Monday
Since I’ve been writing a lot recently about rightwing book bans, it’s only fair that I should look at liberals doing something similar. I have in mind a school system in Washington State booting Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird from the required curriculum. The comparisons are revealing but so are the contrasts.
Crosscut reporter Venice Buhain has the story:
The Mukilteo School District recently approved removing the text as a required assignment for ninth graders. Under the change, the district retains the book as an option for teachers who still want to assign it. Three teachers at Kamiak High School made the request in the fall to remove Lee’s iconic novel from the required ninth grade curriculum, said Monica Chandler, the district’s director of curriculum and professional development, told Crosscut in an interview before the school board approved the proposal. The book will not be not banned, however, and teachers may still choose to assign the book in their classrooms.
The attacks on Lee’s classic are not unlike rightwing attacks on their favorite targets. Critics highlight certain aspects of a work as potentially damaging to young people and those stand in for the whole work. Here’s what the Mukilteo critics had to say:
The teachers’ objections to the book included criticism that Black characters are not fully realized and that the book romanticizes the idea of a “white savior.”
The teachers also cited concerns that characters in the book frequently use the N-word while no character explains that the slur is derogatory, and that the word and the portrayal of Black characters cause harm to students of color.
In other words, these teachers are worried about literature that makes students “feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of his or her race, color, sex, or national origin.” I’m quoting from the new Florida guidelines that are being promoted by Donald Trump wannabe Gov. Ron DeSantis. A friend wrote last week that
that kind of statement is straight from the playbook of the left, with their trigger warnings and wokeness. You can’t decry the old canon for all those reasons and then cry “no fair” when they shoot the same (silly) language back at you.
I agree and think that the Mukilteo teachers went about their criticism the wrong way. Rather than seeking out ways that the book has certain white blindnesses—which it does, as I’ve pointed out myself—they should just have said that there are better books out there. Curriculums have to pick and choose which books they teach and a novel like, say, Toni Morrison’s Bluest Eye is far superior. Flannery O’Connor delivered the most devastating critique of Mockingbird when it appeared, observing, “It’s interesting that all the folks that are buying it don’t know they’re reading a child’s book.” In other words, she regards it as a fairy tale.
It’s not a bad fairy tale, with wondrous characters like Scout and Jem and a gripping plot. That it has engaged so many readers over the decades (Oprah Winfrey is a huge fan) should not be dismissed. But as a fairy tale, it sugarcoats the depth of southern racism and, for that matter, classism (note its handling of poor whites). Harper Lee is no Toni Morrison or, for that matter, Flannery O’Connor.
But if teachers want to take advantage of how Mockingbird engages readers, they can supplement it with its sequel, Go Set a Watchman. Mockingbird is set in the Great Depression, and by the time the Civil Rights Movement rolls around, the white upper class can no longer maintain its fairy tale illusions. Calpurnia, no longer content with the good mammy role, has quit the Finch household. Atticus, meanwhile, is freaked out that African Americans are no longer treating him with the deference they once did and has joined the White Citizens’ Council. (In Mockingbird, he has contempt for the KKK, which attracts poor whites; the WCC is an upper class version of the Klan.) Scout, as a white liberal born to privilege but awakened to Black anger, must renegotiate her relationship to the south and to her (no longer) saintly father. It’s a perfect drama for teens as they step out of their family cocoons and start to think for themselves.
In a New York Times column, Vietnamese-American author Nguyen complained that parents underestimate their kids’ resilience when it comes to the books they read (read my post on the essay here). Liberal parents can be just as guilty of this as conservative parents. It’s as though both sides regard children as delicate flowers that must be raised in a hothouse environment or they will be irrevocably damaged. The fact, however, is that we’re constantly reading material that is insensitive in one way or another. The answer is not to forbid it but to address the controversy.
And that’s where right and left differ. The left is not pulling books off of school library shelves or encouraging parents to snitch on teachers or passing laws banning certain content. It is not forbidding teachers from teaching Maus (as a Tennessee school district 90 minutes to east of me did) or throwing Harry Potter and Twilight into bonfires (as a Tennessee church 90 minutes to the north did). In the Mukilteo School District, teachers still have the option of teaching Mockingbird.
Which is to say that the school system appears to regard them as professionals who are in the best position to figure out what their students need. Leftwing wokeness and liberal cancelation pale in comparison to the authoritarian right’s book attacks.