Reading for Our Lives: How Book Bans Leave Black Kids Behind
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by Tayler Simon
In the 2024-2025 school year, more than 4,000 unique titles were banned in the United States. Titles like All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M. Johnson and The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison were among the most challenged books, reflecting a trend of targeting books by Black and/or LGBTQ+ authors. While all students lose when they lose access to books, Black students lose access to critical Black history, representation foundational to identity formation, and information on sexuality and sexual health.
Like most people, I didn’t know much about the book censorship epidemic. I was aware of lists of banned books from decades past that included “controversial” titles like To Kill a Mockingbird and 1984. I knew Florida’s Governor, Ron DeSantis, was among the competitors in this weird, conservative competition for who can be the most racist and homophobic the loudest. He is succeeding by trying to rewrite and whitewash history even more than it already is. I had no idea the problem of book censorship is worse than it was during the McCarthy Era in the 1950s where there were coordinated efforts to quell books about communism and race from getting into the hands of American citizens.
I got into this fight when I opened my bookstore, Liberation is Lit, and started meeting with literacy advocates across South Carolina. I met some fierce advocates who were continuing their fight after two parents challenged 97 books in Beaufort County. They shifted their attention to the South Carolina Department of Education, where our conservative Superintendent of Education, Ellen Weaver, was championing a new regulation that would allow the State Board of Education to ban books statewide.
But how does a book get banned, and how did we go so far back into time with book censorship?
What is Book Censorship?
There are four main types of book censorship. Book censorship often starts with a challenge by a parent or community member. The most common form of book censorship is a ban or removal from schools and libraries. Usually, this is done on an individual school, school district, or county library level. However, there are now three states with statewide bans on books: Utah, South Carolina, and Tennessee.
The other three types of book censorship include restriction, or requiring permission to access certain material, relocation, or moving books from being accessible to the intended audience where they can no longer access them, and redaction, or removing certain passages or pages from material (commonly practiced in prisons). The other three forms of censorship are important to note because we often think that removal is the only form. Any form of intentional information suppression is a violation of our First Amendment Rights to Free Speech.
The Contemporary Rise in Book Bans
Moms for Liberty, a group started in Brevard County, FL, came on the scene during the COVID quarantine lockdown. These conservative parents galvanized efforts to end COVID restrictions and mask mandates for their children. Their slogan was “I don’t co-parent with the government.” This group had many resources and money at its disposal through its connections to various conservative political candidates (including RJ May in South Carolina, who has been sentenced for child pornography charges). Organizing from Moms for Liberty quickly spread across the country.
As COVID restrictions began to lift, they turned their attention to books. They created resources like BookLooks to compile lists of books that contained sex and sexuality, LGBTQ+ characters, and experiences with race and racism to challenge. They created tools and rating systems, so book challengers could quickly provide justification to administrators, librarians, and elected officials without even reading the books. With these resources, they could scale the rate at which they could challenge books.
Moving the target to books was a natural progression after the attacks on Critical Race Theory (CRT). Inherently a scholarly and legal framework, CRT was co-opted and weaponized to mean anything that talked about race and racism, including children’s books. Deliberately misconstruing CRT is a part of a larger war on intellectualism in this country where public policy began prioritizing white comfort over historical accuracy.
How Black Kids Get Left Behind
The Anti-CRT advocates were emboldened over time and started directly attacking Black history and any works that promoted diversity. Children’s books like Hair Love and Eyes That Kiss at the Corner are a few titles challenged around the country. Conservatives deemed these seemingly benign titles as “indoctrination.” Books about Black history, such as Hidden Figures and Caste, and anti-racism books such as Me and White Supremacy, are also banned in counties in Texas and Florida.
LGBTQ+ books are also a target of book bans, often equating presentations about gender and sexuality as sexually explicit, regardless of whether there is sexual activity present or not. Even sexual health books that are LGBTQ+ inclusive, such as It’s Perfectly Normal, are treated as pornography.
Oftentimes, LGBTQ+ topics and topics are seen as completely separate issues. As a queer Black person, I often see racism in queer spaces and homophobia in “pro-Black” spaces, as if there is no such thing as queer Black people or our queerness and Blackness exist in separate vacuums. Treating these trends in book censorship as separate issues renders queer Black kids even more invisible.
Here are a few ways you can combat book bans in your communities:
- Attend school board meetings and elections: Whether it is in person or virtually, pay attention to what is happening on your local or state school boards and library boards. These meetings often go under the radar because they are so inconvenient for parents and community members to attend. These are the rooms where the vocal minority gets loud, and officials vote on these matters. Consider testifying or writing to officials to support Black students’ access to diverse materials in the classroom.
- Vote in local elections: Moms for Liberty and other conservative groups are quietly packing these boards with members who support book bans, since many people pay more attention to presidential elections than to local ones. If you have the capacity, consider running for these positions yourself.
- Provide access to banned books in your community: You can donate banned books in your area to little free libraries, after-school programs, or other places that provide access to books for children. You can also request them at your local library if they don’t already have them in their collection.
- Keep up with book censorship news: You can find the full database of books banned and challenged at Pen America and follow newsletters such as Book Riot to stay up-to-date on news happening across the nation.
Book censorship is a tool of a white supremacist, capitalist system that feeds on under-educating a Black and poor workforce to maintain social order. Many Black parents I run into are on the surface in favor of book bans, but we have to keep in mind the bigger picture and how it hurts our Black children. Let’s keep these books in the hands of Black children.
Tayler Simon (@tayler_made_books)(she, her) is a writer, book lover turned bookseller, social worker, and seeker of liberation for all. She comes from southern roots, raised by three generations of love warriors. She is the owner of Liberation is Lit, a bookstore that aims to spark collective action for liberation and community building among readers and book lovers by promoting stories from intersectional experiences. Tayler wrote her first book in second grade but resisted calling herself a writer until she started her own blog in 2019 and contributed to numerous online publications works on anti-oppression. She has self-published four books, Phases: Poems, Writing Our Truths: A Guide to Self-Publishing for BIPOC Writers, Love and Other Forms of Heartbreak and Black Madonna. Through her books, she has made a commitment to radical vulnerability, curiosity, and connection.
