53% More Book Banning Incidents In US Schools This Year

vikingpower writes "Isabel Allende's The House of The Spirits. Sherman Alexie's The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. Alice Walker's The Color Purple. Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye. Ralph Ellison's The Invisible Man. What do these titles have in common? They are banned at a school in the U.S. Yes, in 2013. A project named The Kids' Right to Read Project (by the National Coalition Against Censorship ) investigated three times the average number of incidents, adding to an overall rise in cases for the entire year, according to KRRP coordinator Acacia O'Connor. To date, KRRP has confronted 49 incidents in 29 states this year, a 53% increase in activity from 2012. During the second half of 2013, the project battled 31 new incidents, compared to only 14 in the same period last year. 'It has been a sprint since the beginning of the school year,' O'Connor said. 'We would settle one issue and wake up the next morning to find out another book was on the chopping block. The NCAC also offers a Book Censorship Toolkit on its website."

Comments

The 21st Century is

[Anonymous Coward]

the new 15th Century.

Re:The 21st Century is

[lgw]

Ellison's Invisible Man is banned? Dammit, I was forced to read that (very slow-paced book about racism) in high school. Hours of my life I'll never get back! Why couldn't you have banned it earlier? Whyyyy?

Actually, that one baffles me: unlike, say, Huck Finn, Invisible Man is primarily about racism: of course it depicts racism and racial stereotypes; illustrating just how messed up we were was the point of the story (the man was "invisible" in the sense that no one ever noticed he was a person, deserving basic consideration).

Re:The 21st Century is

[Rick Zeman]

Ellison's Invisible Man is banned? Dammit, I was forced to read that (very slow-paced book about racism) in high school. Hours of my life I'll never get back! Why couldn't you have banned it earlier? Whyyyy?

LMAO. I thought the same thing when reading the summary and was going to post exactly that. (I think my torture was freshman college.)

Re:The 21st Century is

[SuricouRaven]

Politics, probably. There's a lot of backlash against political correctness - some people would see reading such a book in schools as 'liberal indoctrination' intended to make white people feel guilty about being white.

Re:The 21st Century is

[jythie]

It is hard to say, but keep in mind a lot of regions are going through a 'poor abused white man, any mention or discussion of racism is just libs trying to take down white people!'. There were several attempts to get teachers fired this year because they made 'white male students' uncomfortable.

Re:The 21st Century is

[lgw]

I'd give you odds it's the reverse - that someone searched through an eBook library and banned every one with racial epithets regardless of context.

Re:The 21st Century is

[Penguinisto]

Gotta agree with sibling... most school districts are far more enamored with stomping out all hallmarks of what most of us refer to as the real world.

Can't have harsh terminology, can't have depicted violence... hell, they can't even stand to have some wayward little boy kissing a girl, or pointing a finger at a classmate while saying "bang".

With all the zero tolerance BS going around? I can almost assure you that the censorship isn't coming from some drooling caricature of the "Right Wing" (cue ominous music), but more a result of overly-anxious officials scouring the libraries to expunge anything that could remotely intrude on what they assert is the "best" way to teach a child.

Re:The 21st Century is

[MightyMartian]

So let me get this straight. The way to deal with political correctness is more political correctness?

That's what always amazed me about the Huckleberry Finn bans. You had everyone from the KKK to Civil Rights types demanding its removal from school libraries. About the only thing you could say was that the White Supremacists got the point.

Re:The 21st Century is

[EdIII]

Why wouldn't it make us uncomfortable?

That teacher made no effort to make the distinction between the actions of people in the past, and the young white men in the room. That's a huge effin problem. Let's discuss racism, and stereotypes, and prejudice, but do it in a way that is not racist in of itself.

Do you think it was only white men that had slaves and were racist? Puhleeeze.

Black people can be the most racist people on the planet now. Look at genocide happening in Africa. Christians and Muslims in Syria. Racism, slavery, and those associated evils are not the exclusive domain of white men. Black people sold each other into slavery in Africa. People tend to forget that. Slaves were picked up at the coast, but it was not white men hunting them to bring them to port.

That's what is so damn offensive about those "libs", "teachers", whatever dealing with children. I just call them arrogant racist assholes.

I was passionate about history, but I would have been deeply hurt and offended if there was too much emphasis on white men being the problem, and not enough attention paid towards creating a distinction that the young white men in the room are not inherently evil.

It's fucking hurtful. It creates a divide. It perpetuates the problem.

I totally understand the thinking behind the book ban. The "white man" is unfairly demonized well after we are supposed to getting rid of this shit. Does anyone think it's a really good idea to create judgement and negative emotions in a young person solely based on the color of their skin?

Children should not suffer the sins of the parents. I am not my parents.

Re:The 21st Century is

[mhajicek]

Banned in a school \= banned in the US.

Re:The 21st Century is

[darnkitten]

Have you tried it in audio format? Sometimes a good reader will make all the difference.

Re:The 21st Century is

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a BIG difference between removing a book from the Required Reading List (which is what actually happened with most of these books), and actually banning the book from the school grounds.

Re:The 21st Century is

[darnkitten]

Politics, probably. There's a lot of backlash against political correctness - some people would see reading such a book in schools as 'liberal indoctrination' intended to make white people feel guilty about being white.

I'd give you odds it's the reverse - that someone searched through an eBook library and banned every one with racial epithets regardless of context.

Usually, anymore, it is an organization that specializes in book or curriculum challenges. It will have a list of "objectionable" materials; downloadable complaints; challenges with page numbers and everything included; and all the press releases needed. The parent/teacher/administrator/pastor/insert authority figure does not even have to read the book.

Check out the Parents Action League's Book Alert Page (sorry, can't remember how to insert a link) for an example.

Re:The 21st Century is

[rmdingler]

Morgan Freeman sounds good narrating my grocery list.

Re:The 21st Century is

[darnkitten]

Usually the challenges start with trying to completely ban the book.

Most challenge policies are written to make that difficult, so the challengers then fall back to the position of trying to get them removed from the Required Reading Lists, and finally to requesting exemption and alternate reading materials for students.

Not that you'd know it from the article, or even the article's source article--both exhibit an amazing paucity of information--first time I've seen the summary more informative than the articles

Re:The 21st Century is

[darnkitten]

True, but, in context, the articles are talking about the number of challenges in schools that are in the US (rather than worldwide).

Re:The 21st Century is

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

That teacher made no effort to make the distinction between the actions of people in the past, and the young white men in the room.

It is weird how you got all that ranting out of some uncited event. How do you even know you are talking about the same event the previous poster was talking about?

Seems kind of convenient to me that you would paint it as so obviously one-sided but neglect to give anyone else reading along the opportunity to see for themselves.

Re:The 21st Century is

[Anonymous Coward]

Why wouldn't it make us uncomfortable?

To quote Megan Kelley, "Just because it makes you uncomfortable doesn't mean it has to change."

Re:The 21st Century is

[tpstigers]

"The "white man" is unfairly demonized"

No. It is, in fact, pretty fair.

Re:The 21st Century is

[Anonymous Coward]

In the USA before the Civil War, the majority of slave owners were black people. Our corporate sensitivity trainer said almost 70% of the slave owners in the USA at the time were black people (Owning other black people). To hear the professional racists all of the white people owned black people. The thing is must white people came from people who came to the USA after the civil war. And the vast majority of white Southerners (98% was the figure I was taught) did not own slaves/black people. The lies are told so often and so sincerely that no one will go and find out the truth.

Re:The 21st Century is

[InfiniteLoopCounter]

That teacher made no effort to make the distinction between the actions of people in the past, and the young white men in the room.

It is weird how you got all that ranting out of some uncited event. How do you even know you are talking about the same event the previous poster was talking about?

The parent started off generally addressing the question at the end of the GP and moved on to a more specific personal example in the same general manner. This is not the typical /. "I'll post something that completely derails the thread, but appeals to mods." This kind of thing is emotive, so it's easy to see things through your own lens.

Re:The 21st Century is

[InfiniteLoopCounter]

Of course when I mentioned 'parent' and 'GP' in the above post I meant from the perspective of the post I was replying to, so 'GP' and 'GGP'

Re:The 21st Century is

[Anonymous Coward]

I was about to mod you down but decided to let you actually present your (hopefully) credible sources.

My apologies to the rest if this is just feeding a troll and/or giving air to the delusioned ...

Re:The 21st Century is

[stdarg]

No, it's not.

Re:The 21st Century is

[Anonymous Coward]

You want to make us all into demons?

We'll see how that works out.. soon

Re:The 21st Century is

[KermodeBear]

What? Black slave owners? I don't believe it! Surely this is just another lie from the white devils! ...Oh, wait a minute...

Re:The 21st Century is

[Sique]

Ok, you cite exactly one example, and one that predates the southern U.S. by 150-200 years. And if you bothered to read the whole article you would notice that in 1662, the legal equality between whites and blacks in Virginia ended, and Anthony Johnson moved to Maryland.

But it doesn't make anything about the "70% of all slave owners were black" more convincing.

Re:The 21st Century is

[Pseudonym Authority]

With all the zero tolerance BS going around?

Zero tolerance = zero thinking. It's a way to remove the responsibility out of school administrators and pin it on some other government body, probably one with lawyers. It's a "Just following orders" for education.

Re:The 21st Century is

[Pumpkin Tuna]

If you can come up from your fantasy of PC guvvmint censors, you will realize that these are "challenged" books. This means someone NOT in the local school district's governing body or staff (usually a parent or community member) demanded that the book be removed. And yes, this is almost ALWAYS from the "right wing."

Re:The 21st Century is

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Children should not suffer the sins of the parents. I am not my parents.

Then surely the children should not benefit from the sins of the parents either, right?

I get the feeling you are one of those people who think institutional racism doesn't exist. Some sort of libtard fairy-tale.

Re:The 21st Century is

[darnkitten]

damn' straight. I've often thought that giving kids the option of listening as well as of reading would increase interest and participation in class. I've only gotten through some classics (as an adult) because of hearing them read aloud.

Re:The 21st Century is

[epyT-R]

More likely it's a liberal who wants it banned because it has the word 'nigger' in it. The liberals control the schools these days, despite the neocons' attempts to do the same. Both have narratives they want youth to accept as truth. Both are full of shit.

Re:The 21st Century is

[epyT-R]

Of course, because the left wing decides the curriculum in the first place, so 'offending' books are never purchased to begin with! School libraries were cleared of unPC, 'offending' material decades ago. Both parties do it, and both are wrong, but don't kid yourself that it's only one.

Re:The 21st Century is

[epyT-R]

Of course, just like the answer to what some call 'reverse' racism/sexism et al is more of the activism that caused it in the first place.. Cultural marxism requires one to compartmentalize his thinking, shifting his context every time the narrative appears to conflict with itself or reality. When a conflict occurs, it is the duty of the citizen to accept the inconsistency as faulty thinking on his part rather than a problem with the narrative.

1984 in a nutshell..

Re:The 21st Century is

[epyT-R]

Yeah, because white males aren't human right? They can't be made to feel ostracized by all that negative reenforcement delivered by teachers and a culture that have been told over and over again that white men were so evil, right? This narrative is the most prominent form of bigotry in force today, far outclassing any remaining racism and sexism at non whites and women. Why? Because it's become institutionalized and promoted as 'diversity training.'

Fuck that hypocrisy and the self-serving politicians and businesses it benefits.

Re:The 21st Century is

[epyT-R]

Actually, no it's not. What it does do is give whites and men a reason to hate and withdraw from a society that now openly demonizes them. It gives them legitimate justifications for hatred towards the 'protected' classes. Newspeak 'diversity' is actually divisive. Wow, what a shock..

If you're going for equity in society where attributes like race and gender don't force citizens down certain tracks, rocking the boat and forcing it to keel to one side with a bunch of fallacious generalizations is not what should be done. Yet, this is the foundation of all 'diversity' policy in the law and in education curricula.

Re:The 21st Century is

[Anonymous Coward]

Well stated. There's far too much emphasis on the degradation of white people for things we had no control over. We've become the easy target to bare the burden of past sins not committed by us. If we're going to move on then let's move on already.

Re:The 21st Century is

[blue trane]

Invisible Man deals with blacks being racist. Ras the Exhorter is a great character. Also the Dean of the (black) college tells the protagonist (quoting from memory so may be inaccurate): "Don't you have any mother-wit, boy? Didn't your mother teach you never trust the white man?" There are depictions of a black family that practices incest, too. It has a wide spectrum of behavior in it, good and bad, black and white, all mixed up.

All that stuff about whites being inherently evil is in you, not in the book.

Re:The 21st Century is

[tpstigers]

Society doesn't openly demonize white guys. White guys own and run our society.

Re:The 21st Century is

[epyT-R]

Actually, it does exist. It's proponents include the Democrat party, the SPLC, and the NAACP. Also, the women's groups, like NARAL, and NOW. They are all responsible for lobbying unjust law based solely on bigoted generalizations, fear mongering, and selective truth, just like the KKK would do to justify non-white bigotry.

Re:The 21st Century is

[LWATCDR]

While I am a really tired of PC I do not think that is the reason.
Of course my school didn't ban books. It had a far better solution. In my Jr. High School they had a small book shelf that had books that required parents permission. One of the books on that shelf was Brave New World which I will never understand being restricted since it was anti drug and anti casual sex. It was not a problem for me since my parents gave me permission to read what ever.
In High School they put the books like Catch 22 and Slaughter House 5 in the "young adults room". You had to be in 11th or 12th grade to go in but for some reason it was never open. They where always using it for projects and such. Very effective way to not have the books cause a problem.

Re:The 21st Century is

[EdIII]

Bullshit.

When you are trying to teach something in a room with young people, and you bring up history in such a way that you label and isolate some young people in the room based on skin color, THAT NEEDS TO CHANGE

More racism does not cure racism.

For all of those that do feel oppressed, taking it out on young white men by telling them that they are evil and do evil things, is not a very smart way to move forward in society.

From those labels comes sadness & resentment. From that you get depression and anger. From that you get young people abused, taken advantage of, and then tattooed, shaved, and handed a neo-nazi jacket.

