Lifestyle Articles:
If you’ve been paying attention to politics or have been to our school library, you’ve probably heard of something called the Book Ban. This is a movement that involves schools strategically removing content on people of color, transgender and queer people, women, and other topics that challenge the ideology of White supremacy. Some of these bans are justified with the criticism of a concept called Critical Race Theory, also known as CRT. Critical Race Theory explains how the oppression of people of color is systematic in the United States of America. The critique for this knowledge being shared is that it causes discomfort for White children, and it may cause them to hate themselves and the United States of America. Another infamous critique is that queerness, like gender or sexuality, is inappropriate for children, and therefore shouldn’t be available to them in libraries. These are both critiques based on paranoia, lies, and unreasonable sources.
Children are often used as pawns for this sort of indoctrination as they are a vulnerable population that is susceptible to propaganda and often do not have the power to get resources from diverse sources unless directly given
Children are also trusting of their authorities, so if a teacher tells them that a certain event in history happened in a certain way, they are going to believe them. If every adult around them suggests the same and there is no other voice or media that challenges that idea, children become indoctrinated and continue to spread that ideology around them. This was previously seen in America with a different book ban.
After the Civil War, the states involved with the Confederacy wanted to save the hatred they had created against Black people and deny it at the same time. They did this through rewriting history and banning books that challenged their revisions. One group that pushed this the most and still has power today is called The United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC). This was a group of women who descended from Confederate soldiers and fought facts by trying to push the idea that the South only fought the Civil War due to the “Lost Cause,” or in other words, the “justified” fight against the North’s aggressive suppression of their state rights. They spread their false beliefs through textbooks, manipulating others to say that slavery was enjoyable and banning books that stated the factual horrors of slavery and the Confederacy. Revoking facts like this and passing them off as unjustness to the South is a proud show of anti-blackness, and changing a source that children relied on for true information passed on anti-blackness and racism onward to the next generation. These same kids grew up and fought for segregation and voted to uphold White supremacy.
Censorship then resulted in the social injustices of racism to keep its power. By bringing back this censorship, we are allowing all sorts of social injustices to continue. As teenagers growing up in this city, we should recognize our privilege and use it for good.
We have the privilege of being in a NYC school that puts banned books in our English classes and factually explains the history of Native Americans, the systematic oppression of Black people, and the oppression of all marginalized groups in the USA.
We are able to read books that are often barred from schools that are just a state away. Being educated in these topics gives us the power to vote with knowledge, spread the knowledge that we have to others, and to understand our impact on the world. We have an impact. We can use it to change the world for good. That is why it is so important that we fight book bans. Book bans and censoring our curriculums only allows for White supremacy to benefit off of the erasure of marginalized communities. It’s a form of protest that no one can take away from you as long as you search and fight for it.
We have the privilege of being in a NYC school that puts banned books in our English classes and factually explains the history of Native Americans, the systematic oppression of Black people, and the oppression of all marginalized groups in the USA.