Burning Bigotry, not Books -

Taking Classics off the Shelves not the Answer

 Ray Buffington, editor-in-chief

Public schools and colleges, alike, are institutions that were created to educate people, giving them knowledge they lacked before, therefore making them more intelligent individuals and less naïve about what is out there in the world. This ultimately adds to our society a nice piece of non-idiotism.

A nifty contraption, right? I like to think so. I am, after all, paying an arm and a leg to attend college and attain a higher level of non-ignorance.

Tools that are used to achieve this upgraded state of enlightenment include pens, pencils, paper, classrooms, handy people who know lots about random subjects to whom we have issued the title “professor”, and handy leather-bound paper pages with text printed on them that we call books.

Books are an essential to life and our culture. They contain mass amounts of information and history written by extremely knowledgeable people. They have guided us through problems we might never have solved ourselves. They have answered questions we might have had to ponder for hours, days, even years. They have given us an image of what things looked like and how things were “back in the day,” a cultural glance into the past.

Throughout the decades, ignorant conservative groups have fought the usage of certain texts in schools and courses, claiming their content was either too risqué, too against Christian views, or too “liberal” for their innocent, young children’s fragile minds. Who would want to fill their heads with “nonsense” that is factual history, or tales of people’s lives and how they are affected by the trials and tribulations we know as life and society?

Anyone remember reading Mark Twain’s infamous novels “Tom Sawyer” and “Huckleberry Finn” when they were younger? Well, both of these books are on the chopping block for banning and have actually been taken off the shelves of the Brooklyn Public Library, at one point, as well as a few other high schools.

What I don’t understand is why were these particular books chosen for exile? What terribly controversial material resides between the pages of the former highly regarded and classic novels?

If anything, Mark Twain attempts to teach the reader about life during that time, about the issues of race, and about the lives of mischievous boys. Hardly items to shield children’s eyes from.

Pro-book burners say that these books teach racism and a general negative outlook to members of different cultures. I can semi-see where they are coming from and appreciate the actual intent. But books such as “To Kill a Mockingbird” and “Huckleberry Finn”  don’t teach that racism is OK, or that one should go around hanging people. They are merely stories based on the time when they were written, a time when things such as racism were a normal part of society.  

Whether or not a book condones things such as racism and hate, is its purpose not to teach the reader something he or she was not aware of before, or something he or she had never thought of? Maybe give them a different perspective on a certain view?

If we take classics such as “Mockingbird” off the shelves, how is the youth of today supposed to relate or visualize what it was like back when racism was a norm?

Are we supposed to just act like the Civil War never happened? Or what about Martin Luther’s King immortal “I have a dream” speech? Major historical events happened because of bigotry and ignorance. How else are we to explain why a huge, bloody war occurred without going into the details of society at that time?

We can’t. Hence why we have books. Withholding information just because it may be a little uncomfortable to take in doesn’t solve anything. It merely makes the wound of ignorance gape wider.

Having books such as “Mockingbird” makes younger readers appreciate the society we have today, while leading to an understanding about why we have holidays such as MLK day or Black History month.

Books on race discrimination are not the only texts feeling the heat.

Lately, Gerald Allen, a state representative for Alabama, has been pushing a bill that would restrict any book that was written by a gay author, or any book that contains gay characters or any kind of gay-related material from being used in the educational system. 

If this bill were to go through, you can say goodbye to any works by Gore Vidal, Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote, Lord Byron, Oscar Wilde, Emily Dickinson, Virginia Woolf, and Alice Walker. Oh, wait… remember the story of Sodom and Gomorrah? There goes the Bible into the flaming pit of “evil” books.

Allen claims that any type of work that has to do with anything homosexual is “not healthy for America”.

Since when is homosexuality “unhealthy”? If anything, gays take care of themselves more so than straights, putting them at the top of the In-Shape list. And can you really catch homosexuality from reading a book? I don’t think so. I’ve read plenty of books with heterosexual lovers taking the lead of the story, yet I still find myself a hip little homo.

When Allen first began gay-bashing books, he wanted to include the genius playwright Shakespeare’s writings. After receiving much flack about trying to oust the legendary lord of the stage, Allen took Shakespeare off his “to-burn” list and claimed he would leave the “classics” alone. However, he has yet to define what exactly a “classic” is.

The only Alabama libraries safe from this raging-mad representative are public and college libraries. They will have no fear of a communist-wannabe crazily running up and down their aisles with a flaming torch, burning anything that does not agree with his views on what America should stand for.

I find that animosity toward literature belongs only to the bigots in our world. They are the people who either fear what they don’t know and are afraid to be influenced by the truth of things, or are, by choice, ignorant to any knowledge outside of their happy little right-winged bubble.

Here is an idea for those kind of people. Let’s destroy every single book, document, and historical piece of information we have in the world, wash our hands, maybe grab a bite to eat(burning that much information is going to take awhile with a lot of hard work), then start a fresh, new world.

We can act like things such as slavery, wars fought for free rights, and even advances in technology never happened. That way the youth of the world won’t be influenced and brainwashed by past historical events and heart-moving speeches. Oh, and don’t worry about the violence on TV or in video games. You can feed the children plenty of that because those things are not really “real”.