For decades parents and school boards have been arguing about whether certain books should be available in public schools. Recently, this has been sensationalized in the media as actual Book Banning. The uproar surrounding the removal of certain books from public school libraries is understandable, but is this issue really as prevalent as it seems?
Since the mid-20th century, there’s been court case after court case to determine how much control parents and school boards should have over which books are available for students. As far as I can tell, the most recent case Board of Education V. Pico in 2023 ruled that it’s unconstitutional for school boards to remove books for political reasons. Currently, it’s still perfectly legal to remove books when they raise other concerns. So what are the reasons behind certain books being pulled from shelves?
Researching this was near impossible. (And I spent an embarrassing amount of time investigating) Each source seems to have its own unique list of books that are “being banned” and provides different reasons for why. Are books being removed as a part of historical revisionism like the American Library Association reports? Are books being pulled because they were written by a person of color? Or because of their LGBTQ content? Is this a far-right conspiracy?
It depends on the fucking source. The best resource I could find reporting on the books removed from school libraries was the PEN America 2023-24 Index. (The most recent year data was available.)
I’m not going to lie, after spending so much time combing through the PEN America list, I can completely understand why some school boards don’t want specific books to be checked out through the public school library. Despite what other news sources would have you believe, there is no far-right conspiracy. People of Color are not being silenced by these “bans”. They’re not censoring books with gay content. The reason these books are removed is so much more rational (and quite frankly boring). It’s just a liability issue.
Should public school libraries contain books that promote school shootings and violent hazing? Probably not.
Should they have books explicitly maketed to adult women as pornographic smut? Again ya know Probably not.
(Just imagine the prospective lawsuits.)
% of School Districts w/ Book Removals:
Iowa 53%
Florida 15%
Texas 6%
North Carolina 3%
Pennsylvania 2%
Utah 2%
Wisconsin 2%
With the sole exception of Iowa, which accounted for 53% of the school districts that removed books, this so-called “Book Banning” is not a widespread occurrence. 22 states have no restrictions for their public school library’s contents. Of the 28 states that do, 21 have only 2 school districts (or fewer) that have removed books from library shelves.
The absence of a book in a public school library does not mean it is “Banned.” There are plenty of titles that I wanted to read in school that were not available in the school library and I went to a large liberal high school. I had to seek them out on my own. These students still have access to these books if they’re interested in reading them. They can easily find them online.
One of the biggest arguments I’ve seen is that removal of certain books disproportionately affects students in poverty. This is not true. 95% of the US has access to the internet. It’s not some special privilege to be able to read books online. If a student is more interested in scrolling on TikTok instead of reading the pdf versions of books, that’s a whole other issue. Don’t blame school boards and “conservatives” for their choice in media consumption.
This article would have been wayyy too long if I included a breakdown of the top 15 books challenged by school boards, so click here for Part 3 in the Banned Books Series!
Why are these books really being removed?