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On censorship and what about the children
Allow me to hold forth on some unstructured thinky-thoughts that have been brewing in my head and came to an absolute boil when I checked Twitter this morning.
The Durham District School Board is currently engaged in a US-style school book banning, and one of the books that it pulled from its shelves is The Great Bear by Cree author David A. Robertson. I haven't read it as it targets a younger age group than I teach, but I have several of Robertson's other works and attended his talks and I can not possibly overemphasize how significant he is as an author and educator. His work speaks to young people, Indigenous and settler, in an accessible, direct, and authentic way. His work is particularly important for young people who struggle with reading. He's an absolute gift to English teachers.
Their rationale for censoring this book (sorry, conducting a fulsome review) is as follows:
In other words, the bean-counters don't like that a book by an Indigenous author might expose children to a specific trauma experienced by Indigenous children on a regular basis. Won't someone think of the children?
If you know me, you know that I'm quite far from being a free-speech absolutist. But I lean more in that direction when it comes to literature, because in general it's better to be able to have these works accessible and critiqued than to remove them from the discourse. And I am very skeptical when social justice language is severed from its meaning, which is to strive for a better, more just world. I am skeptical that school boards are in any way qualified to determine which texts can be taught in service of achieving that better, more just world. If you are so twisted up in your own rhetoric that you silence marginalized voices in your quest for safety, you are on the wrong side of history.
P.S. I am banning the word "fulsome," though. Along with "kind."
The Durham District School Board is currently engaged in a US-style school book banning, and one of the books that it pulled from its shelves is The Great Bear by Cree author David A. Robertson. I haven't read it as it targets a younger age group than I teach, but I have several of Robertson's other works and attended his talks and I can not possibly overemphasize how significant he is as an author and educator. His work speaks to young people, Indigenous and settler, in an accessible, direct, and authentic way. His work is particularly important for young people who struggle with reading. He's an absolute gift to English teachers.
Their rationale for censoring this book (sorry, conducting a fulsome review) is as follows:
Ooookay then. Robertson thinks it's because the main character gets bullied and cuts off his braid. Which is an experience that many Indigenous youth have had. Then he regrows his hair as he gains self-confidence and connects with his culture.An email, obtained by the Star, that was sent by the board to school principals says the books “do not align with the recently updated DDSB Indigenous Education policy and procedure.”
In other words, the bean-counters don't like that a book by an Indigenous author might expose children to a specific trauma experienced by Indigenous children on a regular basis. Won't someone think of the children?
I am increasingly concerned about the weaponization of social justice language to achieve aims that are antithetical to social justice, particularly but not exclusively by institutions like school boards. In order to protect children from ever encountering a negative or uncomfortable emotion, the reading list has to be sanitized and purged of authentic experiences.
In the US, this looks like Don't Say Gay bills, the Critical Race Theory scare, and banning Maus because of its depiction of mouse genitalia. In Canada, of course, we are Enlightened Progressives. So school boards, for example, do not want teachers using materials that have the N-word in them, because that might traumatize Black students. Except that this means I can't use films like I Am Not Your Negro or The Skin We're In, both of which are brilliant films by Black creators and centre the authentic experiences of Black people, and both of which use the N-word. The rhetoric used to justify this in Canada is always about social justice, anti-racism, equity, and diversity, but it's really about legal liability and the result is the silencing of important diverse voices.
Tangentially, I am absolutely fascinated by this excellent post about antis in fandom. The protection of theoretical children (in fandom, this means anyone in their 20s or even older, depending on their physical appearance) has taken on a hysterical tone in recent years, where some people are demanding protection from encountering work that may make them upset. These demands take the form of large-scale harassment campaigns, and notably, the targets of these campaigns are frequently labelled pedophiles.
At the root of most censorship campaigns, the urge to protect children from pedophiles (frequently combined with Satanists and/or Jews, depending on whether the quiet part is being said out loud or not) features prominently. It's notable to me that the "groomer" meme is weaponized both in fandom spaces, by ostensibly queer and marginalized young people for purposes of, supposedly, social justice, and by the far-right in demonizing queer and trans people. Obviously the latter group has much more political and legal clout, not to mention a higher body count, but the underlying impulse and structures are the same. Protect me from the thing that makes me, personally, uncomfortable, by making it unavailable to everyone. And use rhetoric about children and pedophiles to do so.