Talk about uncomfortable things all you want. For those children that is part of growing up and I would not want to shelter them. Just don't isolate a group of them and make them feel bad about something they have no power to change.

We can't change the past. We are not responsible for the entirety of the present. We can't change our skin color. Michael Jackson was a one-off.

Re:The 21st Century is

[epyT-R]

Hi. 40 years have passed since 1970. By and large, the so called 'diversity' organizations in society are the largest offenders. The proof is in the law behind 'diversity' mandates for employers, college scholarships, and divorce courts.. The proof is on TV shows, commercials, movies, and music.

Re:The 21st Century is

[EdIII]

So the young white men that you have in class rooms, representing the opportunity for change, should just have to endure your racist offensive bullshit?

You're teaching them:

1) I'm white. I can't change that though.
2) Everybody hates me because of what I represent. I can't change their incorrect perceptions.
3) White people do evil shit. Doesn't matter that I don't have those negative feelings at all. I look white and have a penis, therefore I'm responsible for all the oppression and social inequality. I was born evil and I'm the Devil.
4) Black people apparently do a tremendous amount of evil offensive shit. From murders, treating women offensively, idolatry of the dollar, etc. They aren't personally responsible though. They have plenty of excuses of why that is, and I need to not say anything judgmental towards them to further the white man's oppression.

You didn't even listen to him did you?

You're own hatred and racism is being used to breed more of it. Everything that you ostensibly hate about racism, you push onto an innocent young child.

Because. Of. The. Color. Of. His. Skin.

Yeah... that's going to end well.

P.S - Instead of slamming young white men about how they are evil and deserve to be demonized.... why don't you spend even more effort showing them the success stories of "other" people? Show a diverse range of examples that serve to eliminate the illusory divide between us, and at the same time, heal the rift between everyone. Raise young white men to know that racism is simply stupid and illogical and that the color of one's skin in no way determines their potential worth to society.

Re:The 21st Century is

[EdIII]

Just to be clear, since it seems that I was saying there were black slave owners, my only point was that non-whites were very much involved in the slave trade.

I didn't actually know that there were black slave owners in the US at any point in time, even predating the formation of the US.

Re:The 21st Century is

[EdIII]

How the FUCK am I benefiting from oppression?

You owe me an apology.

You just said that because I am a white male that I *must* be benefiting from past slavery.

I NEVER HAD ANYTHING TO DO WITH IT.

Right there. That's the problem. You want to hold me to account for actions that were never mine just because I'm white and have a penis. How fucking hypocritical are you?

At some point you have to let it go, or we just need to go fucking kill each other in a field.

Which is it?

You want to meet me in a field and I'll fucking kill you to settle old debts from old men that are dead and gone, or do you want to not judge me by the color of my skin?

You choose

Re:The 21st Century is

[tpstigers]

My, but the vehemence with which the white guy is defended! I suppose it shouldn't surprise me on the whitest (possibly SECOND whitest) place on the Internet.

Re:The 21st Century is

[EdIII]

Apparently the very concept of non-white bigotry is offensive to even utter in society. Calling the proponents of it out, and questioning their logic, reasoning, and tools they use to indoctrinate young white men into a culture of self hate doesn't work either.

It's having disastrous consequences. The tragedy is that the SPLC fights to keep track of hate groups when they can't see that their very actions are creating a new wave of hate and resentment.

The pendulum of racism needs to stop dead center. Not swing to the other side...

Racism will never cure racism.

Re:The 21st Century is

[blue trane]

Are the textile workers in Bangladesh who make your clothes oppressed?

Re:The 21st Century is

[EdIII]

I'm not talking about the book. I was speaking to the behavior of teachers using the book in the classroom.

It's not that a book about racism is being read (that can be a very good thing done correctly) only that some teachers in question completely fail to frame the discussion about racism appropriately.

I distinctly remember the story about a teacher this year that got into trouble because she was clearly using language that made white male children in her classroom feel as if they are part of the problem currently.

Talk about racism. Don't perpetuate it.

Re:The 21st Century is

[LongearedBat]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbary_slave_trade

Re:The 21st Century is

[blue trane]

Let's concentrate on the things you do have control over.

Re:The 21st Century is

[blue trane]

The book "Invisible Man" is a success story, by a black author. Read it as literature, instead of putting your own perceptions on it, before having read it.

Re:The 21st Century is

[rubycodez]

http://americancivilwar.com/authors/black_slaveowners.htm
(note, a bit of opinion near the end of that article that the civil war would not have been necessary to end slavery)

yes, sadly many black slave owners existed. however they were not the majority of slave owners. another misconception is that only the south had slaves, the northern states had them too.

Re:The 21st Century is

[blue trane]

So schools should ban teaching about the original language of the Constitution with its "three fifths" language, in Article 1 Section 2 Paragraph 3?

Re:The 21st Century is

[kwbauer]

Yup, us right-wingers are all about keeping little Johnnie from reading Huck Finn because of the usage of the word "nigger". Sorry, but this craziness is a two-way street in real life.

Re:The 21st Century is

[blue trane]

Okay but banning books isn't addressing the problem you're upset about.

Re:The 21st Century is

[kwbauer]

Exactly. Institutional racism means "I can be as lazy as I want cuz whitey...."

Re:The 21st Century is

[MightyMartian]

I'm sorry. I don't actually believe there is a thing called "cultural Marxism". That's just another meaningless descriptor brought to you by the sick twisted minds that insist climatologists are communists and a functional useful government is impossible and no one of wealth owes the civilization in a damned thing.

Re:The 21st Century is

[Anonymous Coward]

that practices incest, too

Just remember, kids, if you're not wearing a condom, it's not practice!

Re:The 21st Century is

[MikeBabcock]

If you can't figure out the difference for yourself, you have issues.

I know my ancestors were assholes ... some of them killed off natives, some of them enslaved people, some of them might have even eaten baby seals for all I know. That doesn't make them me, and the only person who needs to realize that is me.

Re:The 21st Century is

[MikeBabcock]

How do you teach about white people enslaving black people without mentioning their races? I know you can get all allegorical but that's completely unnecessary; history is history and people need to learn to deal with it.

Re:The 21st Century is

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

You just said that because I am a white male that I *must* be benefiting from past slavery.

No, I did not say slavery. I said institutional racism. And it looks like I was 100% correct in predicting that you don't believe it exists.

Does a fish know what water is? As a white male you benefit in so many ways that you don't even realize. Losing unearned privilege tends to really burn which is probably what explains your raging.

Best way to smoke pot and not go to jail? Be white.

Best way to get a good primary education? Be white.

Best way to get a job interview? Be white.

Best way to not be poor? Be white.

Best way to buy or rent a house? Be white.

This water you swim in is as big as an ocean, the problem is that you just don't know what its like to be a fish out of water.

Re:The 21st Century is

[Anonymous Coward]

more interestingly, i am white and my ancestors were at home in sweden and france until both sets of grandparents immigrated in the 1940s. none were involved in slave trade or native american affairs, but as you know, no one cares. even if it mattered who's ancestors did what (it doesnt), what matters to the institutional racists is our skin tone.

Re:The 21st Century is

[EdIII]

Never said I condoned banning of any information whatsoever.

What should be regulated, or in this case heavily punished with dismissal, is any teacher found to be engaging in such abhorrent behavior.

Teach kids about history. Don't do it in such a way though to single out some of them in such a highly disruptive and hurtful way towards their well being.

These teachers should be guiding the classroom through critical thinking discussions. Not going on and on and on about the evils of the white man, with young white men in the room, in a contemporary context.

I spoke to the reasons and emotions behind that particular ban. Banning the book itself does not address the fundamental problem, and the book isn't even part of the problem.

You can shift this shit around as much as you like too, btw. It works with any particular groups of people that have ugly history between them that needs to be healed.

Bringing up the past, labeling and singling out the youth that is our future, isn't a successful strategy towards healing in any community.

TL;DR - Stop being the Hatfields and the McCoys about it and just let it fucking go for once.

Re:The 21st Century is

[EdIII]

You misunderstand like most other people here. It's not about covering up history. It's 100% about the delivery and the attitudes of those that would impart the information to our youth.

First, teach about how we made useless, baseless, and extremely harmful distinctions between people based on their skin color, religion, gender, etc. You don't need to single out white people to do it at all. We can reference a huge amount of history and disparate races and cultures. The Greeks, Romans, Celts, large parts of Africa, the Dutch slave trade, indentured servitude laws, religious persecution in Europe, the Inquisition, the Mongols, and yes, slavery in the US. Teach that slavery and racism are not the exclusive domain of white men, but very old practices that we no longer tolerate in evolved societies.

Secondly, emphasize that this is not how we do it today. It's 100% not acceptable behavior at all. All forms of racism, including gender related behavior. That they may notice some older people still doing it, but that they are not as mature, and yes, have fallen victim to old bad habits. Make it abundantly clear that the children in the room don't bear any of the responsibility and blame for what happened in the past, and they're our future. The best way to stamp out racism is to refuse to participate. Literally, stop thinking about it and it will stop.

Thirdly, be proactive in NOT making racial distinctions as much as possible. When you do reference it, be sure to reference it as something from the past. Anytime you speak about a contemporary person, don't mention race. Children don't need to know Obama is black and the first black President. Why? There should be no value whatsoever in the information, and to find value, means to find value in those racially supported distinctions. All they need to know is that he was/is President, and was a complete and utter fucking disappointment, which had nothing to do with his skin color. That's left up to history to judge though. I have my own opinions about that total pussy.

Fourthly, and this isn't hard, fill text books with examples of great people from all over the world and different cultures. When you show children that our greatest and most revered people came from so many different backgrounds, and look so different, it subtly reinforces the idea that skin color really doesn't matter. You and I know that it doesn't. We need to show them that great people come from all walks of life equally.

Fifth.... DON'T BRING THE DIRTY LAUNDRY AND NEGATIVE FILTH FROM YOUR OWN PAST AND LIFE EXPERIENCES INTO THE CLASSROOM TO INFECT AND TAINT THE YOUTH OF TOMORROW.

I'm sorry. I just can't fucking stand it. When I hear about some liberal piece of shit trash woman (yes, she is black) shit talking and going on and on about the "white man" in a classroom in 2013 with children in there it drives me insane. How dare she harm those young children and inflict her own bullshit on them.

I learned about the word nigger when I was almost a teenager, and it was the most confusing day of my life. I actually told the boy that it was okay. I was a nigger too, as I thought it meant something like nerd. I grew up not understanding anything about skin color, or racism. The more people wanted to teach me, the more I found them having resentment towards white men in the present and then, as ridiculous as it sounds, conflating it and associating it with me.

Then I learned about the complete logical fallacy that was Affirmative Action. Why I was being punished because of my skin color? Why does Greg get all of these things, not because of his accomplishments, but because of his skin color?

No. I refuse to participate in the rest of many people's delusions. I will teach kids about the logical fallacy that is racism and I will do it in such a way that I don't associate them with events of the past.

Racism does not cure racism.

Re:The 21st Century is

[EdIII]

Congratulations.

The Ugly Racist is revealed, and the name is tpstigers

I'm not defending white men you racist offensive fuck.

I'm defending the hearts and minds of children from your vile spew that would single them out and hurt them based on their skin color

In this particular case, the victims are young white men. Yes, I am defending them at the moment, because nobody will defend them, because according to you... they don't deserve a defense.

All based on what?

You're just as ugly and abhorrent as some white redneck 60 years ago looking to hang a black man

Re:The 21st Century is

[EdIII]

What a total bullshit argument.

You are not trying to say that white men are responsible for that are you? Only white men buy those clothes? ONLY white men make financial profit from it?

How much you wanna bet that if we did a study on all people wearing textiles from that country, that it would represent multiple countries, races, genders, etc.?

I got news for you. Practically NOBODY agrees with the bullshit that is carried out to bring us (and I do mean all of us) our iPhones and designer jeans.

You're being a complete fucking moron. Stop. The 1% that have all the wealth, are not a single skin color, and the 99% that are oppressed and taken advantage of, happens to have a huge white male population as well.

Bringing up that over half the world lives in economic slavery to the other half as an example of white men being evil?

Now you are just playing their game. Divide and conquer, and what better way to do it then to incite and perpetuate racial divides?

Re:The 21st Century is

[EdIII]

This water you swim in is as big as an ocean, the problem is that you just don't know what its like to be a fish out of water.

The fuck I don't.

I'm being judged for the color of my skin today, AND NOT TO MY BENEFIT EITHER. You're a fucking hypocrite and you still owe me an apology. I AM NOT PART OF INSTITUTIONAL RACISM AND I DON'T GIVE ONE FUCK ABOUT YOUR PROBLEMS WITH IT. I DIDN'T DO IT. I HAVE NEVER, NOT ONCE, EVER, PARTICIPATED IN THE OPPRESSION OF ANOTHER PERSON BASED ON THEIR SKIN COLOR. I don't really like the jokes either.

If a woman gets raped, am I somehow responsible because I got a penis?

If a black man gets beat up in Alabama in a hate crime, did I participate in it or condone it?

If a gay man gets denied a job, did I deny it?

You're a fucking clueless moron. I'm being told today that I don't qualify for any kind of social assistance whatsoever for my lack of employment and medical conditions because I'm white, mid 30s, and I have a penis.

I worked damn hard for my education. At the moment, things are pretty damn tough. I probably fall into the poor category now after losing my primary house, and my investment house that I was renting. Worked damn hard to go full doc on it too, so fuck you if you think I got it somehow by oppressing the "minorities". I got them through hard work, keeping my credit score way up (paying my fucking bills on time), and suffering. I went without many days to save for a better future.

When I moved into a condo afterwards, I got punished like a mother fucker for my credit and had to shell out over a thousand dollars in non refundable fees. My whiteness did not save my cracka ass that day.

