.org/en/events/we-readers-live-banned-book-event
Transcript:
Mike Stanton: Son. Last Sunday, the host of a popular news show asked me what it means to lose my body. Specifically, the host wished to know why I felt that white America’s progress, or rather the progress of those Americans who believe that they are white, was built on looting and violence. Hearing this, I felt an old and indistinct sadness. The answer to this question is the record of the believer themselves. The answer is American history. When Abraham Lincoln declared in 1863 that the Battle of Gettysburg, must ensure that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth, he was not being merely aspirational. At the outset of the Civil War, the United States of America had one of the highest racist sufferers in the world. The question is not whether Lincoln truly meant government of the people, but what our country has throughout its history, taken the political term people to actually mean. In 1863, it did not mean your mother or your grandmother, and it did not mean you and me. Americans believe in the reality of race as a definition indubitable feature of the natural world. Racism, the need to ascribe bone deep features to people and then humiliate reduce and destroy them, inevitably follows from this inalterable condition. In this way, racism is rendered as the innocent daughter of Mother Nature.
Jen Ryu (Narration): That right there is the sound of UConn journalism professor, Pulitzer Prize winner, and author Mike Stanton reading, at the We The Readers, a live banned book event last October 3rd with the ACLU of Rhode Island. Hi, my name is Jen Ryu, and I had the pleasure to sit down with Professor Stanton to talk about his experience at the event and book banning in general. Book banning has been pretty viral lately, especially on social media. Parents are going up to boards to “protect” their children. And you’ve probably seen these videos on Instagram and TikTok, though there’s always two sides to every story. What do the authors and educators who write and teach the books think about this? What about the journalists whose entire job is to report the truth and only the truth? Let’s dive into the mind of Professor Stanton and what he thinks about the situation.
Ryu: Hello, Professor Stanton. Thank you for taking the time to sit with me and talk about a really prevalent topic in society right now. Would you like to introduce yourself and first talk about your work as an educator, author, and journalist?
Stanton: Well, thank you, Jen. Nice to be here. My name is Mike Stanton. I’m a professor of journalism at the University of Connecticut. I’m also a longtime investigative reporter and journalist. I worked at the Providence Journal, and I’ve written a few books, and I freelance for various outlets. So nice to be here.
Ryu: Thank you. What was your experience like going to the event and reading there? What were your emotions like when you were going there at the place and driving back home, how was the audience and the environment?
Stanton: Well, this is a different year to read a banned book, because the last time I did it, a few years before the pandemic„ it wasn’t such a pandemic. Now we’re in a pandemic of banned books. And books are being banned for the flimsiest, most ridiculous reasons. I read last week, there was a book banned, a children’s book, because the author’s last name is Gay, G‑A-Y. And for that reason alone, they banned it from a library in a community out west. The crowd was great. We had a full auditorium, probably about 60 people. And it’s an interesting event, because obviously, the people who come are all supportive of standing up for banned books. They’re not the book banners, but it is around us. I mean, that same library had hosted an event, last year by a group that’s affiliated with Moms for Liberty, the big book banning group, conservative organization around the country. So it was great. It was a great event, and it was very reaffirming that there are a lot of people who don’t tolerate what’s happening in America today.
Ryu: Yeah. So you read the book Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates.
Stanton: Ta-Nehisi Coates.
Ryu: Ta-Nehisi Coates. A book that stopped an AP English teacher in South Carolina from teaching last February. Why did you choose this book? And what stood out to you that made you decide to read the specific section in the book?
Stanton: Well, two things, I think racism and the Black Lives movement in America have really highlighted systemic and historic racism and how it permeates through the generations. And I think that the whole idea of the black body, being exploited, that goes back to slavery, and that Ta-Nehisi Coates talks about in his book is really at the core of the problem with race relations in the country today, and all the policing issues and the discrimination issues and the bias issues. And I thought that he raised it in a very compelling way. The book is written as an open letter to his 15 year old son. And the reason he wrote the book was it was shortly after, the police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, had been acquitted in the shooting of Michael Brown. And I should say he wasn’t charged. The decision had come out after an investigation. He was not going to be charged with any crime. And that set off a firestorm of controversy and protests across the country and really fueled the Black Lives Matter movement. And Ta-Nehisi Coates is looking at his black 15 year old son. Parents, often of color, have to have that conversation with their child about how to behave in the public so they don’t get killed.
Ryu: Yeah.
Stanton: And it was very poignant that he sees his idealistic son have his ideals shattered and so he goes to his room and cries. And so he writes this reflection, which I thought was a powerful one. It’s a discussion that we need to have as a country. And I was really troubled to read this Washington Post story about the white teacher in South Carolina who taught it for AP English and a couple of students complained. They wrote an email to a school board member in a town in Georgia, I think I said South Carolina, who was a member of Moms for Liberty. And one of the students said, as a Caucasian, this made me feel uncomfortable. And this whole idea that we can’t be made to feel uncomfortable when we talk about uncomfortable situations really bothered me. So the teacher got punished, got suspended, the book was withdrawn. When she returned to the classroom, five teachers came in with her in a concerted sweep and took the books away from all the students.