In the US, this looks like Don't Say Gay bills, the Critical Race Theory scare, and banning Maus because of its depiction of mouse genitalia. In Canada, of course, we are Enlightened Progressives. So school boards, for example, do not want teachers using materials that have the N-word in them, because that might traumatize Black students. Except that this means I can't use films like I Am Not Your Negro or The Skin We're In, both of which are brilliant films by Black creators and centre the authentic experiences of Black people, and both of which use the N-word. The rhetoric used to justify this in Canada is always about social justice, anti-racism, equity, and diversity, but it's really about legal liability and the result is the silencing of important diverse voices.
Tangentially, I am absolutely fascinated by this excellent post about antis in fandom. The protection of theoretical children (in fandom, this means anyone in their 20s or even older, depending on their physical appearance) has taken on a hysterical tone in recent years, where some people are demanding protection from encountering work that may make them upset. These demands take the form of large-scale harassment campaigns, and notably, the targets of these campaigns are frequently labelled pedophiles.
At the root of most censorship campaigns, the urge to protect children from pedophiles (frequently combined with Satanists and/or Jews, depending on whether the quiet part is being said out loud or not) features prominently. It's notable to me that the "groomer" meme is weaponized both in fandom spaces, by ostensibly queer and marginalized young people for purposes of, supposedly, social justice, and by the far-right in demonizing queer and trans people. Obviously the latter group has much more political and legal clout, not to mention a higher body count, but the underlying impulse and structures are the same. Protect me from the thing that makes me, personally, uncomfortable, by making it unavailable to everyone. And use rhetoric about children and pedophiles to do so.
If you know me, you know that I'm quite far from being a free-speech absolutist. But I lean more in that direction when it comes to literature, because in general it's better to be able to have these works accessible and critiqued than to remove them from the discourse. And I am very skeptical when social justice language is severed from its meaning, which is to strive for a better, more just world. I am skeptical that school boards are in any way qualified to determine which texts can be taught in service of achieving that better, more just world. If you are so twisted up in your own rhetoric that you silence marginalized voices in your quest for safety, you are on the wrong side of history.
P.S. I am banning the word "fulsome," though. Along with "kind."
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but I hate the word "wholesome" (all too often used to sideways-criticise material with sexual content or LGBT content)
and the word "elevated" (there's a clothing shop that writes "Jeans, elevated" on their website and their emails and JUST SAY IMPROVED.
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I think we've lost "kind" to the extremists, unfortunately. I had to give up "libertarian" to them in my 20s and I'm unwilling to cede ground on principle, but I don't care enough about it to fight this one. I'll fight harder for "respect," which is on thin ice. Unfortunately, at least in the Ontario context, "kind" has been weaponized to tell vulnerable people that it is their duty to gleefully walk into their deaths for the sake of the anti-maskers and anti-vaxxers.
but I hate the word "wholesome" (all too often used to sideways-criticise material with sexual content or LGBT content)
Oh no! I mainly see wholesome used in a queer context, so quite the opposite.
and the word "elevated" (there's a clothing shop that writes "Jeans, elevated" on their website and their emails and JUST SAY IMPROVED.
That I agree on! although I mainly only see it on baking shows.
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I mostly hear "elevated" on Drag Race.
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a) the author/narrator is deliberately using the racist language to criticise/draw attention to racism in order to encourage the reader to become less racist and/or to say to readers who experience being the targets of racism "I see you, and what you experience is NOT OKAY and you deserve better"
b) the author/narrator is using the racist language either unconciously/unexaminedly or because they actively endorse racism.
I have no trouble with books in b) being banned by school boards,
but books/films in a) ABSOLUTELY belong in schools if otherwise age appropriate.
