They're Coming for the Books Again
Gaslighting via the U.S. Department of Education
“Often, belonging is first believed when seen in books.” - Mychal the Librarian
The new administration seems to be determined to dismantle all the Civil Rights gains U.S. Citizens have achieved since 1965. Of course Executive Orders are not laws, and certainly, the Constitution still holds the legal power in the land, but the shamelessness with which they are attacking birthright citizenship, transgender rights, and fundamental protections of freedoms should be an indicator of how far they’re willing to go.
The Department of Education has announced an end to Biden’s Book Ban Hoax. I’m not making up that headline – “U.S. Department of Education Ends Biden’s Book Ban Hoax” – that’s the title of the press release on the .gov website, with the dismissal of 11 complaints related to “so-called book bans.”
There’s nothing so-called about the removal of books from library shelves that has been happening around the country in exponentially increasing numbers. PEN America recorded more than 10,000 instances of bans in 2024 on more than 4,000 unique titles from school and library shelves, with 44% including people of color, and 39% featuring LGBTQ+ characters.
And they aren’t just removing the books, they’ve been firing the teachers and librarians who choose those books for classroom and school libraries – not even teaching the books, mind you, just adding them to the materials students have the option to read. Optional, not required.
I don’t know about you, but I’ve always felt that ANY book that inspired my kids to read was intriguing to me, and I loved learning a little more about who they were based on the books they chose to read. Just the same way I can walk into another reader’s house and get a sense of who they are based on the books that line their shelves.
But we all know the real reason they’re coming for the books. Books contain ideas, and ideas are like Tribbles – those little Star Trek creatures that bred like rabbits until they threatened the very safety of the crew. Interestingly, our country and its freedoms were founded on ideas – ideas that have been codified into laws like the 14th Amendment that says we all get equal protection under the law.
Three years ago, a small group of loud parents came for a book in our district and the teacher who had it in her classroom library. They called the trans-centered book “disgusting” and the transgender author “immoral.” They laughed at the trans and non-binary students who were in tears as they spoke to the board about feelings of isolation and loneliness that books like this one could have helped. These parents and adults in our district showed hate and intolerance, bigotry and cruelty, and they did it in the name of parental rights.
Estimates show that around 3% of youth identify as transgender, gender-expansive, or non-binary. In a school district of 10,000, that might be around 300 kids whose gender identity doesn’t fit the cis-gender default. The Williams Institute estimates that about 9.5% of teens, age 13-17 identify as LGBTQ+, which moves that number closer to 1000 kids in a school district who may not ever get to see themselves or their friends represented in the books they read at school or from the public library if groups like those in our district have their way. Our administrators say they don’t ban books, and indeed, the attempted ban of Too Bright to See was shot down by four members of the school board. But book bans aren’t the only way to prevent inclusive books from becoming part of school and public library collections. Even the threat of parent complaints can make administrators so tired that teachers won’t even try to introduce diversity into their book collections.
The GSA advisor at my kids’ high school asked us (the PTA Mental Health Committee) to bring in some speakers for Pride Week in May, and to provide the elementary and middle schools with as many books featuring LGBTQ+ characters as we can to make sure the little kids can see themselves in inclusive books before they ever even get to high school. “The kids know who they are,” she said, “but it’s important that everyone else sees LGBTQ+ kids as the heroes of their own stories too.”
The same thing goes for black and brown kids, for neuro-diverse kids, for kids with two dads, two moms, single parent households, and for every other kind of circumstance, identity, or experience there is. When the statistics show that almost half of the books being banned are about someone not white or straight, it really does make it clear who is allowed to be the hero.
Teachers are not generally the ones banning books. Even the most bigoted teacher would have to be pretty aggressive to reach into someone else’s classroom to remove a book from circulation, and usually, the administrations that ban books are doing so because of complaints from parents (or, bafflingly, from community members). It’s interesting that those same parents who demand that their parental rights should extend over other people’s kids don’t seem to care that parents’ rights are currently being infringed in 26 states where gender-affirming healthcare for minors is banned. Six of those States have made it a felony for doctors to even provide the care that parents want for their children. The Harvard Gazette reported on a study of privately insured Americans, age 8-17, which determined that less than 0.1% of teens are prescribed puberty blockers or hormone replacement therapy for issues relating to gender-affirming care, and zero of them are under 12 years old.
And yet, according to the parents who tried to get the book banned in my district, Too Bright to See was advocating for child mutilation (it wasn’t), and any other book featuring an LGBTQ+ character was inappropriate at best and pornographic at worst.
I love the GSA' advisor’s request for more inclusive books at the elementary and middle school level, so I put together a Bookshop.org list of LGBTQ+ inclusive books for young people. I’ve read a couple and loved them, and others I pulled from the American Library Association Awards lists, the Stonewall Awards for Young Readers, and PEN America. Please feel free to share the list with anyone, and let me know which other books I should add.
Calling book bans a hoax is a fascinating bit of gaslighting this presidential administration is doing, using the Department of Education as its tool. I just wonder, does that mean that the next time the loud little hate group in our district tries to get a book banned I can remind them that banning books is a hoax, according to their president, so there can be no such thing as a ban?
Which means they might as well just pack up their hate speeches and bigotry and leave our books alone.