In the last couple of months volunteering at homeless shelters I personally witnessed that white men were TOLD TO GO TO THE BACK OF THE LINE. No shit. Told... by a black priest. They were last in line to get food. The woman and children I understand, but white men don't get shit. So if you do become homeless and poor, god fucking help you if you are white and have a penis. Society apparently looks at you like a demon that can't protect itself, and now is the time to take out all the rage on it.

What fucking world do you live in?

Apparently your world continually tells me that some fucking mythical white superhero brigade exists that will pull me aside anytime I get into trouble with easy money, less consequences for my actions, and preferential treatment.

That's not my world. My entire life I've been told that I am at the back of the line for any kind of assistance. That people with a different skin color than me deserve, solely based on their skin color, preferential treatment.

No, my world has shown me that I get treated worse predicated on a simple idea that my life somehow made better by being white.

Prove me wrong you insufferable asshole. I dare you. Show up my front door tomorrow with that fabulous wealth, opportunities, and hot women that are begging to be draped over my white male shoulders for nothing.

Please. I'm waiting for my white power world. Where is it?

It is, in fact you, that is oppressing me. Why? Cuz I'm white right? Right? Am I right?

Re:The 21st Century is

[EdIII]

Stop bringing up bullshit that has nothing to do with white people.

There are plenty of black people that have said nasty things about immigrants as well. Heck, even Mexican Americans say that shit sometimes. It's even more tragic when an Irish person says it.

All of those examples you post, speak to ALL Americans. Not just white people.

Re:The 21st Century is

[EdIII]

This whole thing started because I responded to a post where the reasons behind the ban were said to be unreasonable.

Banning the book doesn't help, but the negative bullshit that prompted the ban should be explored, as it is a genuine problem that needs to be addressed.

Re:The 21st Century is

[EdIII]

If you can't figure out the difference for yourself, you have issues.

What issues do I have, and what difference can I not figure out?

That doesn't make them me, and the only person who needs to realize that is me

No. Everyone else needs to realize it too, or they will blame problems in the present on you based on that skin color or ancestry.

To flip it around, what you are saying is that a young black man 80 years ago only needed to realize for himself that his skin color made no difference. We know that's not true. It was very important for everyone else in our society to realize it too.

It's personal to me because I'm part Native American. I've traced my ancestry through the Cherokee and Lakota. Yet, the only thing about me that people take away from a picture is "white man".

I don't like it. I can't do anything about my skin color or how I was born with a penis. All I ask is that I am not judged based on my skin color. Yet, very much, that is exactly what I find in my society today. I don't want young white men to grow up with that pain either.

We should be able to get past all of this, and I'm so sick and tired of the white man bashing. Not because I am white, but because it's so counterproductive and stupid.

Re:The 21st Century is

[Anubis IV]

Exactly the same for me. I was going to post that too. I remember suffering through that book and coming out the other end glad that I was done and wouldn't have to read it again. Same goes for several other books I was forced to read.

Even so, I'm glad to hear that these are isolated incidents of banned books, and that even the ones I may not like are not being banned in any sort of appreciable way. 49 cases across the entire nation is not exactly a huge deal, considering that's several orders of magnitude lower than the number of schools we have, even if it is a 53% increase over last year.

Re:The 21st Century is

[tlambert]

I'm sorry. I don't actually believe there is a thing called "cultural Marxism".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Marxism

Actually, it dates back to at least 1933, although I'm going to guess that given the context, the GP is probably referring to Antonio Gramsci and the Frankfurt School and its influence in Britain during the 1960's during "The Cultural Revlution", which drove a lot of the adoption of the P.C. mindset in institutions of higher learning.

BTW: the adoption of the term and its application by conservatives pretty much owes itself to the William S. Lind book "Who stole our culture?", and is rarely used by conservative thinkers outside his clique.

Re:The 21st Century is

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, are you using his grocery list service as well?

Re:The 21st Century is

[tlambert]

While I am a really tired of PC I do not think that is the reason.
Of course my school didn't ban books. It had a far better solution. In my Jr. High School they had a small book shelf that had books that required parents permission. One of the books on that shelf was Brave New World which I will never understand being restricted since it was anti drug and anti casual sex. It was not a problem for me since my parents gave me permission to read what ever.

Uh... Brave New World is all about sex, drugs, and shallow relationships. One of the plot points centered around one of the characters mis-dialing her birth control device (her "Malthusian belt"), and any message to the contrary was only by way of negative examples. It was also about the consequence to a society which had effectively "banned God". Another plot point revolves around Shakespeare's works having gotten banned, and so anyone whose into banning books in the first place would probably have as much love for their act being vilified as they do for Fahrenheit 451. I could see both sides coming down hard on that one (Liberals for the pro-religion message, conservatives for the sex and Soma, both for the anti-banning message).

I read Silas Marner in 3rd grade, only finding out afterward that I wasn't supposed to have been allowed that book at that age, and went on to strike a deal with the bookmobile lady to let me check out more books at higher levels of difficulty than I was "supposed to be reading", since I went through about one a day over the summer, and the bookmobile was a once a week thing. I still average a book a day, but make most of that up on the weekends. I'm betting Silas Marner's plot pisses off Objectivists.

There really is no excuse for the banning of books, and most of the reasoning for bans involves politics and criticism of government officials.

Re:The 21st Century is

[reve_etrange]

Invisible Man is one of my favorite books. Isn't about time you started stealing electricity and smoking joints to Satchmo?

Re:The 21st Century is

[vakuona]

But you benefit today from the actions of the white oppressors in the past, some of whom may have been your ancestors.

You probably had the privilege of a certain amount of wealth that allowed you to go a good school, whether by virtue of the location you could live in, or by virtue of the wealth of your parents, and that allowed you certain advantages over black people. Yes, some black people are wealthier than you (I am sure there are no (or very few) billionaires lurking around on slashdot, but on the whole, you are better off than many black people and mostly by virtue of the fact that you are white.

So protest all you want, but that racism in the past continues to ensure that you are very likely to be better off than black people _today_, whether or not you harbour any racist views.

Unless you believe black people to be fundamentally more criminal and law breaking than white people, how else do you explain the fact that black men make up 40% of the male prison population while being only 13% of the total male population in the USA.

The odds are stacked in your favour as a white person, for historical reasons, and largely to do with race. That is a fact.

The fact that it isn't of your doing does not mean that it is not something to be addressed. You can think of it as being in possession of stolen goods, and yet being allowed to keep them. That is what white privilege is.

Re:The 21st Century is

[SuricouRaven]

Brave New World ran into the problem of trying to write a dystopia which, upon further consideration, actually looks like a very nice world to live in. Sure, it may be a bit oppressive to some... but the standard of living is ridiculously luxurious, crime is all but unheard of, unemployment is barely even imaginable and overall the people are very happy there.

Re:The 21st Century is

[supercrisp]

I'm sure what you describe happens. I'm also sure--because I've been in the classroom as student or teacher--that a lot of young white men get butthurt when the concept of white, male privilege is broached in the least way. Some guys at that point will immediately holler that they're being oppressed. As a teacher, I will be the first to admit that K-12 and college are filled with horrible, ignorant, non-thinking, reactionary teachers of all political stripes. But we've done that to ourselves. In all the states I've taught in (at the college level), K-12 teachers start out and often continue to earn at the same level as a non-experienced starting line worker in a non-union auto-plant, about $32-34k a year. You're not going to get intelligent people with that sort of cash. And then there are the "education" programs out there that teach tons of nonsense (which is only superseded by the sort of nonsense peddled by the home-schooling industry). Anyway: sure, some teachers suck and are bullies when it comes to race. But in my experience it's far more often that complaining student is a whiner. (I don't use this blunt tone in class. I prefer to slowly encourage the precious little snowflakes to think, rather than to alienate them by speaking to them like the adults they think they are.)

Re:The 21st Century is

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Does a fish know what water is? As a white male you benefit in so many ways that you don't even realize.

The fuck I don't.

Yeah you do, and the fact that your rant completely misses the point I'm making is an excellent demonstration of the principle. You are all arguing about how it isn't by your direct hand that anyone else suffers, which is not the point at all. It might be true, I doubt it, the amount of rage you project suggests otherwise, but even if it is true it doesn't have a thing to do with the benefits you automatically and silently receive for simply being a white male in the USA.

Re:The 21st Century is

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

http://americancivilwar.com/authors/black_slaveowners.htm

Lol, Robert Grooms, favorite of the aryan hate websites and pretty much completely uncredentialed as a historian.

The problem is that the existence of non-white slave owners doesn't say anything meaningful about racism in the US. If there had been any significant number of white slaves, then that would be something to talk about.

And yes, I'm sure someone will dig up reference to a handful of irish slaves that were sentenced to bondage back in England being brought to the US colonies long before the black slave trade was common place. That being the equivalent of comparing a drop of water to a lake won't be particularly meaningful either.

Re:The 21st Century is

[LWATCDR]

That is what is so odd. None of those books are banned in the US. What is happening is a school saying this book is not appropriate to be in the school. Nothing is stopping anyone from reading the books if they want to. While the choices for removal are all debatable as far as this being censorship or book banning it is about as mild as a form of censorship as one can imagine.

Re:The 21st Century is

[LWATCDR]

Wow and yet it is place I would not want to live since their is no real freedom.

Re:The 21st Century is

[bkcallahan]

If I could only get him to read my code aloud...

Re: The 21st Century is

[Anonymous Coward]

That is what I find strange about "Brave New World", some people think it's more of a utopia, whereas I found it a scarier vision than 1984...

Re:The 21st Century is

[Bartles]

Yes, and the way to deal with racism is with more racism, fascism with more fascism, security with more security. Activists always become what they are trying to stamp out. We need to move beyond the activist society.

Re:The 21st Century is

[Bartles]

No, they need to teach it more. That is the most commonly misunderstood portion of the constitution, and I suspect that if the constitution is taught at all it is the most commonly mistaught clause. We would have been much better off as a country if it had been zero fifths, short of full citizenship and abolition of course..

Re:The 21st Century is

[rochrist]

Yeah, I'm pretty sure the liberals have ironclad control of the schools in Kansas and Texas for example. Oh, wait....

Re:The 21st Century is

[rochrist]

Sure didn't cure you. I think you protest too much.

Re:The 21st Century is

[rochrist]

This. The notion of the poor oppressed white man is a sad joke.

Re:The 21st Century is

[rochrist]

So you can't address the actual point, is that it?

Re:The 21st Century is

[Kielistic]

The past brought the present. Nobody has a problem with that. What are your suggestions for helping this situation? Droning on about white privilege(TM) and trying to implicate guilt on people based on their skin colour may make you feel righteous but it does nothing actually helpful. Do you propose redistributing wealth based on skin colour?

The odds are stacked in my favour because I am a person living in a western nation and the western nations were best positioned to take advantage of the industrial revolution when it occurred.

The fact that it isn't of your doing does not mean that it is not something to be addressed

Then address it!

You can think of it as being in possession of stolen goods, and yet being allowed to keep them. That is what white privilege is.

This shit doesn't address anything and is in fact the problem. It assigns blame and guilt based on skin colour. Do only white people have ancestors that took things by force? It divides people and makes racial tension skyrocket and doesn't even hint at a solution. Should white people have everything stripped from them and get shipped back to Europe? That seems to be what you are implying.

This white privilege meme is so oft repeated and so incorrectly because it makes the sayer feel so much better than everyone around them. And some people just love being self-righteous.

Re:The 21st Century is

[Anonymous Coward]

Racism, slavery, and those associated evils are not the exclusive domain of white men.

Indeed, slavery has existing in many cultures throughout history.

It is certainly not just African-Americas that were enslaved, either.

The word "slave" itself comes from "Slav" and refers to the enslavement of Slavic peoples in the slave trade between the Vikings, the House of Islam (Arabs and other peoples, including Africans), and the Byzantines. The Vikings also enslaved the Irish and the Anglo-Saxon / Frankish peoples. Millions of Europeans were taken to Africa and enslaved over the many centuries of the Mediterranean slave trade (considerably more people than were taken across the Atlantic to North and South America and the Caribbean). These slaves were owned by Arabs and other Africans (slave owners of these "white" Europeans included many of those we now call "black").

Many societies deeper in Africa kept slaves of their own, independent of this trade.

There are lots more examples. The Greeks of Athens used slaves in the famous silver mines that funded their "Democracy". The Celts traded slaves to the Romans for wine. The Chinese enslaved people for violation of the law codes created by the "Legalists", many of whom died working on building projects such as the Great Wall or the tomb of the First Emperor. Earlier Chinese even engaged in human sacrifice of slaves, who would be killed and placed in the tombs of their dead former masters. Doubtless many other early peoples did the same.

Slavery was common in much of Central Asia, including India, for many periods of history, and increased with Islamic rule (the Koran permits slavery, but also encourages the manumission of slaves). The Spanish enslaved the natives of South and Central America, forcing them to work in the mines, often to their deaths (a point which apparently escaped the notice of the US Government when it stole the treasure of the Nuestra Senora de las Mercedes from the people that discovered the lost ship, and gave that treasure to Spain in 2007).

The Japanese enslaved the Ainu in ancient times, and in more modern times (prior to and during WW2) enslaved Koreans and others from East Asia. The Soviet Communists enslaved millions of people during the 20th Century, working them to death in the Gulags and the gold mines. Enslavement of females of all skin colors exists to this day in some parts of the world, where they are forced to serve as concubines or in brothels.

These kinds of facts are well known to those who study history or archaeology, and are discussed in countless textbooks and journal articles. There are plenty of sources for those with an interest in getting more information on this subject. For those that don't have much background in history or archaeology (i.e. most Slashdot readers), it wouldn't hurt to do a little "lifetime learning" -- real history has little if anything to do with memorizing dates.

Racism and similar prejudices are even more common throughout human history than slavery is, but I'll leave that discussion for another day...

Children should not suffer the sins of the parents. I am not my parents.

In all likelihood, most human beings alive today have ancestors that were slaves at one point in history. We can't compensate everybody for the evils of the past.

Re:The 21st Century is

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course my school didn't ban books. It had a far better solution. In my Jr. High School they had a small book shelf that had books that required parents permission.

