{"id":1274673,"date":"2023-10-17T12:30:00","date_gmt":"2023-10-17T12:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/?p=448092"},"modified":"2023-10-17T12:30:00","modified_gmt":"2023-10-17T12:30:00","slug":"scholastic-makes-it-easy-to-ban-black-and-lgbtq-books","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2023\/10\/17\/scholastic-makes-it-easy-to-ban-black-and-lgbtq-books\/","title":{"rendered":"Scholastic Makes It Easy to Ban Black and LGBTQ+ Books"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"ORLANDO,\n
People rally to protest state education policies outside City Hall on April 21, 2023 in Orlando, Fla. (Photo by Paul Hennessy\/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)Photo: Paul Hennessy\/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n

The sweeping Republican<\/u> effort to ban books<\/a> from schools could not succeed solely on the backs of fervid state lawmakers and extremist school board members. Reactionary demands to censor books on topics ranging from Black history to LGBTQ+ existence have been abetted by the timid acquiescence of school districts, superintendents, and others in educational leadership. Now, Scholastic, the world\u2019s largest children\u2019s book publisher, has joined the constellation of parties tacitly aiding the GOP\u2019s suppressive agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For its thousands of book fairs in elementary schools this year, the company has segregated books focusing on a huge array of topics and stories \u2014 fiction and nonfiction \u2014 that share little in common aside from not centering white, heterosexual experience. Books on Black identity, picture books with LGBTQ+ characters, stories of Indigenous history and migration, among others, have been grouped together in a collection under the cloying title \u201cShare Every Story, Celebrate Every Voice.\u201d School officials can then opt to exclude the entire section from their schools\u2019 book fairs in one fell swoop. As Jedd Legum reported<\/a>, one librarian called the option a \u201cbigot button.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The policy design bends toward censorship: Librarians are offered the choice to include the collection, but exclusion is the baseline. Book Riot, an independent book industry website, noted<\/a> that Scholastic is \u201cthe de facto school book fair provider\u201d: a billion-dollar multinational corporation that hosts 120,000 book fairs in the United States each year. The scales of power do not weigh heavily on the publisher to bend so readily to far-right pressure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The company has hardly been restrained in its selections: Titles up for en masse exclusion include nothing so radical as a biography of Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, a picture book about the late Rep. John Lewis<\/a>, a collection of poems by National Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman, and numerous kids\u2019 books that dare to show that LGBTQ+, Black, Indigenous, and disabled people exist. In previous years, such titles would have simply been mixed in with other offerings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Book bans have been a major front in the Republicans\u2019 Christo-nationalist refashioning of the education system. According to a report from PEN America, in the 2022 to 2023 school year there were 3,362 recorded instances of book bans in U.S. public school classrooms and libraries. \u201cAuthors whose books are targeted are most frequently female, people of color, and\/or LGBTQ+ individuals,” the report noted. In the last two years, 15 states have passed legislation to ban books in all school grades that relate to some mangled notion of critical race theory<\/a> or anything that challenges racism and introduces gender nonconformity. Similar bills have been proposed in more than a dozen states.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBecause Scholastic Book Fairs are invited into schools, where books can be purchased by kids on their own, these laws create an almost impossible dilemma,\u201d the company said in a statement<\/a> published in response to criticism. \u201c[B]ack away from these titles or risk making teachers, librarians, and volunteers vulnerable to being fired, sued, or prosecuted.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The deflection to issues of teacher liability is a cheap abdication. As a powerful corporate enterprise, the publisher could throw its weight behind challenging book bans and defending imperiled teachers who fight for anti-racist education. Instead, it is making the enactment of reactionary laws easier. That a billion-dollar firm has not taken the righteous path comes as no shock.<\/p>\n\n\n

