So, I was reading how "To Kill a Mockingbird" has been banned from a number of reading lists because it contains a few racial slurs in it and because of how it depicted victimization of blacks in the south.
Now, this bothered me not just because of my stance against banning books for any reason but because this book really stands out against racism, especially in tackling the issues of a racist justice system in the south. It challenges a time in history when this was a fact of life, and points out all the horrors associated with it. It doesn't paint racism in a favorable light, just the opposite. Are we going to simply not allow the upcoming generation to be exposed to a classic book such as this, ignoring the message of the book due to a few slurs of a racist character, slurs which are obviously condemned in the book and are used to point out why such a mindset is so wrong?
This kind of book banning is bad on so many different levels. The fact that kids get a lot less quality education, the level of intellectual literacy that is being deprived when books such as these are banned is severe. The fact is, there's a lot of classics that were written before we became a society that picks its words so carefully. And the fact is, in the past ten or fifteen years when we have been so, there have been very few brilliant books written. To have such a narrow criteria of what is allowed means that kids today are getting a lesser education.
But there's a much, much deeper ramification to this sort of thing.
They say that you can't know the present if you don't understand the past. The fact is, that book deals with a very ugly time in U.S. History. In fact, when it came out it was banned by good ol' boys that didn't like its depiction of southern "justice". But without being aware of this history, we can't understand the impact it has in the present as well as the future. Folks who have never been subjected to racism themselves, folks that have never lived under the shadow of a racist justice system may not fully comprehend the extent to which it once existed. And understanding that is crucial to understanding why racism is a big issue in this country. You can't explain to someone why racial slurs are more than just words if you can't display the context in which they were once used.
I realize that especially in the south, there would be a movement away from this spotty part of history. I realize why it would be a sensitive area. But I also realize that without it, and without literature to take it away from the abstract pages of a history book and make it into something that people can comprehend and see as real, you're setting a really dangerous stage.
After all, as the old saying goes "if you don't know history, you're destined to repeat it."