When I see reports about efforts to ban books from our public and school libraries, it hearkens back to the time when I realized that much of my middle grade and high school American History lessons were misrepresented. More recently, I learned of an effort by the Archivist of the National Archives Museum to replace certain planned exhibits that reference untoward acts committed against historically disenfranchised communities with exhibits omitting such depictions.
An article in the Wall Street Journal reported last fall that the Archivist and her top advisors "have sought to de-emphasize negative parts of U.S. history." While she strongly disagreed with the Journal's perspective in an official statement last October, the exhibits she plans to remove represent Civil Rights icons, Native Americans, and Japanese-American incarceration camps, which she intends to replace with the likes of the disgraced former president Richard Nixon.
When a parent complains about what they perceive as inappropriate content in a book, the removal of that book from libraries dictates its appropriateness for everyone else's children. Over the last several years, banned books have skewed heavily toward those written by authors of color or those that depict historically marginalized populations. How would that same parent handle a brown-skinned mother's request to remove a long-favored fairytale from the school library because she disagrees, for example, with its inaccurate representation of indigenous people; or because the heroes and heroines are exclusively white-skinned, blue-eyed blonds, and the foes all have dark skin—representations this parent might interpret as hostile to her child's sense of self-worth?
These efforts to "sanitize" student readings is geared toward eliminating the possibility some children and/or their parents might be uncomfortable with them. If a parent finds a particular book offensive, they and their child have the right not to read it. But why should a personal decision be forced upon others who may not agree?