Knowing kids, I wonder if that boosted the popularity of the books, and if so, by how much.

Re:The 21st Century is

[Bartles]

Most wealthy people became wealthy by being the ones that built civilization, you brainwashed idiot.

Re:The 21st Century is

[tpstigers]

Vehemence and self-righteousness. Self-righteous like a lynch mob or a Crusade.

Re:The 21st Century is

[EdIII]

Just like it hasn't cured the pain that any "black" person goes through either?

Protest too much?

Just how much protestation about racism directed at yourself is considered too much?

I just love how the moment I defend myself, and condemn clear and present racism towards white people, that I am in fact, performing racism against another group of people.

According to your logic, MLK was a racist too for having the audacity to defend himself?

Re:The 21st Century is

[EdIII]

that a lot of young white men get butthurt when the concept of white, male privilege is broached in the least way

Why shouldn't they get butthurt?

You're telling them to their face that they somehow have privileges based on the color of their skin (which is wholly untrue), and you associate them with that based on something that they have no control over at all.

Then you teach them that we use racism in Affirmative Action to balance the white privilege that is an illusion in of itself. You simply cannot convince them, or me, that the white privilege exists when we do nothing to perpetuate it. We don't even benefit from it.

It's wholly negative too. White privilege is an absolutely terrible thing to say. You just associated them with something incredibly negative and detrimental towards society, and they have no means to defend themselves at all . They're not adults, and probably lack the sophistication and maturity that comes with age to moderate an emotional response. I do, and I still get very emotional over this because I believe it is the true face of racism today. To make it worse, people call it "reverse-racism". What the heck does that even mean? Not only are we victims of racism, but we can't even call it racism!

They are guilty without trial, or hope for appeal, and they will spend the rest of their lives in the prison of white privilege. You get an emotional response from this situation. Why are you shocked about it?

Those young white men are trying to create a future for themselves in a world that makes it clear that they can't qualify for tons of scholarships and socialist assistance programs because, somehow, that assistance is provided by the color of their skin.

I genuinely want to know. Where is this white power world the rest of you are alluding to? Those young men don't live in it. Neither do I.

I've had to fight twice as hard with my education and work my ass off with no sympathy or help from anybody.

All over the color of my skin.

I think my butthurt is pretty damn justified.

Re:The 21st Century is

[EdIII]

This. We get to become victims of racism and can't even complain about it.

You're the joke. You're a racist that thinks he isn't racist because your target has a specific skin color. Why do you evil fucktarded people think that ONLY white people can perform acts of racism?

It's logically precluded by the very definition of the world itself.

Don't let logic interfere with your white man bashing though. Why don't you just take it a step further and start the race war now? If it does happen, you will only have yourselves to blame.

You deserve all of it too. What happened in the past is horrible, but you continue to punish young men for their skin color, and have not stopped the game. You just switched sides on the board.

Instead of being intelligent and mature about it, YOU have created an entirely new generation of angry young men.

But... it is I that is lacking in humanity huh?

Re:The 21st Century is

[EdIII]

Said the racist.

I would deny you nothing based on your skin color.

You would deny me plenty based on mine.

Who fits the definition of racism?

Re:The 21st Century is

[EdIII]

None of what you find in the past is a justification for racism today in any way, shape, or form.

It's not about being right.

It's about stopping racism today, and that means that YOU have to stop.

Stop being racist and get rid of your illusions of white privilege.

You deny me my honor, my dignity, erase whatever perception of compassion and empathy I might possess in others, and all due to my skin color.

You pollute yourself with that negativity as well.

What you don't understand you horrific piece of shit, is that you make victims out of us both when you engage in such petty, hurtful behavior.

I'm white. I was born white. I can't change that. I'm not racist.

You would take from me because of the color of my skin, and nothing you say will change the facts. Your statements support racism today.

You are the problem.

Re:The 21st Century is

[EdIII]

Then just kill us all you evil mother fucker.

I was born white and I deserve to die, or at the very least, have my wealth (which I don't have anyways) stripped from me and distributed amongst the people of different non-white colors.

Are you going to walk around with some Pantone color swaths and distribute my body and my belongings based on it?

Nothing changes the fact that you wish me punished based on the color of my skin today, and I NEVER did ANYTHING to deserve it.

Those benefits you think I receive I don't.

So why don't you just end this now and start the fucking race war? Let's kill each other till there is only one color left. You've made it abundantly clear your completely incapable of moving forward.

I'm not guilty of shit. Yet you clearly want me punished.

Well stop being a pussy, go get some weapons, and make something happen. That will be better than living in this cluster fuck right now where you act like a victim continuously and I have no means to defend myself either.

Re:The 21st Century is

[EdIII]

You can't stop being racist can you?

You will be the victim for the rest of your life, and you will make your children the victim, and you will teach them that other innocent children that were born with a specific skin color are evil and receive unjust benefits.

Keep blaming white people on a continuous basis for your problems. Just don't be surprised when one of us cracks one day and beats the ever loving shit of you because you kept bashing us our whole lives based on race.

When they beat the shit out of you because the of the vileness that leaks from your pie hole, continue to be the victim and think it was about racism directed towards you instead of racism coming from you.

Racism not only doesn't cure racism, it BREEDS it.

Re:The 21st Century is

[rochrist]

I'll be the victim? I'm as white as a fucking sheet. I just don't refuse to acknowledge the fucking privilege that accrues to me because I /am/ white, instead of whining like a sniveling weasel how the unfair people of color are keeping you down! There's only one person here acting like a victim and it isn't me.

Re:The 21st Century is

[EdIII]

Then you're still racist. You just hate yourself.

How sad.

Those privileges are entirely a product of your own delusions. They don't exist.

I don't complain about people of any color keeping me down. I complain about racism directed towards me. It happens to be coming from you.

Re:The 21st Century is

[tpstigers]

You have twice now called me racist. I have not called anyone racist. All I've called anyone is white. Anything else packed into that is only going on in your head.

And to explain, we who are not racist are not offended when someone else calls us racist. Funny how there's no shame in not being racist.

Re:The 21st Century is

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

You pollute yourself with that negativity as well.

Yep, I'm the one "polluted with negativity" here.

Re:The 21st Century is

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

I'm not guilty of shit. Yet you clearly want me punished.

After reading all of that, I'm pretty sure you suffer from mental illness and although it is hard sometimes to resist, I try to avoid engaging with the mentally ill because it only makes them worse. I hope you are able to get better.

Re:The 21st Century is

[skapunker21]

"Don't Call Me White", by NOFX

The connotations wearing my nerves thin
Could it be semantics generating the mess we're in?
I understand that language breeds stereotype
But what's the explanation for the malice, for the spite?

Don't call me white, Don't call me white
Don't call me white, Don't call me white

I wasn't brought here, I was born
Circumsized, categorized, allegiance sworn,
Does this mean I have to take such shit
For being fairskinned? No!
I ain't a part of no conspiracy,
I'm just you're average Joe.

Don't call me white, Don't call me white
Don't call me white, Don't call me white

Represents everything I hate,
The soap shoved in your mouth to cleanse the mind
The vast majority of sheep
A buttoned collar, starched and bleached
Constricting veins, the blood flow to the brain slows
They're so fuckin' ordinary white

Don't call me white, Don't call me white
Don't call me white, Don't call me white

We're better off this way
Say what you're gonna say
So go ahead and label me
An asshole cause I can
Accept responsibility, for what I've done
But not for who I am

Re:The 21st Century is

[Anonymous Coward]

you're crazy, man. you really don't understand what advantages accrue to you because of your skin color, and because you have a penis (not that I'm saying you have much of a penis)?

try walking down the street in NY outside of midtown Manhattan, and notice how often you don't get stopped and frisked. hey, take a look at the studies that show identical resumes with "white" names on them get responses three times as often as those with "black" sounding names.

or hell, do your own experiment, if you really care. you do seem to care, since you explode here on /. with such, er, enthusiasm. so go ahead, send out 50 resumes with names from different ethnicities, i'll bet a bright boy like you could finish that project in 2 weeks.

but nope, you wouldn't, because you'd see how wrong you are.

oh well, it's not so bad. after all, by definition yours are white man's problems.

Re:The 21st Century is

[Anonymous Coward]

You're just as ugly and abhorrent as some white redneck 60 years ago looking to hang a black man

so someone writing an opinion on a website is just as bad as a man who literally murders other men because of their race.

this, right here. this shows the hole in your intellect. maybe you're just mentally unbalanced, maybe your rage leads you to express patently false equivalences.

you can't tell the difference between speech and murder. think about that.

Re:The 21st Century is

[rochrist]

Self-entitled internet white boy feels oppressed. Film at 11.

Re:The 21st Century is

[bingoUV]

I read Silas Marner more than a decade ago, but I still remember smoking tobacco was considered good for health in it, especially in old age. No contradicting opinion was offered.

I got the message from it that it was a belief common in England in that era, but someone else, much younger, might take home a different message. No reason for banning, of course.

Re:The 21st Century is

[bingoUV]

Agreed, or at least I see your point in other parts of your post, but this is insane, and apparently even contradicts your own other points :

Thirdly, be proactive in NOT making racial distinctions as much as possible. When you do reference it, be sure to reference it as something from the past. Anytime you speak about a contemporary person, don't mention race.

Race is a fact. Since there should not be any discrimination on the basis of left-handedness or right-handedness, should it not be interesting if some president is the first left-handed president? Or first right-handed?

The silence of society about the race of a President would speak volumes to children about the unspeakability of race. Race is a fact, just like -handedness. According to yourself, in another point, which I agree with - "stop thinking about it and it will stop". How can making such a huge statement about a President, by not talking about his race at all, cause children to stop thinking about race? That is why I believe your statement that I quoted is very incorrect, confused, confusing and contradicts your other valid points.

Similarly,

We need to show them that great people come from all walks of life equally

Absurdly, by refusing to talk about the "walk of life" some great person has come from?

Yes, we need to show them that great people come from all walks of life equally. By telling them that this great person was left-handed and this one was right-handed. This one was black and this one was white. And this one is nearly perfectly ambidextrous. And this one (racially) is not natively found in the US at all, (s)he's from Korea.

If you don't talk to children about race, they will notice some things themselves. Lots of blacks in the US come from ghettos, blacks are more likely to be imprisoned than whites, blacks are likely to have better cardiovascular ability than whites, and of course, blacks have much darker skin than whites. Do you think children are too stupid to notice some patterns?

Re:The 21st Century is

[TangoMargarine]

While I very much agree with your point (I had one of those Race, Class, and Gender teachers, too. He spent 90% of the class telling us how horrible and evil the white man is), I think the usefulness in keeping these books around is to remind us what happens when society condones racism systemically.

Re:The 21st Century is

[TangoMargarine]

Unfortunately sometimes without legislating equality, a lot of people will never do it.

Re:The 21st Century is

[TangoMargarine]

So delivering snappy, dismissive one-liners makes you so much better?

Re:The 21st Century is

[painandgreed]

Wow and yet it is place I would not want to live since their is no real freedom.

Not true. You are free to do what you want. Even if you want to be totally anti-social, you are free to do so, they will just want to move you to the islands. Even if you do not like the islands, they will allow you to go elsewhere if it is possible to separate you from society as they allowed the poet to move to antarctica. You are not allowed to disrupt society, and you works will not last past your death, but certainly free to do as you want.

Re:The 21st Century is

[painandgreed]

"The "white man" is unfairly demonized"

No. It is, in fact, pretty fair.

I'd probably say that anybody who is being "demonized" due to their skin color rather than their personal actions or beliefs is probably "unfairly demonized."

Re:The 21st Century is

[lgw]

Did you even read the post you replied to? How does the history that Northern whites wanted each slave counted as 0 people, while Southern whites wanted each slave counted as 1 person, so they compromised, single out one group in class in the present and make them feel bad and isolated over something they can't change?

Re:The 21st Century is

[EdIII]

Insane?

I think it's completely batshit insane to talk about a great person and then say, "See kids? This person had freckles and red hair, but created teleportation". Why call attention to a fact that doesn't affect the outcome at all? It makes no sense to do so. You are saying that their accomplishments were done in spite of a disability. You shouldn't say that when it's not really a disability at all.

Race is a fact. Why? We continue to group ourselves, and while that may be benign in of itself as there are so many of them, it's clear that certain groups have a lot of negativity associated with them. Black and White are equally negative at this point for different reasons.

The silence of society about the race of a President would speak volumes to children about the unspeakability of race

No. The silence speaks volumes about how it's a purely worthless distinction. If a child asks if it matters that the President was black, you just say no. It may have mattered in the past, but that was only due to mankind's ignorance and pettiness. We're getting better though.

Children really do pick up on your emotions and reactions towards stuff like that. That silence you disagree with is actually a strong message to the child that what they notice, really makes no difference at all.

Crazy as this sounds, it's kind of like a block of cheese. If you consistently had a negative reaction towards a specific color or smell, and denied the child access to it, that child is going to create negative associations. You see that in nature all the time. Silence, or the lack of a reaction, creates entirely different associations. It's not that children are stupid and can't see these groupings or patterns. As adults, we need to not acknowledge those grouping or patterns as anything but "mildly interesting".

When we notice it, and give it so much importance, those not-stupid children begin to wonder just why that group distinction is important. Once that happens, some of them begin to operate with those same concepts. Even if a child disagrees with it, it becomes a natural reaction to look at a black person and make certain assumptions:

- That person is black. Many of the generalities that have been associated with them could be true.
- Their accomplishments are somehow more meaningful. If I do X it's just Tue. If a black person does X, we need to investigate further and possibly call Ripley's.
- I may be in danger. Should I have a greater level of fear?

It's one thing to talk about a how a great person overcame difficulties, but those difficulties should not include things they had no control over like the color of their skin. It's far more meaningful actually to talk about a disability. Like a child born with no legs setting speed records for sprinting.

There are plenty examples of people overcoming adversity that don't involve racial characteristics like skin color.

Yes, history is chock full of the stupidity. Teach it in history class and just make damn sure you present it in a specific context, that being that such distinctions are pure idiocy.

