In a recent study from PEN America, researchers shed important light on a disturbing trend in public education: a massive increase in efforts to ban books. During the 2021-2022 school year alone, more than 1,600 different books were banned in American schools, affecting a huge range of titles and authors.
And while a wide variety of books have been affected by these bans, PEN’s analysis reveals that certain authors and stories have been disproportionately targeted by vigilante censorship: A full 40 percent of the books banned contain a prominent character of color.
Writing in the NAACP’s “The Crisis,” Dr. Phelton Moss describes this disproportionality as being rooted in “an unyielding legacy of racism, prejudice, oppression, and anti-Blackness.” Two different books by Toni Morrison are on the list of the most frequently banned books in the country, while Angie Thomas’s “The Hate U Give” has been in the crosshairs in more than a dozen communities.
The problem only seems to be getting worse, as 32 different states, including Minnesota, are home to districts where organized groups have successfully executed bans. Of the nearly 300 local groups that have been involved in these censorship efforts since 2021, almost 75 percent have been started within the last two years and are affiliated with a national network of political operatives.
With over 200 local chapters, Moms for Liberty—an extremist group that maintains a running list of books they want to expunge—is the largest of these entities. Other national groups like MassResistance, which the Southern Poverty Law Center calls a “hate group,” also are getting in on the action. These groups all have roots in right-wing political movements, take their marching orders from operatives at conservative think tanks, and share their talking points with GOP presidential candidates.
In other words, book-banning crusades are not an organic uprising of grassroots concerns, but rather a coordinated political effort designed to beat back efforts at racial progress. The White, conservative architects of book-banning campaigns have been strikingly transparent about these goals and motivations.
We must be confident, forceful and unyielding in our defense of books and libraries, as the enemies of progress will be just as—if not more—relentless in their efforts at cultural destruction.
Christopher Rufo, a top advisor to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, has been clear that his goal is “marshaling White backlash” in order to undermine public institutions, particularly schools that serve Black children. They don’t plan to stop at destabilizing our communities, though; they also aim to “deny young people access to knowledge of the past,” according to Marilisa Jiménez Garcia writing in “The Atlantic,” paving the way for the whitewashing, and ultimate repetition, of our history’s most horrific moments.
We don’t have to travel too far into that past, though, to figure out why these groups are so concerned with obfuscating the public narrative. On January 6, 2021, just two years ago, many of the same radical right-wing organizations that now aim to ban books orchestrated a failed, violent coup on the federal government.
This upsurge in White supremacist violence, organizing, and political power is a direct response to the increase in public awareness of racial justice issues, emanating from the protests following the Minneapolis police murder of George Floyd in 2020.
The maintenance of White supremacy requires not just a tight grip on political power, but also an iron grip on the control of information.
It is our duty not just to see through these naked attempts at rolling back social progress, but also to fight back. New groups like Moms for Liberation, which I founded, are joining established organizations like the NAACP and SPLC to defend our freedom. In early October we’ll celebrate banned books week, during which advocacy organizations and free speech advocates alike will ask concerned parents and citizens to buy banned books for school libraries around the country.
We need to go further, though. In the coming months, we plan to hold rallies in state capitals where book bans are most flagrant, like Florida, Texas, and Tennessee, taking the fight to the belly of the beast. Because while Minnesota itself is not yet a hotbed for school and library censorship, our complacency only fuels reactionary efforts.
We need to be organized in our support for diversity and representation in literature while acting in solidarity with our LGBTQ+ allies who also are disproportionately harmed by these right-wing political operations. We must be confident, forceful, and unyielding in our defense of books and libraries, as the enemies of progress will be just as—if not more—relentless in their efforts at cultural destruction.
Because that’s what this really is, after all. When the European colonizers kidnapped and enslaved our ancestors, they began a four-century campaign of oppression, enabled by the weaponization of knowledge and the written word. Groups like Moms for Liberty, MassResistance, and others are just the newest characters in an old, racist story.
Every one of us can see through that artifice if we just read past the headlines.
Nekima Levy Armstrong is a lawyer, founder of Moms for Liberation, and executive director of the Wayfinder Foundation.
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