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I feel that the idea of banned books, or censoring books, is something attributed to the 80’s. But, it may not be so far into our pasts.
Police Officers in South Carolina are trying to get two books removed off of a summer reading list because they feel it displays the police in a negative light.
BookRiot first reported it this morning.
The Comic Book Legal Defense fund reported it a few days back, on June 28th.
The two books in question are The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas (Amazon, B&N, Ebooks.com) and All American Boys by Jason Reynolds (Amazon, B&N, Ebooks.com).
Now, I haven’t read either of the books, but thankfully BookRiot clearly showed what the books were about. While there is violence against minorities in the books, specifically instigated by the police, it isn’t about what the police do. It’s about acceptance of what happened and not countering violence with violence. Read the BookRiot post here.
As reported to WCBD news,
President of the Fraternal Order of Police Tri-County Lodge #3, John Blackmon, says, “Whether it be through social media, whether it be through text message, whether it be phone calls, we’ve received an influx of tremendous outrage at the selections by this reading list.”
Now, I haven’t read either of these books, but one of them is a #1 NY Times Best Selling book, and I’ve heard wonderful things about it. I get if you have a book that may be anti-government and quite obviously calling for the rallying of a population, but these books are non-fiction and are addressing issues that are important to so many in an easy to understand format. I find it to be an exaggeration that the local police department is getting ‘hundreds’ of calls complaining about this book. The issues represented in the book are very important. If something is grotesque with the violence or sexual content, that is one thing, but just because you don’t like what a book has in it, doesn’t mean you should remove it from a list because you feel uncomfortable.
Books can make you feel uncomfortable, especially when you don’t agree with what is being written. But saying that it is going to cause violence in your community when you read it? I think that’s absolutely ridiculous!
If your community is brought up well, and you have good families, there is no reason that a book should incite you to violence. I’ve read many violence books over the years, but never once through I wanted to go out and do anything I read about. There’s racism in books and I’ve never once thought about saying, or doing, any of those things that are from books. That excuse, in my opinion, is absolutely ridiculous.
The fact that this is still an issue is ridiculous. I find this really upsetting, but of course, this is just my stance on it.
Do you have any thoughts about this? Do you agree? Disagree?
