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Why are book bans taking place?

  • Aniya Faulcon
FILE - Amanda Darrow, director of youth, family and education programs at the Utah Pride Center, poses with books, including

FILE - Amanda Darrow, director of youth, family and education programs at the Utah Pride Center, poses with books, including "The Bluest Eye," by Toni Morrison, that have been the subject of complaints from parents in Salt Lake City on Dec. 16, 2021. The wave of book bannings around the country has reached a level not seen for decades. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer, File)

Airdate: Thursday, September 1, 2022

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Book challenges in America aren’t new — but over the past year, they’ve reached a peak. In particular, Pennsylvania is second on a PEN America’s list of states with the highest number of banned books. In Pennsylvania, there are four hundred and fifty six bans across nine districts and the school district with the most bans across the nation can be found in the state as well.

Quinn Yeargain, Assistant Professor of Law at Widener University, said books are most commonly banned because they contain references to racial politics and the LGBTQ community.

“There’s this idea, for example, that exposing white students to ideas of racially progressive politics or the experiences of people of color in the United States and elsewhere in the world is not a good thing, is indoctrinating them, is making them feel bad,” Yeargain said. “A lot of people in the far right have accused educators and gay and trans people themselves of attempting to groom children, to engage in sexually inappropriate behavior with them.”

Yeargain said these ideas are deeply problematic and removing a book solely on the grounds that it reflects a viewpoint that schools disagree with is violating students First Amendment rights.

He said, the people who are trying to limit access to books, can cause an adverse effect, as drawing attention to a book by banning it may intrigue students to search for it elsewhere.

“Schools are meant to be learning laboratories where students explore different ideas, where they challenge themselves or they challenge their own beliefs,” Yeargain said. “And a lot of parents seem to think that students should go to school with the exact beliefs of the parents themselves and nothing that happens at school should change that. I don’t think that that’s how society should work.”

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