By Cash Michaels –
School bells are weeks away from ringing across North Carolina, and beyond the normal drudgery of getting students properly prepared, many parents are bracing themselves for something they thought they’d never see in their lifetimes—the banning of books at their local schools and public libraries.
Spurred by the conservative political movement, school systems and libraries across the nation, and in North Carolina, have had to deal with demands primarily from white Republican parents that certain books be taken off the shelves of local libraries, or be removed from local school curriculums because they are deemed “not appropriate” for their children.
According to the American Library Association, during 2021, at least 729 attempts to ban library books were made. And in a report from PEN America, 2,532 book bans were issued in 18 school districts in 32 states during the 2021-22 school year. Forty percent of the challenged titles “prominently featured people of color.”
By “not appropriate,” these book-banning parent groups, like Moms for Liberty, claim they don’t mean books geared toward African American or LBGTQ subjects, but rather books that contain what they consider to be sexually explicit content. In some cases, these parents have actually filed criminal complaints in their local counties and school boards to have what they consider to be books with offensive materials removed.
Many of the titles are by African American authors who write about the Black experience, and/or deal with racism in America. Toni Morrison, Nikole Hannah Jones, Nic Stone, and Ta-Nehisi Coates are just some of the popular Black authors being targeted by conservative parent groups.
Nikole Hannah Jones has had her award-winning The 1619 Project targeted by Republican congressmen and even former President Donald Trump while he was still in office. They objected to the book documenting how America was built on the…
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