Not just teachers need to do this. Parents need to be very careful about perpetuating such stereotypes as well.

Re:The 21st Century is

[EdIII]

You are indeed racist.

If you met me on the street and saw that I was white, you instantly assume that I have certain characteristics. One of those being that I "own and control everything". Not in a benign way, but that I am participating in a grand conspiracy to oppress a large number of people based on their skin color. Even unwittingly, which is idiotic and bullshit as well.

You've multiple times included me in a group of people that need to be fought, punished, and brought to justice in your eyes.

You can deny it all you want, you're a fucking racist. Nothing you can say will ever change that. It's your words that label you a racist, not something in my head.

As long as you continue to shove me into a group based on the color of my skin, especially for such negative reasons, you are a fucking racist.

All of the truly abhorrent and terrible effects of racism, you have inflicted upon me. You have called me out as being partly responsible for the pain of other people, when that is complete and utter fucking tripe.

You are no different than a white slave owner whipping a black man. You've caused pain, and you will justify in whatever way you can.... because your racism is somehow more acceptable and distinct from that of the past.

You're not just a fucking racist. You're deluded enough to actually think you aren't. All because your racism is better.

Re:The 21st Century is

[EdIII]

Blaming the victim again are we?

As a victim of racism I can't feel hurt to be associated with the evils you describe that don't even exist with no ability to ever defend myself and regain my dignity and honor?

Like I said you fucking moron, racism actually hurts TWO PEOPLE.

Re:The 21st Century is

[EdIII]

No.

What I suffer from is racism directed towards me no different than a black person before civil rights. The person doing it is you. The fact I have such a passionate response over it is not indicative of any mental illness, but only that I am victim who is fighting really hard to eliminate it.

You already gave a list of sources supporting your statement that I'm guilty of oppressing others based on their skin color. It's not true, but you hold it to be true. YOU published your feelings quite clearly.

Since it's clear you can't get past it, and wish to inflict suffering upon the children of racism, which is more than likely what we both are, with further racism, you need to make a decision.

Keep being racist and harming me because I happen to share a skin color with the persecutors of the past?

Get over it, and not see me only as the color of my skin?

It genuinely seems that at this point you can't. You NEED for some sort of justice to occur, and that justice involves me getting punished based on my skin color. Sounds like you fully support some kind of redistribution of wealth to compensate the victims of the past.

Since you do, that's why I call you out to war in a field. Apparently, meeting you out there for extreme violence (which I don't actually want to participate in) is the only solution.

So either come and kill me and take your pound of flesh, or let me live a life of peace where we don't judge each other based on such idiotic distinctions.

Review what you have said in your postings. You're very much the racist, and I will never back down for a second in fighting what you are and what you represent.

Re:The 21st Century is

[EdIII]

You still don't get it.

I don't participate in any of those delusions that you have. I don't know a single white person that has ever took me aside and said, "Hey. Don't approve that person for a loan. They're black".

I've NEVER witnessed it, and there exists a huge amount of varied experiences across multiple countries in which I have completely failed to see racism in action.

You know the only racism that I know of? The genocide and bullshit happening in certain countries. Not in the USA.

Let's just say you are 100% correct

It's not fucking me. Why do I get to be grouped with all of the other assholes based on my skin color.

Try to engage your brain for one damn second and realize that the group you are fighting against ISN'T WHITE . All of what you think occurs is from the 1%. It's a conspiracy, from many ethnicity and colors, to grab power and wealth.

I'm not part of the 1% anyways, don't get those benefits, but in your eyes, I'm the devil.

That's nice. I get to go through life labeled as evil simply because I was born American, White, and Male.

What you have all made abundantly clear, is that the facts of my life are completely inconsequential and only my whiteness matters. I can't even defend myself.

Re:The 21st Century is

[EdIII]

Racist makes baseless claims in a snarky statement that are easily refuted by the evidence.

Asshole racist interviewed. Film at 11.

Re:The 21st Century is

[rochrist]

Very orginal. Did you think that up all by yourself?

Re:The 21st Century is

[LWATCDR]

You have a strange idea of what free is. What if I want to share my ideas with society? You know freedom of speech? No thanks I find it disturbing at best. Of course we do not know what the islands are really like. It maybe that all the progress that is allowed comes from the islands.

Re:The 21st Century is

[EdIII]

Not at all. I copied you.

Re:The 21st Century is

[bingoUV]

No, you don't say "See kids? This person had freckles and red hair, but created teleportation". You say "this person created teleportation". Separately , as an answer to the question "who was the first scientist in the field of teleportation with freckles? ", this Guy's name is the answer. If a kid asks if this Guy had freckles, you say yes. Of course freckles don't matter, so you say so when a kid asks. Just like race. What is so hard about it? Why must every trivia be an adversity?

I never said race be advertised as if it were an adversity. I compared it to -handedness, remember? Why would you choose to ignore that and harp on as if I called race an adversity, I have no clue. So 90% of your this post is irrelevant.

Though, you have not addressed the point about how kids can see great people can come from all walks of life without talking about the walk of life of specific great people.

Re:The 21st Century is

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, I've just finished reading all your rants here, and I'm pretty sure you have some serious rage issues, as well as potentially being batshit crazy. I honestly feel sorry for you, since you've clearly had some serious harm inflicted on you -- perhaps due to some sort of racially-charged incident or policy. Please consider seeking professional help.

I don't know if this will be helpful, but let me try to explain where you go wrong.

I don't participate in any of those delusions that you have. I don't know a single white person that has ever took me aside and said, "Hey. Don't approve that person for a loan. They're black".

I've NEVER witnessed it

Yeah, you never witnessed it in the U.S. because it's illegal and could likely get anyone saying that fired. But just because people don't overtly say things or even take actions doesn't mean there isn't an undercurrent of racism going on... and I'm not just talking about whites here. As you rightly point out, Black people, Asians, Hispanics, etc. can all harbor intense racist attitudes as well.

Anyhow, go around to all those people who approve loans, and try asking them a few pointed questions. Say you were invited to a family gathering with them, including their kids, etc. Would it be okay if you brought your black girlfriend? Many of them may probably say, "Of course," but I bet if you ask enough people, eventually you'd find someone who responds with a -- "Well, you see, it's a family gathering and..." followed by awkward silence. And then if you push them, you might end up with an explanation like, "Well, I'm not racist, but my kids are going to be there, and, you know, I don't want them to get the 'wrong' idea... you know?" or some other BS.

Better yet, if they have daughters, try asking if it would be okay if they married a black man. Again, many will be fine with it, but I bet you'll eventually find someone who responds with, "Well, of course I'm not racist, but well..." etc.

There are literally MILLIONS of white people like this in the United States. (And huge amounts of black people who are similarly racist, as well as Hispanics, etc. too.)

If you don't think these people exist, and actually are quite common, you are INCREDIBLY NAIVE.

Now, when people like this are put in charge of approving loans, of course they don't say, "Don't give this person a loan because they're black." That's illegal. And their racism might even be mostly unconscious -- they may be very respectful toward everyone and never say anything that could be perceived as racist. But those same views that lead them to not want their daughter to marry a black man will lead them to look a little more carefully at a loan application from a black person. Maybe they'll just tend to double-check things a little more often, or check out something that doesn't "quite look in order" a little more often.

And the aggregate effect of millions of people doing little seemingly insignificant things like this leads to things being slightly more difficult for a black person to get a loan or go to a better school or get a better job or not get randomly pulled over by the police or put in jail.

And you're absolutely right -- black people can be racist against whites or other races as well. The issue is that HISTORICAL racism has left us with a system where white people are already DISPROPORTIONATELY ahead. White people already tend to have the better jobs, the more powerful positions, etc. So, if only a small percentage of white people harbor feelings of distrust toward "people not like them" or have a subtle bias to hire people "more like them" or whatever, that adds up.

Again, if you don't believe this happens every day in the U.S., you are incredibly naive.

It's not fucking me. Why do I get to be grouped with all of the other assholes based on my skin color.

You shouldn't be. The idea of "white privilege" should NEVER be used to blame all

Re:The 21st Century is

[blue trane]

The point is, the material is not the issue. The poster apparently has some story about how one teacher somewhere said something that made whites in the class squirm, and that is such a huge deal that he goes on to defend banning books that the teacher might have used. It's silly. The books don't say what he wants this mythical teacher to have said. He's invented some fable and used it to respond to a story about banning books, then claims that he isn't against banning books. But it's backpeddling.

Re:The 21st Century is

[blue trane]

If it even exists. What evidence are you going on again? Some vague memory?

Abolitionists did try to make whites feel guilty; but they had a point, because slavery was ongoing and whites were tacitly supporting it (unless they were Abolitionists). What if the teacher is teaching about Abolitionists? One technique is to put yourself into the time; so in that case the teacher could be defended in trying to make whites in the class feel guilty, because they were exploring the attitudes and techniques of Abolitionists and immersing themselves in the period.

Buy a Kindle

[Anonymous Coward]

They won't know what you're reading.

Re:Buy a Kindle

[Fwipp]

Depends on which "they" you mean. You could certainly argue that Kindle books are tracked by many more people, and likely by more nefarious ones.

Re:Buy a Kindle

[DexterIsADog]

It's obvious from the context that "they" are censorious local school boards. Good for you for throwing an evil corporation/NSA spying comment into an unrelated topic.

Re:Buy a Kindle

[Anonymous Coward]

It's obvious from the context that "they" are censorious local school boards. Good for you for throwing an evil corporation/NSA spying comment into an unrelated topic.

Of course it's related. "They" would like to prevent "wrong thinking", that is the whole point of censorship at the school level. If someone knows what your electronic reading choices are, "they" can consider those choices if you trip any other flags for "wrongness", and then take the appropriate action. Soon the only freedom you will have will be between your ears, and "they" are working on that, under the guise of medical research and mentally controlled computers.

Re:Buy a Kindle

[EdIII]

Unrelated my big fat white heinie.

Censorship is all about knowing what information people are consuming, and then to stop it. A local school board is a much much smaller threat than government surveillance and censorship.

Right now it's the school board, but the child can go to the library and get the book. It's physical. Kind of difficult to censor that. You would need book burnings.

It's not paranoia either. The FBI persecuted people based on their beliefs, the IRS has been used to quell political dissent, and knowing what people read is the first step towards putting them in the "undesirable" category. This isn't exactly something I need to prove with citations either. Read a damn history book.

It's absolutely related, and indeed, far far far far far far far far far far far FAR more nefarious with its potential impact.

You're argument that it's unrelated is purely about the source and scope of control, and you're dead wrong on this one.

Re:Buy a Kindle

[Anonymous Coward]

I would hazard a guess that it's not "wrong thinking," unless one can redefine it any time they need.

I would guess that it's actually more to do with preventing someone from being inspired to stand up to the power.

Re:Buy a Kindle

[DexterIsADog]

I was pointing out that the GP's "they" was that poster's intent to refer to the school board, which is the only reasonable interpretation by a reader of standard English. That was my entire point.

You built a gigantic tinfoil hat rant on top of your mistaken premise.

Thank goodness you suggested I read a history book - I probably know more history than you.

Still, you did win me over to your point of view. After all, how could I resist the elegance of your argument; "far far far far far far far far far far far FAR more nefarious with its potential impact." One more "far" and I would have subscribed to your newsletter.

You are an idiot.

Re:Buy a Kindle

[EdIII]

You're the idiot. What tin-foil? These are facts.

Amazon has performed FAR more censorship of books than any school board could hope to do. That was in a single day. They have the ability to not only remove a book from sale, but remove the book from consumer owned equipment.

It's not unrelated, and is indeed, very much pertinent to the discussion at hand.

Keep calling me an idiot and stick your pedantic, entirely unnecessary, and baseless restriction of the scope of this discussion.

Re:Buy a Kindle

[DexterIsADog]

The whole premise of your first post was based on your incomprehension of simple English. What you wrote was irrelevant, a non-sequitur to what I wrote. You don't seem to understand that my post was about which "they" a previous poster was referring to. It had nothing, NOTHING to do with the topic of your rant.

You are STILL firing at the WRONG TARGET. Yours was the pedantic, lecturing, condescending post. You corrected me about supposed ignorance which I did not display. I am far more knowledgeable than you on the subject, and I'm not going to engage you on what you did write, because you're more than a little unhinged.

You stupid, myopic little troll.

Re:Buy a Kindle

[EdIII]

It's you that is the troll.

The poster brought up an extremely valid point about censorship on digital devices, which are becoming more and more used in school settings by the day.

You then slammed them, being the troll *you* are.

I defended that position. Censorship on digital devices is not unrelated to the discussion at hand, is proven to be true, and has nothing to do with Tin Foil Hats.

Not to mention censorship on digital devices has the potential to be far more damaging. Many many orders more so.

Re:Buy a Kindle

[DexterIsADog]

You literally don't know what you're talking about. Your response was a non-sequitur rant about nefarious blah blah blah, when my post was about a point of grammar. You didn't defend anything, in the sense that your argument missed the entire point of the post.

You really are an idiot. Please, keep missing the point in your rants, but I'm done, because you genuinely don't seem intelligent enough to understand. Keep posting your blather. I'm not going to reply or even read your next deposit of guano on this subject.

The Tale of Scrotie McBoogerballs?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrotie_McBoogerballs#Plot

Reverse psychology?

[Anonymous Coward]

Best way to make people want something is to ban it.

Re:Reverse psychology?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hope so. They actually have kids that want to read books and they're taking them away from them...

Re:Reverse psychology?

[darnkitten]

That is usually the effect.

Half the time, the first we hear of the book is when someone tries to challenge it. The story gets into the media, and sales spike. I wouldn't be surprised if there aren't authors and publishers out there deliberately trying to court banning for the publicity's sake.

Re:Reverse psychology?

[stdarg]

Some things are banned because authorities are afraid people will want them. Drugs, prostitution, etc. And it turns out people DO want them and banning a specific instance of it brings lots of attention. I'm sure a lot of people found out about those relatively new (to me) synthetic marijuana drugs because of reports of the products being banned, or cops wanting to ban them and crying that they were still legal.

