The Failed Campaign To Kill To Kill a Mockingbird
Recent moves to censor the book have come from Virginia, Mississippi, and California.
![Harper Lee To Kill a Mockingbird banned book Harper Lee To Kill a Mockingbird banned book | Photo: Harper Lee; Donald Uhrbrock/Getty; Illustration: To Kill a Mockingbird (cover detail); J.B. Lippincott & Co.](https://d2eehagpk5cl65.cloudfront.net/img/c1200x675-w1200-q80/uploads/2022/06/vignetteTo-Kill-a-Mockingbird.jpg)
People have been trying to ban Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird since the 1960s. And since the 1960s, they have largely failed. In one early instance, the school board of Virginia's Hanover County unanimously voted in 1966 to remove the book after board member W.C. Bosher found his son, a high school junior, reading it. The board gave little reason for the decision other than Bosher calling the book "immoral" and "improper for our children."
Letters to a local newspaper supporting removal focused on the book's discussion of rape, wherein white Atticus Finch defends black Tom Robinson in court from a false accusation by a white woman. Lee herself compared the criticism to "doublethink" in George Orwell's novel 1984 (which the board also removed), yet she wrote that the "problem is one of illiteracy, not Marxism" and sent a check to be put toward a first-grade education for the school board.
Today, campaigns against the book frequently focus on its use of the word nigger. Characters (mostly white ones) use the word 48 times, because that's how many people talked in 1930s Alabama. The word gets pushback in the book on at least two occasions. When young Scout Finch asks what "nigger-lover" means, her father Atticus says: "Ignorant, trashy people use it when they think somebody's favoring Negroes over and above themselves. It's slipped into usage with some people like ourselves, when they want a common, ugly term to label somebody."
In recent years, To Kill a Mockingbird has been challenged or removed in such places as Accomack County, Virginia, in 2016 (briefly); Biloxi, Mississippi, in 2017; and Burbank, California, in 2020. A Biloxi school board member said the book's language made some people "uncomfortable." But not every book is supposed to be comfortable, and sometimes people have to leave their comfort zone to learn about important topics. In the case of this book, those themes include racism, justice, and tolerance. That's why many progressives criticized the Biloxi ban, such as President Barack Obama's Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and the American Civil Liberties Union of Mississippi.
Others accuse the book of having a white savior complex and shallow black characters. Whether or not those critiques are fair, the classroom is a great place to discuss and debate them.
Despite decades of censorship attempts in the public sector, the private sector has met consumer demand for the book. More than 40 million copies have been sold worldwide.
This article originally appeared in print under the headline "To Kill a Mockingbird."
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Cry more sarcasmic, you pathetic little gibbering bitch.
Thanks to Pete Booty-Judge the stores are out of Butt-Salve
Leftists are literally cancer
What do you do with cancer? You kill it. Right?
No, it kills you.
Create affirmative action to support the minority cancer cells, and dedicate institutions to teach other cells how to cancer?
Hey look, sarcasmic is a medically illiterate retard just like he’s a historically, legally, morally, ethically, culturally, and literally illiterate retard.
Be careful not to imbue him with more power than he actually has. The president is not this powerful.
I’ve always taken it as a push against MSM as well, considering how the saying originally became popularized. People seemed to discount the power of the narratives the government tries to push us all to believe until the internet allowed so much information to spread. Also the president should have basically none of the powers that the office has come to hold in modern times, but what can you do? Convincing people to vote libertarian is rather difficult.
Nothing wrong with taking a somewhat dated book out of the classroom. The only reason I’d keep it is that they’d probably replace it with something woker and worse.
It *is* told from the white point of view, showing a white child exposed to the reality of segregation. The people on the wrong end of the segregation, that is black people, merely have walk-on roles.
Since I don’t trust modern woke works, why not a classic like Raisin in the Sun or, if you want a *real* censorship dispute, Native Son.
Nothing wrong with taking a somewhat dated book out of the classroom.
because…. modern published works are so enlightening and chock full of wisdom?
the more we evolve the more we regress. We have past the tipping point
Keller ISD to remove controversial books, including the Bible, from library shelves for review
https://www.fox4news.com/news/keller-isd-to-remove-controversial-books-including-the-bible-from-library-shelves-for-review
KELLER, Texas – Keller ISD is asking campus staff and librarians to remove more than 40 books from library shelves.
“because…. modern published works are so enlightening and chock full of wisdom?”
If you could look beyond the first sentence or my post…
Yeah, but comments are for hot takes!
Native Son is going to be beyond the grasp of the modern American high schooler.
Censorship is the tool of the stupid authoritarian.
My argument is almost always that they should be adding more books to the curriculum not less. I’d be curious how many books a high schooler needs to read to get through these days. It was sort of pathetic even when I was a HS.
