As a retired American librarian, I have been aware of book banning/censorship efforts for decades. My primary professional organization, the American Library Association, has been tracking book challenges for decades and, every year, the libraries in which I worked hosted exhibits and programs about the importance of maintaining unfettered access to books and information during Banned Books Week, commemorated every October. In Canada, the Book and Periodical Council (BPC) was the driving force for forty years behind Freedom to Read Week, an annual event celebrated in February. In 2024, Library and Archives Canada, the Canadian Urban Libraries Council, the Ontario Library Association, and the Book and Periodical Council joined forces to increase awareness of this important issue.
In the past few years, there has been a growing movement to remove materials that some factions of society find objectionable from school and public libraries – and sometimes even from bookstores. They most commonly cite parental rights, age appropriateness, and pornography as their objections. In some cases, librarians have been personally demonized, called pedophiles and groomers, and threatened by the states in which they reside with prison if they failed to comply with state and local directives to remove books that those in power have decided were objectionable. Libraries have been increasingly targeted and harassed on social media and in their physical spaces and some public libraries have been entirely defunded. These events are all well documented and you can review some of these efforts in my Libraries in the Crosshairs postings for Canada and the United States.
Disproportionately, it is books by or about minority groups that are challenged and banned. As PEN America notes: “Books are under profound attack in the United States. They are disappearing from library shelves, being challenged in droves, being decreed off limits by school boards, legislators, and prison authorities. And everywhere, it is the books that have long fought for a place on the shelf that are being targeted. Books by authors of color, by LGBTQ+ authors, by women. Books about racism, sexuality, gender, history. PEN America pushes back against the banning of books and the intolerance, exclusion, and censorship that undergird it.”
In my own social media groups related to books, reading, libraries, or particular authors, there are occasional posts about book banning. These posts always prompt a few participants to question if censorship or book banning really exists. After all, they posit, they can buy any book they want on Amazon. So how can anyone say that the book has been banned if it is possible to buy it freely? They retreat into semantics and whataboutism to justify their support for limiting access to certain books in publicly funded institutions. There are also quite a few people who seem surprised and wonder how a particular favorite book of theirs could possibly have been banned. For the naysayers and the ostriches, and for those of us who are weary of endlessly explaining what is happening and why it is problematic, I thought I would try to summarize the issue in this blog post. Others have done this before me and many have done it far better than I. But this is my effort.
The concern over censorship and book banning in the United States and Canada derives from support for the First Amendment to the United States Constitution and in Section 2 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. In both countries, these are fundamental principles underlying our systems of government.
The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution provides that Congress make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting its free exercise. It protects freedom of speech, the press, assembly, and the right to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. Under section 2 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Canadians are free to follow the religion of their choice. In addition, they are guaranteed freedom of thought, belief and expression. Since the media are an important means for communicating thoughts and ideas, the Charter protects the right of the press and other media to speak out.
And, until recently, politicians from both sides of the political spectrum expressed support for these principles.
In 1953, Dwight David Eisenhower, the 34th President of the United States and a Republican, gave the Commencement Address at Dartmouth College where he told graduates: “Don’t join the book burners. Don’t think you are going to conceal faults by concealing the evidence that they ever existed. Don’t be afraid to go into your library and read every book.” This speech was widely seen to be a public rebuke of the activities of Senator Joseph McCarthy in his communist witch hunt. Three years later, in October 1960, Democratic candidate and soon-to-be 35th President of the United States, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, replied to a candidates’ questionnaire in the Saturday Review and said: “If this nation is to be wise as well as strong, if we are to achieve our destiny, then we need more new ideas for more wise men reading more good books in more public libraries. These libraries should be open to all—except the censor. We must know all the facts and hear all the alternatives and listen to all the criticisms. Let us welcome controversial books and controversial authors. For the Bill of Rights is the guardian of our security as well as our liberty.”
According to the Cambridge Dictionary, censorship is the action of preventing part or the whole of a book, film, work of art, document, or other kind of communication from being seen or made available to the public, because it is considered to be offensive or harmful, or because it contains information that someone wishes to keep secret, often for political reasons
So, is it proper to say a book has been banned if it can be purchased from a bookstore or online? There are some who say that the availability of any book for purchase somewhere means that it is not banned. That strikes me as a very simplistic and specious argument and a convenient way to obscure the real issue. The fact is that removing a book from a library limits the opportunities for someone to discover it by accident or intent or to discover it while browsing related sections of the physical or virtual library collections. Even if a person knows about the existence of a particular book that has been removed from a library they frequent, they might not have the financial means to purchase a copy of it. Limiting access to books about controversial or difficult topics also limits what might be produced in the future. Authors who want to be published will start to alter how and what they write to avoid offending anyone.
Many authors, current and past, have spoken out against censorship and book bans. As author Judy Blume, one whose works have been frequently challenged and removed (banned) from school libraries over the years pointed out: “But it’s not just the books under fire now that worry me. It is the books that will never be written. The books that will never be read. And all due to the fear of censorship. As always, young readers will be the real losers.” In a letter to Senator Joseph McCarthy, author Kurt Vonnegut wrote: “Perhaps you will learn from this that books are sacred to free men for very good reasons, and that wars have been fought against nations which hate books and burn them. If you are an American, you must allow all ideas to circulate freely in your community, not merely your own.” Author Robert Heinlein, in The Man Who Sold the Moon, wrote about censorship and the issue of age appropriateness, noting: “The principle is wrong. It’s like demanding that grown men live on skim milk because the baby can’t have steak.” For those who cite parental rights as a justification for books being removed from school libraries, author Jodi Picoult eloquently stated: “we shouldn’t have to relive history all over again, that it’s OK for a parent to decide whether or not a book is appropriate for their own child, but it’s not appropriate for that same parent to make the decision for your child.” Benjamin Franklin wrote: “If all printers were determined not to print anything till they were sure it would offend nobody, there would be very little printed.”
As the late, great American comedian and social commentator Tommy Smothers noted: “The only valid censorship of ideas is the right of people not to listen.” I encourage everyone to exercise their right not to listen to, watch, or read things that disturb or offend them. I even acknowledge that same right (futile though it may be) for parents to try to control what their minor children can see, hear, or read about. But that is where it ends. That individual or parental right does not extend to what anyone else – or anyone else’s children – can hear, watch, or read. At least, until the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution or the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms are thrown out, members of U.S. and Canadian society have the right to decide for themselves what they want to access and public monies (in the form of libraries) have to be spent to support everyone’s rights, not just the rights of some.
As Voltaire, the 18th century French writer and philosopher said: “Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so, too.”
Lifetime musings 