But things like boring books that schools force you to read anyway? Nah.

Re:Reverse psychology?

[LongearedBat]

Please don't let them ban Game of Thrones or The Hobbit! People might start illegally downloading them en-masse.

Ban or Censor?

[Mr D from 63]

There is a difference. Its a shame the words are interchanged just to outrage the reader.

Lots of books should be censored from our public schools for a variety of inappropriate content. More books are being published every year, so that list should grow. Kids can get any of those books via their parents if they want. As for the particular books on the list, well, each case must be discussed separately.

Re:Ban or Censor?

[Shadow of Eternity]

The difference is whether or not you agree with the people doing the banning.

Re:Ban or Censor?

[Anonymous Coward]

Banned from schools. Your opinion seems to think that carte blanche refusal to allow books into schools is somehow appropriate. The schools should in no way stop teachers from teaching. Some subjects may be offensive, some may even be hurtful. Kids need to learn to deal with difficult and sometimes horrible/inapropriate subjects.

Re:Ban or Censor?

[Anonymous Coward]

Lots of books should be censored from our public schools for a variety of inappropriate content.

"Should" and "inappropriate" are subjective. I see no reason to let oversensitive fools ban or censor books.

Re:Ban or Censor?

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's call a spade a spade. Only the Christians support this. Even they'd admit. Hell, they're proud of it.

Re:Ban or Censor?

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Kids can get any of those books via their parents if they want.

Yeah, that's privilege speaking.

The people who most rely on public institutions are the ones who are least able to replace them with their own money. Average middle-class kid and just get his mom to order the book on amazon. Average lower-class kid's mom is working 60 hours a week just to pay the rent and keep food on the table. She doesn't even have a computer to order from amazon and couldn't afford to if she did.

Re:Ban or Censor?

[Mr D from 63]

If you think I grew up in "privilege" then you could not be more wrong. Your assumption tells me more about you than any point you tried to make. Maybe there are some cases where a kid can't get the books he or she desires, but that does not impact the argument made.

Re:Ban or Censor?

[nurb432]

I happen to agree, and as long as its still available to parents and older children i'm not so sure either term applies.

Re:Ban or Censor?

[DarkOx]

I don't know if by censor you mean make some redacted version of the work available or make the entire work unavailable.

If its the latter I am not sure I agree with you but many will. On the whole there is not bright line for what is vulgar, what is culture, and what is appropriate for a given age reader but people have been searching for one almost as long as people have been writing books and its a moving target. I would argue that parents, relatives, and nannies need to spend enough time with their children to know what they are reading and put in the correct context for them. If its not possible for some caring responsible to be in a position to do that than we need to be rethinking other aspects of our society before we worry about who is reading what books.

If its the former than I shutter to think what will happen to you when you take the black market to the Bible, Qu'arn, Upanishads, and just about every other holy book. My guess is angry mobs will descend upon you. If you are going to censor content though you pretty much will have to maul those works because they contain examples of just about everything anyone anywhere has thought might be inappropriate to write about.

No I don't think we need to go out of our way to stock school libraries with whatever it is people find 'edgy' this decade but I also don't think we ought to worry much about it either. Why? Because: We ought to consider that there is no safer way than a book where a young person can get exposure to some of these edgy and more radical ideas, let alone feelings and thoughts around 'adult' activities.

They are going to hear about or see this stuff happening somewhere sometime whatever it is, drugs, sex, explosives, other religions, and they will be curious. Much of that curiosity might very well be satisfied by just reading about it and at least there the worst that can happen to your delicate little snowflake is probably a paper cut.

Re:Ban or Censor?

[liquid_schwartz]

GLAAD loves banning / censoring speech. Hardly a Christan organization though.

Re:Ban or Censor?

[jythie]

Privilege is a complex and scaled topic. In this context, yes, if you are asserting that kids can just go to their parents and get the books then that is a privileged assumption since that is not a viable option to large percentage of the of the population. And this is an important part of the argument since the point is that many children really do rely on public institutions for obtaining such works, and thus removing them from public access puts up a significant barrier that children of more middle class parents do not experience.

Re:Ban or Censor?

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's call a spade a spade. Only the Christians support this. Even they'd admit. Hell, they're proud of it.

LOL.

What color is the sky on your planet?

Re:Ban or Censor?

[demonlapin]

Libraries still exist. I used to make a twenty-minute bike ride to go to one, several times a week, before I got my driver's license (which was 1990). It didn't hurt that there was a sketchy neighborhood near it that would sell me Penthouse and Playboy when I was fourteen.

Re:Ban or Censor?

[bickerdyke]

If it was a money problem, public libraries would offer a convinient solution.

The true luxury that "privileged" kids have are parents who manage to get them intrested in reading.

Re:Ban or Censor?

[gewalker]

So, you have no problem with teaching showing snuff films, and child pornography to 2nd graders. I think that using discretion in books and other media used in schools is a far lesser problem than failing to do so. Censorship requires authoritative (governments, Catholic church and many others can be cited) agencies banishing or restricting objectionable content -- with associated civil or criminal penalties (official or not) associated with violations -- without penalties, there is no real restriction. Lessor restrictions are really not censorship, that though may well be undesirable or even odious and evil.

Say I personally kill you for reading the Bible because I think it is evil -- this is not censorship.
Say Muslims are known to kill people for reading the Bible because I think it is evil -- this is not necessarily censorship, depends on whether said Muslims are extremist that are officially or unofficial sanctioned or tolerated, if so -- yeah its censorship, otherwise it is same same as me doing it.

Being a member of the school book and saying a teacher crossed the line by showing Debbie Does Dallas to 2nd graders crossed the line and make sure she gets fired is not censorship, it is reasonable because community standards dictate that such would be totally inappropriate content. Showing Debbie Does Dallas to seniors is almost certainly the same answer -- it is not the in the purview of the school exercising its in loco parentis rights and responsibility to educate students in such a manner. Minors do not have the same legal rights as adults. See Contributing to the delinquency of a minor if you still doubt the responsibility to exercise judgment.

Re:Ban or Censor?

[lgw]

"Privilege" is a hammer to beat down arguments without having to actually have an argument. It's the new "that's racist".

Used books stores are still around. Books passed hand-to-hand (a tradition for banned books) are still around. Poor as I was growing up, I could scrape together bus fare and a couple bucks for books every couple of weeks, which goes petty far in the deeply discounted section of half-price books. I also took the bus to the library regularly, but there was better stuff in the used book stores. The school library was largely irrelevant.

Re:Ban or Censor?

[Mr D from 63]

Since none of these books is banned from the public library, I'd say its a bit of a needless side-track to the discussion. Kids that are brought up in challenged environments have a wide number of factors that will limit their ability to succeed in life. Ready access to a few particular books in the school library is very low on the list of things to worry about for those kids.

Re:Ban or Censor?

[s.petry]

Troll! In History it's people in power under tyrannical rule that burn books and ban education. More recently in the US it's been special interests, mostly claiming to be working for equality. Special interest groups on both sides have tried to ban Tolkien's works because, you know, it's anti-Christian enough for those Christian's to ban yet Christian enough for special interests to ban because it's too similar to Christianity. Citation because Google can be difficult for trolls.

Re:Ban or Censor?

[Penguinisto]

Let's call a spade a spade. Only the Christians support this. Even they'd admit. Hell, they're proud of it.

...really? I was reading a large number of books as a kid in Catholic School that would qualify as censorship material today.

(...as a near-universal example, start with The Bible - specifically, Song of Solomon.)

Re:Ban or Censor?

[jythie]

It can vary wildly. For instance in the region I grew up in, the school library was pretty much it unless your parents were willing to buy you stuff or drive you down to the 1000 square foot public library. There were no busses, used bookstores were few and far between (and, last time I looked, are completely gone now). School libraries are a bit of a last resort, there are all sorts of better options IF those options are available.

Re:Ban or Censor?

[jythie]

True, it is hardly the largest factor, esp at these small scales, but it is a good one to keep an eye on since, as you say, they such kids already have it tough, and the school should be giving them the best chance it can with the best resources available. Explicitly taking low cost resources out of the pool works counter to that goal.

Re:Ban or Censor?

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Since none of these books is banned from the public library,

Yes, I expected someone to bring up public libraries. Those tend to be few and far between in the neighborhoods where poor kids live. Given that mom's working 60 hours a week, she won't be taking junior to the library all that often either. Full disclosure: I have many librarians in the family.

Kids that are brought up in challenged environments have a wide number of factors that will limit their ability to succeed in life.

Yes, they all add up. Restricting their access to "subversive" knowledge doesn't help.

Re:Ban or Censor?

[Mr D from 63]

Yeah, I expected the "kids don't even have access to public libraries" response. It proves my point, there are way bigger problems these particular kids face.

Re:Ban or Censor?

[anagama]

We lived in a very rural area when I was a kid ... I probably got to go into town 3 or 4 times per year, but what was cool was that the county library had a bookmobile (a large bus fitted out with bookshelves) that would come around every other week or so. It was awesome. I have such pleasant memories of getting on the bookmobile and finding books, even records to listen to. I just checked online -- the Library still has the bookmobile branch, but it doesn't seem to go to as many places anymore.

Re:Ban or Censor?

[Sique]

No. "Privilege" is just privilege. It means a right not everyone has (from latin privus - private and lex - law, "private law"). And not everyone has the means to get to the next used book shop, to even know about the next used book shop, especially not every teenager. And not everyone has enough pocket money to buy even used books.

Your argument still doesn't fly.

Re:Ban or Censor?

[Mashiki]

And in today's world the majority of groups that are trying to ban materials and publications are left-leaning or liberal, and try to do so in the "name of diversity" or "political correctness." As much as some things change, plenty doesn't.

Re:Ban or Censor?

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Yeah, I expected the "kids don't even have access to public libraries" response. It proves my point, there are way bigger problems these particular kids face.

You seem to be the kind of person who confuses the form of something with the meaning of something. Simply mimicking the form of my response doesn't impart any validity to your point.

In fact, your point is rather simple-minded. If only the biggest problems are worthy of discussion, much less action, then hell, we should only be talking about famine in africa.

Re:Ban or Censor?

[Mr D from 63]

Lets get to the details then. I agree we are not having a fruitful discussion with generalization.

How many of cases have we seen of a book being censored and removed from an inner city school (the example you put forth) where you would generally agree that it deprives kids in that school? Seems that most of the censorship requests happen in rural America or those areas that see a growing progressive shift and a pushback from conservative Christians. Is it really a problem in those schools? Do we have any evidence? I don't know, but if its those details that really concern you, then maybe check it out. I would back you on the argument to keep any book in these schools that would provide educational nourishment to these kids. But my fear is that most of these books aren't even there to start with, and there would be a greater benefit to increasing the number of books in general.

Re:Ban or Censor?

[s.petry]

Not liberal, libertarian and philosophical. Interesting fact, in the 1940s-1950s under the "industrial education programs" the first things banned philosophical works related to critical thinking.

Re:Ban or Censor?

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

How many of cases have we seen of a book being censored and removed from an inner city school (the example you put forth)

That's funny, I didn't mention inner cities at all. Looks to me like you are just trying to strawman the discussion. In fact, a larger percentage of the rural population lives in poverty than the urban population does - especially single parent families headed by the mother. Public libraries are even harder to come by in rural areas than urban.

Re:Ban or Censor?

[LWATCDR]

It is an interesting subject when you think about it. Take this basic premise
Books are important because they are a very powerful way to exchange and teach ideas.
The issue then becomes not all ideas are good ones.

For example Mien Kampf is a classic example of a lot of really bad ideas but another example would be Chariot of the Gods. In the US and other nations we work on the idea that adults should have the option to read anything and decide for themselves. The problem is that it doesn't always work. I mean you still have people that believe in Crop Circles, Big Foot, and astrology, and the DNC. So should school libraries limit the content to that which is safe? If a teenager wants to read a more challenging book the parents can supply it via the public library or purchase. Or should it be a free for all. Should a sixth graders have access to the Happy Hooker from the school library? Maybe the Turner Diaries?
Then you have the issue of where is the line between curation and indoctrination? Or even between indoctrination and education?
I suggest that it is not as simple as "Censorship is bad, um okay"

Re:Ban or Censor?

[Anonymous Coward]

Extending the ridiculous hyperbole in the direction of your position, literacy is clearly only appropriate for people aged 18 and over. For their sake, children should not be taught to read _at all_. Hey Mr. Taliban, tally up a book ban.

Re:Ban or Censor?

[Mr D from 63]

OK, I missed that...should have gone back and checked what you actually wrote. But even those rural areas you are referring to... do you know of any specific books that are not available? My point is the same regardless.

I grew up in the countryside, both parents worked minimum wage for quite some time, my Dad worked two jobs. They could not transport me but I could find ways to get places if I needed to. Kids are resourceful. A few books difference in the school library would have had zero effect on me, or any other kid I can think of, and there were a lot of underprivileged kids. I really don't agree with your fundamental argument that select censorship of a few books is a real problem for these kids. I don't agree with censorship of most of these books, but that is a different point. Almost everyone will agree there is some published content that has no business in schools, so it really comes down to specific books, specific content, in specific schools.

I am glad you care about these kids, I do as well. We can agree that they need any help we can give them. I do what I can, I probably should do more. I just hate to lose the war because folks want to make a battle about everything. That's how I feel, don't expect you to agree.

Happy New Year to you!

Re:Ban or Censor?

[Anonymous Coward]

Until society is willing to label such massive frauds such as the bible and the koran as fiction, we're not even willing to really acknowledge the problem of harmful media.

Re:Ban or Censor?

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

do you know of any specific books that are not available

You are asking me for a list of books that have been banned from some public school or another? And if most of the attempts to ban books have failed, then that makes the argument that kids can just get their parents to buy the books or go to the public library legitimate?

I really don't agree with your fundamental argument that select censorship of a few books is a real problem for these kids.

They all add up.

Re:Ban or Censor?

