When he thinks of the public library where he worked before becoming a professor, Kerol Harrod, who today teaches future librarians at Texas Woman’s University, is suddenly carried away by passion.
“It was just down the street here,” the man said, pointing to the establishment further up Oakland Street. The duty met him a few days ago in a park in the small college town of Denton, north of Dallas. “What I liked the most in this work environment was walking down the aisles to contemplate the shelves and become aware of all the utopia that emanates from them. »
He continues: “In a library there is a diversity of voices, existences, points of view and stories, some of which may clash on the outside, but all of which here have a unique opportunity to exist, peacefully, in the same space, to be told. And that is what must be protected. »
The beautiful utopia still and always moves the former librarian, even if he sees it more and more wavering under the effect of the conservative and radical wind which is now blowing over the world of books in his country, with gusts of more stronger hitting Texas.
With 801 books banned in 22 school districts by the Republican majority of this southern state, for content relating to gender identity, racial tensions or even diversity, which it considers problematic, Texas is now in top of the list of politically guided literary censorship in the United States, compiled by PEN America. Far ahead of Florida, Pennsylvania or even Tennessee, which are also engaged in an intense culture war against books.
The beauty of free speech is that if you don’t like a book, you can choose another one, or even decide to write one yourself. But if you seek to limit access to these ideas, it is this freedom of expression that you lose.
Worse, on the drawing boards, the local legislature is currently working on no less than 37 bills seeking to reduce access to hundreds of books in school and public libraries by facilitating the challenge or preventive withdrawal of titles present on the shelves. Others want to establish new content labeling systems to better constrain acquisitions. Seventeen of these laws also go further, by proposing to remove legal protection that protects librarians from being charged with incitement to crimes because of books and their content which they allow to be circulated to educational purposes. A major change of course which could, if these laws were to be adopted, criminalize the practice of these professionals in the context of the ongoing culture war.
From friends to enemies
“This is beyond comprehension, sums up from her office in Austin, the capital, Shirley Robinson, general manager of the Texas Library Association. Many things that we thought were unthinkable are happening in our country. Here we are: librarians, people previously loved and appreciated in their community, are now insulted, treated as pedophiles and child exploiters in the streets or on social networks. It’s a tragedy. »
Its first act was played out in Virginia in early November 2021, with Republican Glenn Youngkin winning the governorship, driven in part by a final campaign strategy that sought to demonize certain books from his state’s school libraries and above all to mobilize parents to promote censorship. Books exploring the theme of sexual identity or illuminating racism within American society were in her sights.
His victory, just months after the Democrats returned to Washington, inspired other Republicans to follow suit in several other states in the 2022 midterm elections. to mobilize their base as the 2024 presidential election approaches, as in Texas, where Republican Governor Greg Abbott has raised the temperature a little more by promising as of December 2021 to give parents control over education of their children, by allowing them to have a say in the books that the school system puts in their hands.
He has also called for criminal prosecution of school staff who expose children to children’s novels that radical members of his party call “pornographic”. Blown accusations that hit All Boys Aren’t Blue, by George M. Johnson, recounting the youth of a young African-American queer in New Jersey, one of the most targeted by Republican censorship campaigns. The book entered, shortly after its release in 2020, the list of bestselling books of the New York Times.
This movement is also fueled by the elected Republican of 93e district of Texas, Matt Krausse, who in a letter sent to state library managers a few months ago asked to investigate the presence on their shelves of 850 titles in which the presence of sexuality or racism would make “students uncomfortable”, according to him. His list contains, among other things, the English translation by David Homel of the first novel by Quebecer Sophie Labelle, entitled Sky (Hurtubise). The book chronicles the life of a transgender teenager.
There is also the graphic novel adaptation, by Renée Nault, of The Scarlet Maid by Margaret Atwood, two novels by Ta-Nehisi Coates, strong pen of the movement for the affirmation of civil rights or even an Amnesty International report dating from 2011 entitled, We are all Born Free (We are all born free). To recite nobody else but them.
Harmful simplism
“You only have to read through this list to understand that their intention is not ultimately to ban books, but to make the ideas they contain disappear, and this is undoubtedly what is most disturbing,” says Kerol Harrod. You cannot get rid of ideas circulating in a society by getting rid of objects that contain those ideas. It’s a really simplistic view of things. »
Simplistic, but ultimately damaging to the library profession in Texas, many of whom, under the effect of this war deemed absurd, prefer to leave the battlefield before even taking up arms to fight back. “Libraries are already underfunded places with very low salaries. When on top of that you have to deal with this kind of scrutiny, suspicion, breach of trust and degradation of your work climate, you don’t stay,” says Shirley Robinson.
In recent weeks, complaints have led police to raid public libraries in Kerrville and Huntsville, as well as school libraries in Katy, Leander and Granbury, in rural Texas, to check whether the content of certain books violates the American obscenity laws, recently reported the Houston Chronicle. No librarian has been arrested.
Today in Granbury ISD, at the High School library, they came with a hand cart and carried away multiple boxes of books tagged with “Krause’s List”.
They can do this because the board voted 7-0 on Monday to change district policy allowing books to be removed prior to a review. pic.twitter.com/7ZDhOONnjd
— Christopher Tackett @[email protected] (@cjtackett) January 27, 2022
In the small Texas town of Granbury, activists recently took over a school library to remove books from a controversial list drawn up by Republican congressman Matt Krausse, whose name appears on the boxes. In this corner of Texas, the school board now allows the removal of books from the shelves even before their evaluation by an advisory committee, in the event of a dispute.
Shirley Robinson also says: “We see people retiring earlier than expected, others questioning their intention to study in this field. And then there is self-censorship which is becoming more and more important. Librarians decide to remove books from the shelves themselves, simply to avoid fuss and confrontation. It’s not very healthy. »
“The beauty of freedom of expression is that if you don’t like a book, you can choose another one, or even decide to write one yourself,” says Kerol Harrod. But if you seek to limit access to these ideas, it is this freedom of expression that you lose, that which gives the chance to exercise one’s critical sense, which forms informed citizens in a democratic society. Without that, there is no longer a free society, and this is the threat, this is the fundamental issue that the promoters of this censorship movement do not seem to fully grasp. »
“This is not the first time that the United States has faced such a movement. In the 1950s, a book about the wedding of a white rabbit and a black rabbit caused a scandal in Alabama and fueled waves of censorship, he adds. It is possible that the books targeted by censorship today will become mainstream in the future. Like Elvis Presley, who was considered scandalous when he started out. But that’s no reason to sit back and wait for it to happen either. »
Several miles from Dallas, New York, the Brooklyn Public Library is already setting the tone for the offensive with its “Book Unbanned” project, which offers teens and young adults ages 13 to 21 access to digital versions of condemned books. by conservative campaigns.
“It’s not generalized,” says Shirley Robinson. The activism of censorship groups has increased dangerously, but those who support librarians are still very timid, and this is the trend that we will have to reverse very quickly. »
This report was financed thanks to the support of the Transat International Journalism Fund.The duty.