Some black people don’t come out looking too well in Raisin in the Sun (Walter Lee and Willy).
So? One of the good things about the classics (who knows about the modern stuff) is that they have flawed or bad characters, which is more true to the human condition than a bunch of Ayn Randian cartoon heroes and villains.
Rand always gets shit for her “cartoonish” villains, but they are more true to life than literally any other author I have ever read. I have to wonder if the people who say that ignorant shit have neglected to ever read Rand, or neglected to ever read a newspaper.
For my sins, I read her two major books, and, Lord help me, some collections of her speeches, too.
Yes, the villains were so cartoonish they made Skeletor in the He-Man series look like a nuanced character study.
So, you support removing ODWM just because of the author’s demographic from the curricula in favor of something more…..hip and Ebonic?
They tried that in Oakland schools. It wasn’t a great success.
Was it too tiring for you to read the second sentence of my comment?
Or perhaps you don’t do nuance, because it’s too boring?
I don’t know about the book, but I must protest in the strongest terms possible the depiction of Harper Lee with a c********e in her hand. Don’t you know by now to airbrush that sort of filth out of existence?
she is smoking a cigarette, aka fag, which also happens to be me, though I am not a cigarette. My husband tells me Im smoking hot so there is that.
https://www.thefreedictionary.com/Fag+(cigarette)
cigarette
noun fag (Brit. slang), smoke, gasper (slang), ciggy (informal), coffin nail (slang), cancer stick (slang) He went out to buy a packet of cigarettes. see tobacco
Collins Thesaurus of the English Language – Complete and Unabridged 2nd Edition. 2002 © HarperCollins Publishers 1995, 2002
3 paragraphs on the ignorant hicks in Alabama and Mississippi and what horrifying racist pieces of shit they are and 3 words indicating that the exact same book was banned in California.
Well, yeah. The people in Biloxi and Accomack were just doing it out of fear that people would find out that they’re disgusting, rednecked racists. The Californians were doing it as a noble gesture, to protect POC from being offended.
Get out of Malibu/San Fran Sissy-Co/Berkley and California’s just Arkansas with higher taxes.
They did the crime of not specifically highlighting people of color as the bravest, purest, bestest people. And at the same time making a white person virtuous? That’s double bad
Expect the rewrite to involve the protagonist being a strong womxn of color, soon streaming on disney plus!
Skin color is the most important thing
Oddly enough Tom was guilty of the rape in the first manuscript. That was changed at the behest of the publisher.
If everything needs to be judged by today’s rules, then I guess they need to ban Romeo (16) and Juliet (13) for glorifying statutory rape.
That’s why many progressives criticized the Biloxi ban, such as President Barack Obama’s Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and the American Civil Liberties Union of Mississippi.
Look at that. Praising Democrats without praising Trump even more. That’s proof that everyone at Reason is a leftist.
Just like Biloxi banning To Kill A Mockingbird is veritable proof that Republicans are racist, but California banning To Kill A Mockingbird didn’t warrant analysis.
Or maybe you’re just an incredibly stupid piece of shit and the reason you get called a leftist is because you have 3 feet of Marx’s cock up your ass.
The best way to engage an argument you dislike is in bad faith.
because that’s how many people talked in 1930s Alabama.
I’ve seen plenty of evidence that it’s how many people still talk in 2020s Alabama. Or does it only count 3/5ths when some people say that word?
Oh snap! Or does it matter if it ends with an “a”?
Barry Hussein said “Nigger” in his tome, “Wet Dreams of my Father” the B-word too, heres the audio book version, https://thephoenix.com/BLOGS/blogs/phlog/OBAMA_FRIES.mp3
This book was cursory 7th-grade reading material at my reliably conservative middle school in St. Louis circa 1990.
I’m a bit uncomfortable with rape references in books before high school, but the only one I read I would support removing from 1st and 2nd year high school education, if not high school completely, would be I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. The description of her molestation is too much.
Reason would do well to actually analyze what is at play here. Because in many cases, it isn’t censorship. Parents have a right and a duty to monitor and manage the media their children consume. Whether Reason Writer A thinks that the consumptive choices of a Parent are prude, or too extreme, should be none of their business.
The sole reason prolific writer (*checks byline*) Jason Russel (?) has reason to offer this shallow and tepid few paragraphs is that our society has created a near monopoly on education- which means that for a parent to manage the education of their kids, they are forced into a zero-sum battle with all the other parents in their district or state.