[Anonymous Coward]

The true luxury that "privileged" kids have are parents who manage to get them intrested in reading.

This is the responsibility of every parent. Just because the poor are too busy watching Survivor Island instead of spending valuable time with their children, doesn't mean the rest of us have to pick up the education tab. Let's face it, the poor have better things to worry about than what their child ends up doing that evening; as long as they don't bother the parents which are too busy drinking and having sex. You know, the same non-sense that got them into the mess of having a child in the first place.

Don't let them guilt you for their poor judgement and subsequent mistakes.

Re:Ban or Censor?

[Anonymous Coward]

+2 for this liar ?

You and your + raters can go fuck your lying selves.

Re:Ban or Censor?

[TangoMargarine]

What is the difference, then? Google defines "censor" as "examine (a book, movie, etc.) officially and suppress unacceptable parts of it." I suppose you could technically say it would be censoring to remove the entire book but that seems clearly outside the spirit of the term. Yet you appear to use "ban" and "censor" interchangeably in your post.

Re:Ban or Censor?

[TangoMargarine]

Half-Price Books

Re:Ban or Censor?

[lgw]

Wow, is confusing "rights" with "means" so indoctrinated on the left now that you use them interchangeably?

More people have died

[WOOFYGOOFY]

More people have been persecuted, hounded, ruined, tortured, burned, murdered, and just exterminated en-masse because of a book called the Bible than any other document in human history including Mein Kampf and Das Capital put together.

Just sayin' .

Re:More people have died

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, no. There is a difference between hyperbole and ignorant lying. I'm no YWHW fanboy, but don't say stupid things that are blatantly untrue.

Re:More people have died

[YumoolaJohn]

I'm not sure either of those things is true. People would have done 'kind'/'evil' things regardless of whether these fairy tail books were around or not, in all likelihood.

Re:More people have died

[neminem]

Actually, it is probably literally true: all the tens of millions of people killed by Hitler and Stalin weren't killed by the books written by those dictators, they were killed by the dictators directly, or by their policies. If you only include deaths due to people directly influenced by those two books, but not deaths directly or indirectly *ordered* by those dictators, you have a much smaller number. Whereas if you go by the literal bible, the number of deaths Yahweh Himself directly ordered to occur, is not zero, but it's not that big, either.

Re:More people have died

[sconeu]

This "Bible" book condones a hell of a lot of stuff:

• Incest (Lot & his daughters)
• Terrorism (see the 10 plagues)
• Biological warfare (again, see the 10 plagues)
• Genocide
• Rape

It clearly should be banned.

Re:More people have died

[WOOFYGOOFY]

Actually I'm going to have to throw the Koran in there to really seal it up, owing to the efficiency of 20th century killing machines. BUT even at that, it's merely because the American Indians and Mexican Aztecs who died from infectious diseases aren't normally counted as having been "killed" by Cortez and the Manifest Destiny Christians .

But this is wrong. Anne Frank died of typhus, not in the gas chambers but she is rightly counted as having been killed by Nazis anyway.

Face it - religious wars and the books that inspire those wars have killed more people than other book or ideology.

Re:More people have died

[Anonymous Coward]

I've never understood the problem people have with Mein Kampf. It's a stunningly dull, dreary, rambling book which makes taking over the world with a fascist regime look decidedly tedious and pointless. We stocked it in a bookshop as it was on multiple reading lists - then the university Jewish Society demanded we ban it. We offered to hold a public book burning in their name and heard nothing more on the matter.

Re:More people have died

[gewalker]

Highest estimate I was able to find at all related to the Bible related deaths was 17 million in a quick search.

How about Das Capital and everything related to it? 100 million give or take.

The 100 million deaths related to Communism being attributed to Das Kapital is certainly at least as valid as counting the Crusades and the Inquisition as being a result of the Bible -- Nothing in the Bible can accurately be attributed as a direct cause of these 2 events. Just as in the case of Das Kapital was not the direct cause of the many atrocities of communism.

The Bible is at best 2nd place is the history of killing people because of a book.

It may be in third place if you count Mein Kampf related deaths at about 15 million (6 million Jews + 9 million war deaths), as the 17 million for the Bible may be a bit high on the as accurate numbers for Bible related deaths are hard not available.

Re:More people have died

[Mr D from 63]

I generally agree, just providing balance.

Re:More people have died

[Anonymous Coward]

The only problem with that is that God does not exist. Any deaths carried out in his name were the acts of humans, ordered by humans, and under their policies. If we get to blame the Bible for what people did to enforce their interpretation of it, then for a fair comparison then we have to include the murders committed under Stalin in his defense of his interpretation of Marx's works.

Re:More people have died

[Anonymous Coward]

I would agree that religion has allowed for some decisions (both good and bad) that wouldn't have happened otherwise, because of faith. I will stand by the opinion, as it can't be really proven, that overall, the civilization that we would have had, would be where we are currently. I think it would have all evened out in the end. It could have been even better if religious beliefs weren't taken so strictly or pervertedly. At the very least, life would not be worse than we currently have.

All the wars about religion, past and present, would not have happened, just leaving the economic / political wars which aren't nearly as bad as those don't have to end with the destruction of the people, just their things.

Re:More people have died

[WOOFYGOOFY]

I don't buy it. People will do for each other out of a natural inborn sense of decency. No religious exhortations needed. Christians didn't invent civilization, civil law, democracy , representative government, the concept of Rights or the concept of a shared, general welfare. These are the things that keep us from sliding back down in barbarism.

OTOH as is widely evident, nations founded on religious "values" are only too happy to slide back into barbarism. There is a direct, inverse relationship between how religious a nation is and how equitable and egalitarian it is. That's not for nothing. The more religious the state, Iran, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia , Yemen Pakistan India the worse off religious minorities and women in those nations have it- they're just much less equitable to their populations.

Even amongst developed countries this relationship holds. Canada is more equitable than the US and Denmark and the Netherlands are even more equitable than Canada. Religion is the go-to reason why some people should be privileged over others, why some people should be displaced, disenfranchised even killed. It's just a historical fact.

If you want to tell me that ystic Sufis, Sikhs and Zen Buddhists are peaceble grass munching bunny-people then I'm not interested in arguing about THAT kind of religious endeavor which may even have something positive to contribute to society. But evangelical Christians for instance, believe that it ultimately doesn't matter what you DO in this life, good or bad, because either your name was written in the Book of Life at the start of all time or it wasn't and if it was, you're going to heaven and if not, fuck you, you're going to hell and that's all there is to morality. They don't say this explicitly but it's a basic tenant of their sick fundamentalism. I am sure in other religions there are correspondingly demented core beliefs. See www.religionofpeace.com for details .

This may be new to some readers. Book:

God is not Great- Chris Hitchens

Point is, the people doing this banning are fundamentalist or evangelical Christians whose own book has caused untold real world suffering, unlike , say Tropic of Cancer or House of Spirits, for instance.

See the point?

Re:More people have died

[Mr D from 63]

Or were the books just the excuse?

Re:More people have died

[WOOFYGOOFY]

It's true. We do have to count those. See my adjustment.

Re:More people have died

[WOOFYGOOFY]

100 million American Indians dead between Cortez and the American Indian genocide. Plus, lower population then, so greater relative percentage. If you go by percentage of population, it's a total wipe out in favor of religion. .

Re: More people have died

[Anonymous Coward]

Or were the books just the excuse?

The books were their justification. There is no excuse for what they did.

Re:More people have died

[Mr D from 63]

So, in your opinion, everything bad a person does is based on religion, and everything good is human nature? I think there is plenty of "evil" in human nature as well as "good". I am athiest, so I could care less if we are talking Christians or Buddhists, or assigning blame to one religion or another, but to choose to only assign the negative to religious influence seems to be more a matter of convenience to your own arguments.

Religions have cropped up in almost all societies. There is a reason for that, and its not "evil". It is because there was a need. Its an interesting exercise to think about that societal need. Much more interesting than just blindly casting fault on religions for many of our problems.

Re:More people have died

[russotto]

The Bible doesn't cause all that stuff (though it depicts); it's just the fan clubs that are a problem. No Bible, and they'd rally around something else; _Dianetics_, maybe.

Re:More people have died

[cold fjord]

More people have been persecuted, hounded, ruined, tortured, burned, murdered, and just exterminated en-masse because of a book called the Bible than any other document in human history including Mein Kampf and Das Capital put together.

Just sayin' .

As long as your meaning is, "They were persecuted for believing in Judaism or Christianity," or for owning a Torah or Bible, very possibly.

Beginnings of Christian Martyrdom

In their very deaths they were made the subjects of sport: for they were covered with the hides of wild beasts, and worried to death by dogs, or nailed to crosses, or set fire to, and when the day waned, burned to serve for the evening lights. Nero offered his own garden players for the spectacle, and exhibited a Circensian game, indiscriminately mingling with the common people in the dress of a charioteer, or else standing in his chariot. For this cause a feeling of compassion arose towards the sufferers, though guilty and deserving of exemplary capital punishment, because they seemed not to be cut off for the public good, but were victims of the ferocity of one man."

WHEN EUROPEANS WERE SLAVES

A new study suggests that a million or more European Christians were enslaved by Muslims in North Africa between 1530 and 1780 – a far greater number than had ever been estimated before.

League of Militant Atheists
North Korea Ranked No. 1 for Christian Persecution
Persecuted and forgotten: Egypt's Christians
A Global Slaughter of Christians, but America’s Churches Stay Silent
Christian Persecution in China Despite Supposed Religious 'Freedom'
The Case Against the Nazis; How Hitler's Forces Planned To Destroy German Christianity

UNDERSTANDING ANTI-SEMITISM AND ITS HISTORY

The list is obviously much longer.

Since someone is practically certain to object along two lines, lets dispose of them now.

Yes, the Spanish Inquisition was terrible, it was also limited in scope.
The Crusades were a long delayed response to Muslim invasion of the Holy Land.

Re:More people have died

[lgw]

nations founded on religious "values" are only too happy to slide back into barbarism. There is a direct, inverse relationship between how religious a nation is and how equitable and egalitarian it is.

Your knowledge of history is sadly lacking. The truth in Western culture is that for about 1000 years, the Church and the State balanced on another well. There were vile, hateful people in both, but each acted as a check on the worst excesses of the other. The dual power structure really helped protect the common man (OTOH, he did pay taxes to both, and each family owed a son to each).

But evangelical Christians for instance, believe that it ultimately doesn't matter what you DO in this life, good or bad, because either your name was written in the Book of Life at the start of all time or it wasn't and if it was

You're knowledge of Christian sects is worse. "Evangelicals" are mostly about religion-as-popular-entertainment. You don't get 10000+ member mage-churches by spending time on Calvin and Luther and sin, but by putting on elaborate and entertaining stage productions each week, carefuly tuned to make people feel better for having attended, not making anyone feel bad or guilty. You may be thinking of "fundamentalists", may of whom believe just what your wrote - they're at the opposite end of the spectrum of modern Christian sects from the evangelicals.

Re:More people have died

[lgw]

That's a terrible comparison. Most of the deaths (as many as 90% of the population in Central America and 95% in North America - staggering numbers) were inevitable as soon as anyone, for any reason crossed the ocean.

Your hated for religion seems an irrational compulsion - have you talked to anyone about it?

Re:More people have died

[operagost]

The Bible doesn't say anything about wiping out Native Americans.

Re:More people have died

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL. Have you ever even read the Bible? The Bible doesn't "condone" the incest between Lot and his daughters. It's merely an incident that ~occurs~ in the Bible, and t's used for the same purpose as the transgressions of Ham against Noah after the Deluge.

Lot, Noah, and their families were saved for being "good". Immediately after being saved, these sins occurred. The stories are meant as allegories to show the sinful nature of man. They aren't condoning the sin.

I'm not a Christian, but at least I understand the Bible. You might want to try actually reading it some time as opposed to just looking up a list of bad shit in the Bible and quoting it as if you know what you're talking about.

Re:More people have died

[Anonymous Coward]

Too bad it doesn't mention putting faggots to death like the Koran does. How did you miss that little gem? Oh, that's right, it's because you're a flaming leftist who bashes Christianity while Islamic nations are actively murdering gays by state law.
 
Thanks for playing but you've proven how much of a fucktard bigot you really are.

Re:More people have died

[DoofusOfDeath]

Reliable citations, please.

Also, one can do anything he wants "in the name of" some document or philosophy, regardless of whether or not it's actually consistent with it. For example, if I hear that you're not a fan of dogs, and so I kick a puppy in your name, does that suddenly make you a monster?

Re:More people have died

[DoofusOfDeath]

I think your list is highly selective. Assuming that this list is approximately correct, Christianity and Islam fare pretty well, historically speaking.

As far as I can tell from that list, a lot more killing has happened for non-religious pretenses than for religions pretenses.

If you don't find fault with that list, then I suggest you lay awake in bed fo a while tonight and re-examine some of your beliefs.

Re:More people have died

[clarkkent09]

Most wars in history were not religious. Early 20th sentury with WWI and WWII which together probably killed more people than all previous wars put together, not to mention Red Terror in China and Russia, Stalin's purges and pogroms, Russian civil war etc had nothing to do with religion (though they did have a LOT to do with Mein Kampf and Das Kapital). The point is, people will fight and kill each other regardless, mostly over power and resources. They sometimes use a particular book, ideology or religion as an excuse and rallying point for their side, sometimes not. It doesn't make any sense to say Bible caused more deaths than another book.

I also think that the fact that the Bible served as a foundation for the most successful civilization in the history of mankind much more than offsets the cases when it was used for evil.

Re:More people have died

[l0n3s0m3phr34k]

The "reason" is because religion is mostly a response to our "third man" perception. When we're put into a survival situation that we consciously think all lost (like Ernest Shackleton lost in the snow) we often think here is "someone else" there helping us...in reality it is our subconscious survival instinct rising up "to the occasion" and forcefully taking over parts of the conscious trying to keep itself alive. We attribute it to some otherworldly divine force because it seems outside of "us" and "alien"...but it's really just the more primitive parts of our minds kicking in because the "consciousness" that is "me" obviously can't deal with whatever is going on.

