Book Banning

BOOK BANNING

Conservative groups have been organizing parents on a local level to ban books in school libraries by or about Black or LGBTQ people. These groups call objectionable books about Blacks “woke” and the books about LGBTQ people “pornographic”. The groups have names such as Moms for Liberty and Florida Citizens Alliance. Some have funding from rich people like the Koch brothers and support from prominent people like Betsy DeVos, former Sec. Of Education. The groups in favor of limiting access to certain books, which include by the way books by Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison and Booker Prize winner Margaret Atwood, favor everything from outright bans to requirements for parental permission. The danger to freedom to read and to freedom of the press regarding the currently most controversial topics can easily be broadened to include other areas such as birth control, atheism, socialism, climate change, etc.

(Source: The New York Times, 12/13/22)