By Arivumani Srivastava (PO ’26)
Cable news attacks accusing schools of indoctrination, parents storming school board meetings, and bills proposing to prosecute teachers are all byproducts of the culture wars that have enveloped the United States during and after Trump’s presidency. Now, opponents’ have their eyes set on a new battleground: the classroom. Schools have become ground zero for an all-consuming debate spanning from mask mandates to LGBTQ+ rights. However, of particular concern is the weaponization of critical race theory in these educational disputes for broad censorship.
The backlash against critical race theory (CRT) has catalyzed numerous pieces of legislation. Critical race theory is typically defined as examining how racism is structurally upheld by both legal and social institutions in the United States. Community stakeholders who believe CRT teaches all White people are oppressors have rallied to pass numerous bills outlawing its teaching in school. North Dakota and Idaho passed legislation explicitly mentioning CRT, with seven other states outlawing its concepts without outright naming it. While there is an entirely separate debate on whether the principles of CRT should be taught, or are taught to begin with, in K-12 curriculum, the weaponization of CRT for censorship at the local level has led to a much more dangerous result.
Across the nation at the district level, books have been systematically banned and removed from classroom curricula and school libraries. According to PEN America, over 500 titles are banned from districts across the country, and another 500 are under investigation for potential banning. Targeted books include contentious titles, such as Ibram X. Kendi’s Stamped from The Beginning, which details the history of anti-Black racism in America. However, more commonly among the banned books are titles like The Story of Ruby Bridges, Who Was Jesse Owens?, and Beloved. These banned titles are pieces of literature and biographies of individuals crucial to our history that merely include themes of race and ethnicity. The banning of these books does not target critical race theory. Instead, it censors integral stories that tell the painful tale of minorities in America, running contrary to the narrative of a post-racial nation with liberty and justice for all. These bans are a threat to maintaining an accurate history of our nation’s historical struggles with race.
The most common argument made in favor of banning these books is that they make White children feel uncomfortable or guilty for their race. These feelings are often considered inevitable by community stakeholders and policy analysts across the political spectrum when discussing sensitive topics like Jim Crow or Korematsu v. United States, though, and they are certainly not justification for censorship. When students read these books, the uncomfortable feelings that arise do not preclude conversation. On the contrary, they often lead to productive conversations surrounding our nation’s history with race and are critical for understanding the inextricably entangled histories of power and race in America. We must ensure students have access to all topics, so that they have a complete picture of our country’s history, both the good and the ugly. This reconciliation with history can be painful, but even more painful is repeating atrocities of the past. We must ask ourselves: is it more important to protect the young from temporary discomfort, or to equip them with the knowledge to mitigate the perpetuation of centuries of racial trauma?
Book bans do not just undermine a complete and accurate history curriculum, though. Widespread censorship in our schools poses a direct threat to the foundations of our democracy. As Justice Stephen Breyer eloquently penned in the majority opinion of a recent case examining free speech in public schools, Mahanoy Area School District v. B.L., “Schools are the nurseries of our democracy.”
Schools are incubators of civic engagement and producers of our next generation of leaders. If we are going to give schools an esteemed position as the engine of democracy in our country, we must treat them as such. Banning books is antithetical to one of the keystones of the United States: freedom of expression. By censoring literature from an early age, we are doing a great disservice to the next generation of Americans and failing to uphold the very principles we as a nation espouse.