\"NEW\n
The Scholastic Book Fair is promoted with signs in a hall at a public school in New York City on March 7, 2022 in New York City.Photo: Michael Loccisano\/Getty Images<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Scholastic\u2019s decision is<\/u> all the more feeble given the weaknesses of the book ban laws and removal policies in question. The language of the laws themselves is extremely vague. For instance, Arizona bans \u201cinstruction that presents any form of blame or judgment on the basis of race, ethnicity or sex.” Florida is particularly expansive but no more specific, barring \u201cany training or instruction that \u2018espouses, promotes, advances, inculcates, or compels\u2019 belief in certain ideas about race, sex, color, or national origin.\u201d Arkansas legislation simply states that public institutions are barred from the \u201cteaching or training of divisive concepts.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The laws\u2019 ambiguity gives the state expansive leverage to reprimand and punish schools, librarians, and individual teachers should a prosecutor choose to apply the law aggressively. The imprecision, however, also gives educators and school officials more ground to push back \u2014 especially as fights against these laws continue in federal court.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

School districts and educational companies like Scholastic need not jump so readily through right-wing hoops.<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Instead, school districts have mostly responded with vigor<\/a> in removing books from shelves. Teachers and librarians should not, of course, have to risk their livelihoods, and schools should not have to risk losing funding, in order to keep diverse books on shelves. But school districts (those not already under the yoke of extremists) and educational companies like Scholastic need not jump so readily through right-wing hoops. The progressive-lite ring of \u201cShare Every Story, Celebrate Every Voice\u201d does not drown out the fact that the billion-dollar company is offering up censorship on a platter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The answer to the GOP\u2019s ideological warfare<\/a> has never been to put our faith in private corporations like Scholastic to maintain kids\u2019 access to diverse reading material, just as Bud Light and Target will not<\/a> carve the path for trans liberation by market-testing LGBTQ+ inclusivity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Scholastic Book Fairs are themselves a reflection of an underfunded, unequal public school system, in which a private company sets up shop inside schools to sell to the parents and libraries that can afford to spend the money. \u201cSchool book fairs are a public display of disposable income,\u201d wrote<\/a> Book Riot\u2019s Danika Ellis, \u201cit is school-sponsored consumption.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But for the sheer fact of offering books that tell stories beyond whiteness and gender conformity, Scholastic has \u2014 like Disney<\/a> \u2014 drawn the ire of far-right zealots. Legum noted, \u201cIn recent months, Scholastic has faced sustained criticism from Brave Books, a publisher created to counter \u2018the progressive agenda in so many of today\u2019s children\u2019s books.\u2019\u201d The group plans to offer alternative book fairs to meet more reactionary tastes. Their titles include such dross as \u201cElephants Are Not Birds,\u201d which teaches children that \u201cboys are not girls,\u201d by failing to understand how the constructs of gender, sex, and, indeed, language and meaning work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Brave Books are hardly a threat to Scholastic\u2019s near monopoly on school book fairs, but like every corporation erroneously branded \u201cwoke,\u201d the publishers\u2019 commitment to social justice, even in its most tepid form, goes as far as it serves profit margins and no further. The \u201cShare Every Story\u201d bundle is a dodge, aiding book bans while keeping the market share for sales of texts celebrating diversity. If the company wants to protect teachers, librarians, and schools from the consequences of rightfully defying book bans, it can throw its money behind getting Christo-fascists out of office, or supporting lawsuits and legislation<\/a> to stop book bans and protect educators who won\u2019t be coerced out of teaching inclusive titles.<\/p>\n

The post Scholastic Makes It Easy to Ban Black and LGBTQ+ Books<\/a> appeared first on The Intercept<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

This post was originally published on The Intercept<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Caving to the far right, the children\u2019s book giant lets school book fairs exclude diverse titles en masse.<\/p>\n

The post Scholastic Makes It Easy to Ban Black and LGBTQ+ Books<\/a> appeared first on The Intercept<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1764,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6145,29],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1274673"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1764"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1274673"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1274673\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1277511,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1274673\/revisions\/1277511"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1274673"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1274673"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1274673"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}