I Blame Facebook
Feb. 22nd, 2022 07:35 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rynlingWhat's behind the right-wing book-ban frenzy? Big money, and a long-term plan
https://www.salon.com/2022/02/08/whats-behind-the-right-wing-book-ban-frenzy-big-money-and-a-long-term-plan/
In organizing terms, Moms for Liberty, Parents Defending Education and No Left Turn all adhere to a similar formula, as the Guardian noted. In most cases, a parent ostensibly flags a local school for doing something they consider beyond the pale, such as incorporating "controversial" books about gender or sexuality into the curricula. That parent and their allies reach out to one of the aforementioned groups, whose leaders weave the incident into their broader national narrative. To smoothen this process, some groups provide detailed walkthroughs for parents about how to file open records requests, create press releases, file civil rights complaints and petition school boards.
The way I understand it, the broader context is that parents can't get off work, so they need their kids to be in school. Last November, people therefore voted for education boards that promised to keep schools open. Unfortunately, the people they elected are anti-vaxxers and Holocaust deniers who are funded and abetted by larger right-wing organizations. I'm not entirely certain that children necessarily read in actual reality, but part of the strategy of these organizations is to stir up controversy by banning books from school libraries that they aggressively mischaracterize as being anti-white and anti-straight propaganda meant to make children feel bad.
There are all sorts of disturbing things about this, but here are two:
First, I wish the GOP didn't allow itself to be associated with these sorts of nutbags. If you say something like, "Many small business are drowning in taxes and regulations, and it's often an immediate matter of sink or swim for their owners to vote Republican," that's no longer a conversation. These days, even hinting that you might see the benefits of Republican views on the intersections between the public and private sectors in the context of local communities is basically saying, "I hate Black men and gay children so much it's unreal."
Second, flattening the discourse like this means that you can't have a nuanced conversation about books (and media) that maybe shouldn't be required reading for younger children. To give an example, the graphic novel Maus comes from a comics subculture that's performatively edgy and gritty, and there's a lot of stuff at the beginning especially that might be difficult to process for someone whose reading comprehension is still developing. In addition, it's a running joke that the artist's Holocaust survivor father is super-mega-ultra racist, and that's worth talking about. But now you can't have the sort of conversation where you're like, "I don't think this book should be removed from the library, but I'm also not sure it should be part of the curriculum for ten-year-old kids, whose teachers probably aren't equipped to lead discussions about why someone might feel the need to attempt suicide because he fantasizes about fucking his dead mother."
Personally speaking, I think a lot of the "problematic" elements in any given piece of media go completely over most children's heads. They simply don't have the social and cultural knowledge necessary to recognize and fully process what they're reading or watching, so it's not really a big deal. I also feel like the sort of kids who are driven to read can handle mature themes and conflicting points of view without being scarred for life. And in any case, once these kids become teenagers, they'll use any excuse to test boundaries they can find, and it doesn't really matter what they read or don't read.
Anyway, "protecting the children from harmful narratives" is a moot point in the age of smartphones, and I suspect that the real purpose of banning books is to turn progressive-leaning people into caricatures of themselves so that they become walking strawmen. It seems to be working, and there's not much to be done about it save to stay off social media.
https://www.salon.com/2022/02/08/whats-behind-the-right-wing-book-ban-frenzy-big-money-and-a-long-term-plan/
In organizing terms, Moms for Liberty, Parents Defending Education and No Left Turn all adhere to a similar formula, as the Guardian noted. In most cases, a parent ostensibly flags a local school for doing something they consider beyond the pale, such as incorporating "controversial" books about gender or sexuality into the curricula. That parent and their allies reach out to one of the aforementioned groups, whose leaders weave the incident into their broader national narrative. To smoothen this process, some groups provide detailed walkthroughs for parents about how to file open records requests, create press releases, file civil rights complaints and petition school boards.
The way I understand it, the broader context is that parents can't get off work, so they need their kids to be in school. Last November, people therefore voted for education boards that promised to keep schools open. Unfortunately, the people they elected are anti-vaxxers and Holocaust deniers who are funded and abetted by larger right-wing organizations. I'm not entirely certain that children necessarily read in actual reality, but part of the strategy of these organizations is to stir up controversy by banning books from school libraries that they aggressively mischaracterize as being anti-white and anti-straight propaganda meant to make children feel bad.
There are all sorts of disturbing things about this, but here are two:
First, I wish the GOP didn't allow itself to be associated with these sorts of nutbags. If you say something like, "Many small business are drowning in taxes and regulations, and it's often an immediate matter of sink or swim for their owners to vote Republican," that's no longer a conversation. These days, even hinting that you might see the benefits of Republican views on the intersections between the public and private sectors in the context of local communities is basically saying, "I hate Black men and gay children so much it's unreal."
Second, flattening the discourse like this means that you can't have a nuanced conversation about books (and media) that maybe shouldn't be required reading for younger children. To give an example, the graphic novel Maus comes from a comics subculture that's performatively edgy and gritty, and there's a lot of stuff at the beginning especially that might be difficult to process for someone whose reading comprehension is still developing. In addition, it's a running joke that the artist's Holocaust survivor father is super-mega-ultra racist, and that's worth talking about. But now you can't have the sort of conversation where you're like, "I don't think this book should be removed from the library, but I'm also not sure it should be part of the curriculum for ten-year-old kids, whose teachers probably aren't equipped to lead discussions about why someone might feel the need to attempt suicide because he fantasizes about fucking his dead mother."
Personally speaking, I think a lot of the "problematic" elements in any given piece of media go completely over most children's heads. They simply don't have the social and cultural knowledge necessary to recognize and fully process what they're reading or watching, so it's not really a big deal. I also feel like the sort of kids who are driven to read can handle mature themes and conflicting points of view without being scarred for life. And in any case, once these kids become teenagers, they'll use any excuse to test boundaries they can find, and it doesn't really matter what they read or don't read.
Anyway, "protecting the children from harmful narratives" is a moot point in the age of smartphones, and I suspect that the real purpose of banning books is to turn progressive-leaning people into caricatures of themselves so that they become walking strawmen. It seems to be working, and there's not much to be done about it save to stay off social media.
no subject
Date: 2022-02-23 01:55 pm (UTC)I think this is it. I've been teaching literature classes for years now, and every semester I'm lucky if I have even one student who can remember the title of a book they've read outside of class. I get the feeling that banning books (especially physical books) is almost purely rhetorical at this point.
Which isn't to say that kids don't read. Starting around 2017, I've noticed a trend in students "reading" movies, tv shows, and anime by turning on subtitles and watching the video at 3x (or sometimes even 5x) speed. People were really surprised when everyone seemed to have watched Squid Game overnight, but that's how they did it - by speeding up the video and reading the subtitles. I've actually started doing this myself, and it's not as awkward and uncomfortable as it sounds.
Either way, banning books is silly, as is the conversation over banning "CRT." Like, the only people who care about physical books and critical race theory are grad students... and now apparently Fox News lmao.
no subject
Date: 2022-02-27 07:47 pm (UTC)I'm just baffled because I genuinely can't comprehend a life without books. I don't read as much as I used to because video games have taken up some portion of that media consumption time (and also, you know, it's not fair to make comparisons between being a chronically ill adult with a full time job and being a not-yet-chronically-ill high school student, but my brain insists on doing that).
Banning books is silly indeed. (Obligatory snark that anyone on Fox News understands the word "critical"....)