Ryu (Narration): Like I said in the intro, book banning is quite the issue that is stirring up all over society and social media currently. The American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, or OIF, released data and says that there were 1269 demands to censor library books and resources Just in 2022. 2571 unique titles were also targeted for censorship. These numbers are significantly higher than the 2021 numbers of 729 books challenged and 1858 unique titles targeted for censorship. The preliminary data report for 2023, which is between January 1, 2023, to August 31, 2023, says that there have been 695 attempts for censorship of library materials and 1915 unique titles challenged. That is, 20% increased from last year, and this is just in the span of eight months. The OIF also states that the vast majority of these challenges were books written by or about a person of color or a member of the LGBTQIA+ community.
Ryu: What do you think about the book banning situation, especially as it circles around social media and it exposing to younger children? And also it’s really prevalent in middle and high schools. So how does the problem affect education of these teenagers who are preparing to enter the adult world?
Stanton: Well, the Ta-Nehisi Coates book, Between the World and Me, that I read from, one of the things that struck me about that AP English teacher in Georgia, was that she challenges her students with texts from authors that they might not normally read. And I think exposing children to different points of view, to different races, ethnicities, sexual orientations, is a good thing. And my hope for the future is that younger people who, in general, don’t read as much anymore because of social media’s distractions, will be drawn to these books by the fact that they’re being banned and say, what are they trying to keep from us? But the reality also is that it’s one thing if I’m a prominent author like Ta-Nehisi Coates to have my book banned, it’s going to bring more attention. And in fact, Ta-Nehisi Coates went down to Georgia and went to the school board meeting that discussed this teacher and what she did and went out to dinner with her.
Ryu: Oh, wow.
Stanton: But there are lesser known authors who say, yeah, you say this is great because this will inspire students to go read these books. But there’s also a lot of students who are never going to be exposed to the books or be aware of it because of the ban. And I think that’s wrong. And my hope is that the younger generation will overcome that barrier of reading in today’s social media world and educate themselves and that they’ll be better than their parents are behaving today.
Ryu: Yeah, I definitely agree with you. Like teenagers are teenagers, if you tell them no, they’re going to want to do it more. But especially in communities where kids don’t have access to books and stuff like that. And if you don’t give them the opportunity to read them, they’re never going to read them because they never know they existed.
Stanton: Exactly.
Ryu: But this also brings into the issue of the First Amendment. There’s a lot of conversation of people being against book banning, saying that it is against the freedom of speech, which is written in our Constitution as the First Amendment. In the eyes of an author, do you agree that your freedom of speech as being violated when you see your fellow authors books being banned?
Stanton: Absolutely. Because here’s the thing. Some parent in some town is upset that they don’t want their little Johnny or Susie reading a book about a transgender child or a book that suggests that white racism has oppressed black people. And they go and just based on their word alone and the political climate, they get that book taken off the shelf to protect their “rights”. What does that do to the rights of all the other people in the school of a kid who is struggling with their sexual orientation, who feels isolated and alone and might really take some solace from having a book that shows that they’re not alone and gives them some practical solutions on how to cope? So, yes, people’s rights are being infringed. The rights of the authors to express what they’re expressing are being infringed by these book Nazis.
Ryu: What do you think the possible long term consequences might be if the society continues book banning?
Stanton: Well, I think, it’s going to increase the divisions we see in our society. And for all the hope that rebellious children will read the things that their parents don’t want them to read, children will also be indoctrinated. I mean, that’s the other cry of the right that the youths being exposed to these liberal, radical “ideas” are being indoctrinated. And in fact, these other children are being indoctrinated by these other views, and some of them are going to grow up to try to reflect their parents intolerant ideology. And I think that’s tragic.
Ryu: Well, events like the ACLU Rhode Island’s We the Readers event definitely gives authors the opportunity to speak about the issue. But what are other ways authors, publishers, and literary organizations can protect their freedom of speech in literature?
Stanton: Well, you see organizations like the ACLU, like Pen America, a writers group, they’re monitoring this. They’re tracking it, in some cases, filing lawsuits to challenge it, and raising public awareness of it. And I think that there is a lot of backlash, against the book banners. And obviously, it varies from town to town, region to region. And we live in New England, where it’s much more tolerant political climate. That doesn’t mean there aren’t extremists out there. That doesn’t mean that in any community, you won’t see people, seeking to ban books. But fortunately, they’re in the political minority. Usually, if you go into a state legislature and try to ban a book, and there’s so much distortion of the facts that goes into these book banning efforts, the whole critical race theory, furor was totally exaggerated. Critical race theory, which I believe is a legitimate theory about historic, political, and social and economic inequality, is not taught in elementary schools. It’s not taught in middle schools. It’s not even taught in high schools. It’s taught in colleges. And to me, it’s a willful distortion. There actually have been, I think, some reports about how the right seized on this, and there was some admission that they know that they’re twisting the truth, but it’s a way to rile people up.
Ryu (Narration): Well, you heard it directly from Professor Stanton. Book banning is definitely an issue society has to work out. But until then, keep a lookout for other events like We the Readers and consider supporting your local authors.