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The problem is that school board bureaucrats are terrible at nuance and reading comprehension, and are not the people who should be deciding whether a) or b) is true in any given case. The class and social interests of the institution are directly antithetical to the cause of anti-racism and social justice, regardless of the demographics or political leanings of any individual member. To a certain degree they recognize this and that's why they tend to have review committees, which sometimes even include people from marginalized groups, but when they do so it tends to be the most privileged and liability-conscious members of that group.
The motivation of any school board in a neoliberal economy 1) spend as little money as possible and 2) don't get sued. If that means only allowing sanitized approved materials over materials that challenge the status quo, that's what they'll do.
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Book banning as in removing books from the library shelves like they are doing here is more extremist than removing things from the curriculum.
Conservatives in the US like to be outraged by the imagined removal of Huckleberry Finn from the curriculum because the n-word is used dozens of times.
They don't seem to realize that there are many books in this world, and sometimes the books our children will read are not the same ones we read, which is fine.
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They don't seem to realize that there are many books in this world, and sometimes the books our children will read are not the same ones we read, which is fine.
We had a very interesting discussion about that in my English class. We looked at 5 articles addressing the possibility of turning the FNMI literature course that I teach into the mandatory English course for Grade 11. While the articles were all from different points of view and biases, all of the articles referenced "replacing Shakespeare with Indigenous authors."
I did a straw poll of my students. 3/5 of them had read Shakespeare in their 3-4 years of high school, 2/5 had not. Shakespeare is not part of the curriculum. So why bring it up in the articles—in every single article? Because it's not about what the kids are actually doing in the schools, it's about what parents remember from their own school days.
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whitechildren” or other call to coddle the oppressors instead of give equal care to the oppressed.no subject
Can I at least take "pivot" out behind the woodshed and put it out of its misery?
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About the word "Kind"
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There is sufficiently little genuine kindness in the world that we definitely need to protect it from the fash.
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long answer: hopefully coming soon.
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The discussion of "antis" reminds me of discussion I've seen elsewhere of "tenderqueers", in context of of erasing the leather community, groups like TNT!MEN, etc, from Pride
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They almost sound like a reductio ad absurdum of the kids that J*rd*n P*t*rs*n whines about
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Everywhere I look these days, it feels like people are weaponising the internet. We've only had it in widespread use for a couple of decades -- how is it such a cesspit already? :-(
(I'm keeping/reclaiming "kind" for as long as I can.)
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I think some is parenting—I see a direct line from crunchy mommablogging to this—and some is litigation-shy school boards. But I think there are a whole bunch of different interesting and horrifying factors.
For one thing, queer youth of today have had their formative years (in which they definitely knew they were queer) during the Trumpist backlash against the modest social justice gains made by previous generations. They have been told that they're bad and sick and wrong. They were already the victims of neoliberal schooling and a shrinking public sphere. And the last few years have obviously been trauma hell.
But of course there are even bigger forces at work. This is a lengthy video essay that I think is great for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that he wears a shirt that I designed the whole time. It's about the trucker convoy but it goes into the degree to which political debates have shifted from economic to cultural. And with the decline of Actual Activist Movements With Community Roots In the Streets, politics is increasingly a social group. And that's inaccessible for a number of reasons.
The result of this stew is likely a lot of mostly middle class, mostly young, mostly white people without tons of political analysis forming algorithm-based echo chambers on social media and believing that reblogging the correct political line is in itself activism. This is very vulnerable to infiltration from bad actors, and so it's quite easy for a TERF or a Nazi to get in there with "queer is a slur, I do not consent to seeing your BDSM gear at Pride" and have that catch on as a meme.
Of course, young white middle class progressives have always been dumb as shit. I was one once too. The big difference is that I had Movement Mommies and Daddies to knock some sense into me with a book or 10, and that's what I see lacking when you move from primarily real spaces to primarily online spaces.
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Mind you, this week in my life reminds me how much time the mainstream media actually DOES spend cranking up the culture wars for ratings. Ugh.
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One thing that everyone who studies the culture wars comments on is just how much easier it is to get engagement on it versus the more tangible issues that affect us. Which, of course, is a good part of the strategy as well.
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