For what it is worth, I love TKAMB. The stage production at my school was one of the first “serious” plays I chose to try out for, and it was one of the first “unsatisfying” endings I was exposed to as a kid, and the first book where I understood why that had to be the case. I am glad my kids are also reading it. But not because (*recheck’s byline*) Jason Russel (?) says it ought to be preserved. I wouldn’t trust him to opine on the education of my kids from his (*checks bio*) Washington DC residence any more than I’d trust a stranger on the street.
The “censorship” of To Kill a Mockingbird is not the story here. For crying out loud, I can read shallow and vapid “Book Buningz OMG!!11!!” screeds in Vox. The story Reason ought to be telling is how an ever growing government has turned personal consumptive decisions into zero sum Kulture Warz. And the fact that Reason can’t step back far enough to understand that spells a huge problem for this magazine and the libertarian movement.
You beat me to it. The only thing I’d add is that this isn’t censorship. Censorship is when people aren’t allowed to read (view, etc.) something. There’s nothing in this piece about students being told they can’t read the book. It’s only about what’s in the curriculum.
Meanwhile Reason excuses *actual* instances of censorship, wherein books and published materials are actually being pulled from shelves and prevented from being shared on the internet because MUH PRIVIT CUMPUNIES!
You’re assuming they don’t want this place to turn into Vox.
That’s actually a really good point.
And for how much Reason rails on the obesity of the Education Bureaucracy (rightly so), you’d think they’d recognize that nearly unassailable gov’t power over education is the real problem.
“Lee herself compared the criticism to “doublethink” in George Orwell’s novel 1984”
I wonder how many Reason writers have read and understand this book?
As a “how to” or as a warning?
To Kill a Mockingbird is one of hte greatest American novels ever written (even though written by a flaming liberal (not progressive)). That people are still trying to get it pulled from shelves is contemptible.
Almost as contemptible as the fact that there are still people who want to read it.
Now there’s a hot take!
What woke progressives call “uncomfortable” is just real life to the rest of us. Pity their poor life skills.
No, progressives have exceptional life skills, from trying to make everyone else miserable to making themselves miserable.
Odd that no one ever mentions To Kill a Mockingbird is just a horrible book.
>>A Biloxi school board member said the book’s language made some people “uncomfortable.”
Harper Lee waaaay over Mississippi’s head.
In the past Democrats banned the book because it favored negroes.
Today, Democrats ban the book because it doesn’t favor negroes enough.
Characters (mostly white ones) use the word 48 times, because that’s how many people talked in 1930s Alabama.
Can we get a cite on this? I’m pretty sure more than 48 people knew how to talk in 1930s Alabama.
coin flip.
White Savior narrative. Cancel it, and cancel it hard.
Is it irony that white progressives want to ban the book to protect ‘people of color’ due to it’s ‘white savior’ narrative?
Nothing wrong with good white characters helping the nonwhite characters out.
Better than having all the whites riding around in white hoods.
And if the author is white, hey, write what you know! Better not culturally appropriate some other group you don’t belong to.
Why is anyone but the parents in the district concerned what books the school uses?
Just want to point out that when the article about the bible being pulled from shelves was written, there was no mention of ‘BANNING BOOKS’. Weird dichotomy, isn’t it?
It’s wrong to ban the Bible or any other children’s book, no matter how pornographic.
/r/atheism is thataway, kiddie-fucker.
So woke people in Biloxi want to remove the book because of its language. How does this reflect poorly on conservitards?
No no, the Biloxi bumpkins want to ban it because they hate niggerlovers. That’s why they had to have 3 paragraphs dedicated to discussing what lousy racist pieces of shit they are. The woke people in California are the noble ones who want to save the fragile ears of POC from hearing the word “nigger”. That’s why they had to have 3 words dedicated to offhandedly mentioning that they also banned the book.
Great story, great movie, lousy book.
Way too much ink spilled on pointless imagery.
It has always been disconcerting to see how TKAM is treated as a story of the magnificent marble god named Atticus.
The book actually depicts him realistically as a propeller-headed nerd out of touch with reality, blinded by a religious view of rules and law. The fact is that his role in failing to free Tom Robinson just goes unexamined by blaming it on white trash tribalism that therefore requires no further examination, even after law enforcement kills the innocent Tom. Atticus’s shot-gun defense of Tom against a lynch mob is nice, but it is Scout and Jem who repel the mob, not Atticus. And when vigilantism saves Jem’s life, Atticus just assumes that his son will have to now be prosecuted for murder.
I don’t really recall whether the book or the film actually portrayed Atticus as expecting the humble black community to just feel extreme gratitude to anything any white man did for one of them, or whether there (hopefully) was just something like a political note of ‘the enemy of my enemy is of necessity my friend.’
These flaws in Atticus’s personality got great attention in “Go Set a Watchman”, but they really disappointed millions of admirers who had accepted The Great Marble God.