See No Evil: Reflections on Censorship During Banned Books Week

By Kristin Billera

September 26 to October 3 is the American Library Association’s Banned Books Week. Book banning is, unfortunately, still a very real problem in the US today, despite the decision in the pivotal Supreme Court case Board of Education, Island Trees Union School District v. Pico.

In Pico, the Board of Education of the Island Trees School District in Levittown, New York, rejected the recommendations of a committee of appointed parents and school staff and ordered that all books which were “anti-American, anti-Christian, anti-[Semitic], and just plain filthy,” be removed from the high school and junior high libraries. Steven Pico, a high school student, brought suit against the Board on behalf of several other students, and claimed that the Board was violating their 1st Amendment rights. The Supreme Court, in a 5 to 4 vote, ruled in favor of the students. The Court held, in an opinion written by Justice Brennan, that “local school boards may not remove books from school library shelves simply because they dislike the ideas contained in those books and seek by their removal to ‘prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion.’”

According to the First Amendment Center, cases subsequent to Pico usually focused on whether or not material was “vulgar.” A 1989 case in the US Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, Virgil v. School Board of Columbia County, Florida, upheld a Florida school board’s decision to ban a high school literature text book because  it contained selections from Aristophanes’ play Lysistrata and Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Miller’s Tale. The Court writes:

“We decide today only that the Board’s removal of these works from the curriculum did not violate the Constitution. Of course, we do not endorse the Board’s decision. Like the district court, we seriously question how young persons just below the age of majority can be harmed by these masterpieces of Western literature. However, having concluded that there is no constitutional violation, our role is not to second guess the wisdom of the Board’s action.”

It’s unfortunate that school boards and parents throughout the country find issue with some of the best written and most important books in our society. Bannedbooksweek.org has published a Google map marking over 120 challenges and bans of books throughout the country, which have taken place since 2007. The site reports that this number isn’t close to the actual number of books which actually are challenged or banned each year.  The “ALA recorded 513 challenges in 2008 but estimates that this reflects only 20-25% of actual incidents, as most challenges are never reported.”

I attended a private, Catholic school and my high school English teacher, Mrs. Josephine Cummings, had told us once that we were lucky to attend a private school where books weren’t challenged or banned and we were actually allowed to read books such as Catch in the Rye or The Grapes of Wrath. I absolutely agree with her and I am grateful that I did have the opportunity to read these books. It is so disappointing to me that students may often not be allowed to read some of my favorite books of all time such as The Great Gatsby and Catch-22. It is true, that many of these books do have references to sexuality or more vulgar language, but that doesn’t inherently make the entire book obscene. For example, To Kill a Mockingbird is often banned or challenged because it contains the word “nigger.” Anyone who would ban or challenge a book that is ultimately about tolerance, justice and standing up for what is right, on the basis of a racial slur (used in way that is a realistic portrayal of the 1930’s South) alone clearly has missed the entire meaning of the book.  These books are considered some of the best books in American literature because they portray certain universal truths about the human condition. They do not gloss over the ugly parts of life and for this reason, they should be revered.  They portray abject poverty, war, class differences, adultery, racial intolerance, violence and even the unbearable awkwardness of adolescence in such starkly honest terms, and this is the reason why these books are considered still considered classics today.

The right to speak freely is not where 1st Amendment rights end. It includes a right to freely access information because without an audience, then free speech loses its teeth. It is trite, but we must remember that the 1st Amendment is meant to protect controversial and unpopular speech. Students should not be exempt from this right and they should not be shielded from some of the greatest literature ever written simply because school administrators and parents are unreasonably worried about damaging students’ delicate psyches.

See also Books Challenged and Banned in 2008-2009.