Psst! Got Any Extra Kerosene?

 I know of a state that would gladly accept your contribution.

And should presidential-hopeful DeSantis secure the high office, expect conflagrations throughout The 'Union' that will rival their worst wildfires.

When Worlds Collide And Converge

 

While reading the early part of a recent column by Rosie DiManno, as a Canadian I couldn't help but feel a measure of smugness, but that sentiment quickly evaporated the further I got into her piece.

At a school board meeting last month in what I choose to call Bumf--k, Virginia, elected officials dropped all pretence of rational debate by outright calling for the immolation of books they deemed offensive because of sexual explicitness.

“I think we should throw those books in a fire,” declared one councilman. A marginally less combustible colleague chimed in about wanting to “see the books before we burn them so we can identify within our community that we are eradicating this bad stuff.”

While both books, Call Me by Your Name and 33 Snowfish, are critically acclaimed, their respective themes of gay kids and exploited homeless teenagers were just too much for the officials. 

"Standard American reaction," I thought to myself. Next, however, DiManno turned her sights on Canada:.

Some titles in particular have drawn recurring wrath. To wit: “To Kill a Mockingbird.”

Three years ago, the Peel District School Board issued a fiat declaring the literary classic by Harper Lee could only be taught “if instruction occurs through a critical, anti-oppression lens.” That followed a recommendation from a pedagogue, Poleen Grewal, associate director of instructional and equity support services.

That, in itself, is not alarming. I can't think of anyone, myself included, who would teach that novel in a historical or cultural vacuum. Indeed, I used to include a recording of Strange Fruit, as well as talk about the history of racism in the U.S. when exploring the novel.

But then things turned uncomfortable.

The Toronto school board got its knickers in a knot last month, rejecting an autobiography by renowned criminal defence lawyer Marie Henein for a book club event, essentially because she (successfully) defended Jian Ghomeshi in his sexual assault trial.

Hamilton’s public school board announced in November that it would be launching a review of all the books in its libraries — and those entering its collection — as part of an equity and learning strategy, blah-blah-blah. Because that’s all the rage now, part and parcel of a societal reckoning with our collective racist history, to hear tell. The upshot could be not just removing contentious books from the curriculum but from libraries, denying students access to books in which they might have an interest. Which surely is counterintuitive to promoting reading and independent critical inquiry.

Just down the road from Hamilton, a similar process is underway, vowing to cull books that don’t meet modern standards — “harmful to either staff or students” — by the Waterloo Region District School Board.

“As our consciousness around equity, on oppression work and anti-racist work has grown, we recognize some of the texts and collections that we have are not appropriate at this point,” Graham Shantz, the board’s co-ordinating superintendent of human resources and equity services, told trustees, as reported by the Waterloo Region Record.

From all of this, DiManno draws a lacerating and, in my view, accurate conclusion.

Where is all this equity lens forensic auditing of books leading? Answer: to an unholy alliance between the left and the right.

There’s nothing more intrinsically virtuous about censorship, whether it’s coming from reactionaries in a lather about sexual content — gender panic and trans rights the cri du jour — or activists on the progressive end of the ideology spectrum sifting for any hint of historical oppression and white or straight privilege.

The banning/burning of books has occurred in many eras, most notoriously that of Nazi Germany. The contemporary zeal for eliminating books that challenge or discomfit the reader has the same genesis and the same result: the narrowing of thought and capacity for critical thinking, no matter its official justification.

Perhaps Ray Bradbury captured this misguided messianic fervour best in his classic dystopian novel, Fahrenheit 451: "It was a pleasure to burn."

 

 

 

Things Fall Apart

Can a society that regards books as threats survive? I have my serious doubts, doubts you may share after becoming acquainted with the following story, yet another nail in the coffin of the empire known as America.

This tale comes from Southlake, Texas, where many are concerned about the ability of books to make people think, feel and, God forbid, possibly act. 

The debate in Southlake over which books should be allowed in schools is part of a broader national movement led by parents opposed to lessons on racism, history and LGBTQ issues that some conservatives have falsely branded as critical race theory. A group of Southlake parents has been fighting for more than a year to block new diversity and inclusion programs at Carroll, one of the top-ranked school districts in Texas.

Late last year, one of those parents complained when her daughter brought home a copy of “This Book Is Anti-Racist” by Tiffany Jewell from her fourth grade teacher’s class library. The mother also complained about how the teacher responded to her concerns. 

Carroll administrators investigated and decided against disciplining the teacher. But last week, on Oct. 4, the Carroll school board voted 3-2 to overturn the district’s decision and formally reprimanded the teacher, setting off unease among Carroll teachers who said they fear the board won’t protect them if a parent complains about a book in their class.

The following news clip revolves around a benighted administrator with Southlake's Carroll Independent School District, Gina Peddy, urging teachers to provide balancing material for 'controversial issues' involving racism and the like; she provoked outrage when she said that if they are teaching about the Holocaust,  they should also offer students access to a book from an “opposing” perspective.

Fahrenheit 451 was written in 1953 by Ray Bradbury. It seems that in Southlake and many other areas of the Benighted States of America, his horrifying dystopian vision is edging ever closer to reality.