Barack Obama released a rare public letter denouncing the “profoundly misguided” attempts to ban books in libraries across the country.
“Today, some of the books that shaped my life – and the lives of so many others – are being challenged by people who disagree with certain ideas or perspectives. It’s no coincidence that these ‘banned books’ are often written by or feature people of color, indigenous people, and members of the LGBTQ+ community,” the former president wrote.
Obama’s comments come amid a wave of parent concern over the addition of highly sexualized content to public-school libraries.
Much of the concern has focused on the book Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe, an LGBT book that has been introduced to elementary and middle-school students around the country. The book, which received the 2020 American Library Association’s Alex Award, includes erotic scenes of men having sex, illustrations of minors performing oral sex, and a drawing of a man masturbating a young boy’s penis.
School districts from Alaska to Florida pulled the book off the shelf following community pushback. Meanwhile, Kobabe insists the book is suitable for younger audiences. “It’s very hard to hear people say ‘This book is not appropriate to young people’…There are people for whom this is vital and for whom this could maybe even be lifesaving,” the author told NBC News.
Similarly, in Minnesota, parents have challenged the inclusion of When Aidan Became A Brother, which explores a young girl’s decision to transition to a boy. “When Aidan was born, everyone thought he was a girl. When Aidan told his parents he felt like more of a boy, they were responsive and fixed things in his life so they fit him better,” a summary of the book reads.
In late June, Maryland’s largest school district began limiting public access to Board of Education meetings due to a growing uproar against the state’s “inappropriate” gender and sexuality curriculum.
“This is an attempt to stigmatize protests and it’s an attempt to stigmatize the families who are coming and showing up to show their support for restoring the opt-out option for parents,” Ismail Royer, a policy adviser for the parents’ group Coalition of Virtue, said. “It’s completely unnecessary for security. It’s just a way of demonizing defense.”
Beneath the former president’s letter to the nation’s “dedicated and hardworking librarians,” was a link to an organization, Unite Against Book Bans, spearheaded by the American Library Association. On Friday, the group held a rally in Chicago headlined by antiracist author, Ibram X. Kendi, who has infamously argued that the “only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.”
In addition to sexually explicit books, many parents have also begun objecting to so- called anti-racist books that teach kids that white supremacy is rife in American society.
Obama also passingly referenced attempts to bowdlerize classics: “[T]here have also been unfortunate instances in which books by conservative authors or books containing ‘triggering’ words or scenes have been targets of removal. Either way, the impulse seems to be to silence, rather than engage, rebut, learn from or seek to understand views that don’t fit our own.”
In recent years, several publishers have been caught re-writing historic books to make them more inclusive and sensitive to modern tastes. In February, it was revealed that physical descriptions of characters in new editions of Roald Dahl books were airbrushed to remove references such as “fat” or “ugly” by hired “sensitivity readers.”
In Dahl’s classic, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the once-hefty kid, Augustus Gloop, is no longer introduced as “fat” but rather as “enormous.” Moreover, the infamous Oompa Loompas, the miniature orange handlers of the chocolatier once called “small men,” are now referred to as “small people.”
R.L. Stine’s classic, Goosebumps anthology, was similarly overhauled to incorporate inclusive language without consulting the author. A character once described as “plump” was refashioned as “cheerful,” while references to the word “crazy” were changed to “silly.” One character who dressed as a “dark and stormy night” for Halloween was stripped of their black face paint.
Reissues of the James Bond book series, many written by Ian Fleming in the postwar period, have been affixed with a politically correct disclaimer: “This book was written at a time when terms and attitudes which might be considered offensive by modern readers were commonplace,” one reads. “[We’ve made a] number of updates…in this edition, while keeping as close as possible to the original text and the period in which it is set.”
For instance, in new versions of Live and Let Die, a description of Africans involved in the diamond trade as “pretty law-abiding chaps I should have thought, except when they’ve drunk too much,” had the latter half of the sentence removed, Douglas Murray wrote in April for National Review.