Seeing as this "entity" can be "brought out" using specific electrical impulses to the human brain, it's all nothing more than a "mindgame" to keep us alive. Since we humans see patterns in everything, and since this is a "shared experience" we have just said "oh, that's God!" when it's only our brain. And since we have evolved to be social and cooperative, we also assumed that this "outside" force is as well.

Re:More people have died

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay I'll play, how about the forced gang rape of children again in the story of Lot. That was Lot's choice unlike, as referenced above, the daughter's tricking him into drunkenness to have sex.

Does a good man who has a choice encourage strangers to gang rape his daughters to protect guests really make sense to anyone?

Just askin'....

Re:More people have died

[l0n3s0m3phr34k]

In Marxist Russia, Das Kapital burns YOU!

Re:More people have died

[WOOFYGOOFY]

Get real. Americans explicitly, under the "theory" of "Manifest Destiny", wiped out the American Indians by massacring them, slaughtering their buffalo etc etc etc.

    This was again explicitly a religious doctrine- "It is Manifestly God's Destiny for us that we should extend our nation to the Pacific" So please.

If American Indians were "inevitably" going to die because white people stood foot upon their shores , then would have been no need for the Indian Wars or the US infecting blankets with smallpox.

Re:More people have died

[Mr D from 63]

I think that is part of it. I also think there is a social evolutionary element, where the "group" benefits from cohesive beliefs.

Fast forward to what we have today, and religion has a complex interweaving with our social structure. To assign just 'good' or 'bad' judgements to religious elements becomes fruitless and short sighted. The real question becomes... .what are our present needs for religion, considering our global social structures and all the diversities within, and what will our future needs be? Many interesting things to ponder from an anthropological perspective.

Re:More people have died

[WOOFYGOOFY]

Crazy straw man. The POINT is who are these Christian Evangelicals to be going after peaceable books like these when their OWN "holy book" has been used to justify mass murder repeatedly throughout history and has a body count that reaches into the stratosphere?

Hard to believe anyone in this thread is so stupid so as to miss the point I made.

Re:More people have died

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess you didn't read Leviticus 20:13 KJV. I guess the bible must be as horrible as the quran according to you. And do not bring up the "killing of infidels" as the bible express the same the only difference is that the koran when you see the passages in context (try reading verses before and after, just like in the bible) says to do so when attacked while the bible says to do so simply because they do not wish to be assimilated.

Re:More people have died

[JimSadler]

I take it you have an issue with exterminating those not following the one true faith.

Re:More people have died

[Mr D from 63]

I wasn't so much arguing against your point, just the underlying basis you stated when making it. Your point, right or wrong, was not well made.

Re:More people have died

[WOOFYGOOFY]

Come on, that list leaves out everything that happened before the 20th century !!! When did religion rule the roost for most of civilization and what percentage of the available people did wage war with and on?

Point is, the fundies going after House of Spirits (!!!!????) have no moral basis to start in after other people's literary works. In fact their DECLARING WAR on these peaceable books is just the latest manifestation of their bellicose, intolerant "kill everything that disagrees with us" mentality which is just exactly what produces a "body count" in the first place. .

It just so happens that history has not deposited these book burners into a political climate and historical time in which they have the power to KILL these authors. But they're working on it:

http://www.publiceye.org/christian_right/dominionism.htm

Re:More people have died

[WOOFYGOOFY]

Yeah just the opposite . . no one argues about Islamic fundamentalism because it's in no way controversial : we all agree it's barbaric. And? And you point is? Our legislature isn't filled with psychotic amoral predators like Michelle Bachman and Ted Cruz who espouse a Christian Dominionist theology and INTEND to destroy our government through any means at their disposal whatsoever , the government shutdown being just the LEAST of what it is they've said they want to do to this nation.

Re:More people have died

[s.petry]

Pol Pot, Stalin, Mao, and Hitler called to tell you that you are wrong. People that have banned Religion have caused way more deaths than any single book, and as far as I can tell each of them believed pretty strongly in a book called "The Communist Manifesto".

That said, I don't blame Marx's book for people dieing either. Why not blame horrible events on horrible people bent on control and power instead of a book? Your comment was not informative, it's meant to insight hatred. If it was true I'd let it slide, but it's a fabrication meant to insight hatred.

Re:More people have died

[WOOFYGOOFY]

I accidentally turned it into a numbers game but only in the minds of people who were looking for a way to avoid the obvious rightness of the point I was trying to make. Mea culpa.

Re:More people have died

[darnkitten]

People will do for each other out of a natural inborn sense of decency

Your post reads a bit differently when, as in my area, "to do for" someone means "to kill" him (or her).

Ah, idiomatic expressions.

Re:More people have died

[darnkitten]

Methinks both o' yaz are overgeneralizing.

Re:More people have died

[WOOFYGOOFY]

No , dude. My post was meant to point out two ironies. One was the the fundamentalists pushing for this round of book burning, oh sorry banning, hold as holy a book which has been used to justify death unlike the books they're trying to ban.

The second irony is that this jihad against everything not Christian is EXACTLY the kind of totalitarian impulse which, left to its own devices, produces historical body counts in the first place.

It's not that I didn't have a worthwhile point to contribute. It's that the dogmatic defenses your mind reflexively raises against any point that contradicts the world view you've adopted are once again distorting things which are perfectly clear to everyone not so encumbered.

Re:More people have died

[Mr D from 63]

I am glad you feel that your 'rightness' is so 'obvious'. Seems like a trait you might share with Christian Evangelicals in their efforts to censor some books.

Re:More people have died

[Anonymous Coward]

"Just askin'" and omitting context (probably because you've never read the Bible and have absolutely no idea whatsoever what you're talking about).

Lot offered up his daughters to be raped in place of angels (who were direct emissaries of God). In addition, they were men, and by the standards of Lot's time, women had few/no rights. Certainly fewer rights than emissaries of God.

Don't worry that you don't know anything about history, religion, or ethics. It's okay, you're simply uninformed and ignorant.

Re:More people have died

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the Bible does not condone incest--neither in the case of Lot and his daughters or Judah and his daughter-in-law. In the case of Lot, his daughter got him drunk in order to become pregnant. When he was three sheets to the wind, each had sex with him. In the case of Judah, his daughter-in-law dressed as a whore and waited for him to travel by her "station". Judah did not realize she was his daughter-in-law. Judah, himself, deplored his actions. The Bible does not record the reaction or response of Lot to his daughters' actions and children. The Israelites didn't like the behaviour of Lots and his daughters. Their descendents became separate nations that hated Israel. ("Israelite" is the name for the ancient Jewish people, i.e., Old Testament Israel. "Israeli" is the term for the modern Jewish people.)

Rape was not condoned either.

Terrorism and Genocide are debatable. Like one man's "freedom fighter" is another man's "terrorist". It is poor scholarship to place 20th and 21st terms and standards on Old Testament times. If you do this with living people, psychologists call it "projection". The Bible does acknowledge that war was a part of life back then and different kingdoms and empires made it a business to practice war against their neighbors. The Israelites were given rules for war. Total war was not permitted--Sherman's March to the Sea was something the Bible did not permit. There were what we would call "good wars" and "bad wars".

Re:More people have died

[s.petry]

I have no idea what world you live in that is trying to push everything to be Christian, is it perhaps "Fantasy Island"?

Your first point was a completely untrue statement, that the Bible caused more deaths than anything else ever. That is wrong, fabrication, untrue, delusion, or what ever else you want to label it as which means "false"

Now you make another false claim that Christians are trying to take over government and acting tyrannical? How exactly are they doing that? Because of all the Religious Christmas specials that aired on national TV this year? All of the no longer existent nativity scenes blocking your view of the parking lot? All of the "Happy Holiday" cards you read because Christians are afraid of saying "Merry Christmas" for fear of being sued or attacked by the ACLU or the Rainbow Coalition?

If anything, Christianity has been oppressed in this country which is supposedly believing in "Free Religion". If I'm an atheist, a minority, homosexual, and/or transgender I can do and say what ever I feel like. Hell, I'll get national air time if it's offensive enough to those "Religious People".

In other words, your second point is just as false as your first. As to my defensive statement, it was not defensive you clod. It was pointing out that you are propagating hate speech. If I pointed out that Mao and Stalin were atheists, so all atheists were mass murdering commies would you be defensive? Because it's a true statement, or because it's wrong? Whether or not you were atheist should make no difference in pointing out the failed logic and the negative impact it has on society.

Re:More people have died

[stdarg]

Hmm, there's a huge argument about Islamic fundamentalism going on in the world. I'm honestly not sure what you're referring to when you say it's not controversial. What do you call US support of Islamic fundamentalists in Syria? We agree its barbaric, so we fund it?? Sorry your argument just doesn't make sense in light of what's happened since 2001 when Islamic fundamentalism was thrust into the limelight.

Another example is to look at US support of Pakistan.

Re:More people have died

[WOOFYGOOFY]

Oh so my point is false. Sorry i have to pin you down here. The rightness of my point is NOT obvious. My point being that these fundies are banning books which have never inspired anyone to harm anyone, unlike their holy book and the reason they're doing this can only be because , like all fanatics, they hold as the only good the advancement of their religion against their "enemies", who need to be persecuted- thrown out of schools, libraries, society if they can manage it.

That point is not obviously true. That is your assertion?

 

Re:More people have died

[WOOFYGOOFY]

It amusing to see the enemies of freedom, intellectual expression, art, culture and secular society feel compelled by this topic to leave the safety of the masks of sanity they normally hide behind and attack people decrying book banning.

Please. Continue. Out yourselves. One and all. Come. Come.

Re:More people have died

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe the point is, you'll openly mock and incite hate towards christians where the bible may condone though the religion itself condemns, where as you get offended on the muslims behalf if someone speak against them even though they actively do what is written in their religion. And you can go ahead and say it's extremist groups only, but when have you seen a crowd of thousands of christians chantting "death to ".

It really just comes down to hypocrisy really.

Re:More people have died

[Mr D from 63]

You are pointing to an irony, but then mixing it with an assertion. If your assertion is that Christians have no business attempting to censor what you consider relatively 'benign' books because wars and persecution were fought on the basis of Christian beliefs, then I'd say that no group that fought wars or persecuted based on any belief has any right to censor anything even if they don't want their kids exposed to it, including those that fought for democracy. If you think a modern day Christians and their beliefs should be marginalized based on the fact that wars were fought with Christianity, as well as other religions, as an excuse, then so be it. I see Christians do some very good things all the time, and raise some very good, smart, productive, and socially valuable kids. Those are things that should be respected, IMO.

FWIW - I personally don't think we should be censoring most of these books, but these articles tend to seek out and make a big deal about the most questionable calls. We'd all disagree on where to draw the line. Blatant pornography most would agree should be censored. Everything between that and Curious George is up for debate in our society by one group or another.

Re:More people have died

[Mr D from 63]

But if you will notice, there was no attack of anyone denying book censorship in any of my posts. Go ahead and be a victim anyhow, if that's what makes you feel better.

Re:More people have died

[WOOFYGOOFY]

If your assertion is that Christians have no business attempting to censor what you consider relatively 'benign' books because wars and persecution were fought on the basis of Christian beliefs,

Yeah but that's not my point. It's not that Christians have historically fought wars generally which disqualifies them from attacking just any idea or books, it's that they've done it citing specific passages from their holy book as the REASON and JUSTIFICATION to kill those people. There is a direct connection between their book and the way they used it to deaths of millions. Yet they want these other harmless books banned.

Sorry , that point couldn't be clearer. You don't see it? Really? I mean, really?

Re:More people have died

[WOOFYGOOFY]

Yeah defending banning books IS attacking people defending against censorship. I am not making myself a victim. The victims are the authors and would be readers of the banned books. The victimizers are the fundie and evangelical christians who are using religion and the bible once again to attack civil society.

Re:More people have died

[WOOFYGOOFY]

you'll openly mock and incite hate towards christians where the bible may condone though the religion itself condemns, where as you get offended on the muslims behalf if someone speak against them even though they actively do what is written in their religion.

And I did this where exactly? maybe you should actually read threads you participate in. If you bothered to do that you'd see my link to :

www.thereligionofpeace.com/âZ

above.

Re:More people have died

[WOOFYGOOFY]

I've made my point that Christians have no business banning books owing to their having used the Bible to murder millions, a fact that ought to serve, if we're banning books, in having it banned everywhere.

Of course I am not interested in banning books or persecuting authors of books , denying them access to libraries and readers. Only chirstians are.

No matter how you twist and turn the facts are the facts. Christians are trying to get books banned because they feel those books represent in some faint way some alternative worldview other than christianity. This is what they do. This is what they've done throughout history whether it's the catholic church going after Galileo or the Scopes trials or evolution or the assault of education by local school boards crammed with fundies. Christianity attacks other people who don't believe as they do. It's an aggressive religion which attacks civil society every chance it gets. Christianity attacks everything not in accord with its world view, as we clearly see here and it is no different from fundamental Islam in this regard.

Re:More people have died

[Mr D from 63]

OK, that is a wonderful point. Very useful. Thanks

Re:More people have died

[Mr D from 63]

I am not defending banning books in general, but unless you agree that blatant pornography is acceptable content in public school libraries, or any other content, then you have to agree that censorship is acceptable. Then we must consider each request to censor content on its own. To generalize it as a Christian only thing doesn't really help at all. I realize a lot of the requests are Christian based, but that is the dominant religion in our country so it is to be expected.

Many folks would argue that books about guns should not be in schools. Its not always a religious thing. I doubt I would agree to censor most of these books, but I will respect the voice of others and try to keep the line drawn in a reasonable place.

Re:More people have died

[Anonymous Coward]

Lot offered up his daughters to be raped in place of angels (who were direct emissaries of God). In addition, they were men, and by the standards of Lot's time, women had few/no rights

Oh, well when you put it that way, it's just fine. I don't see anything wrong with this now that it's in context.

Re:More people have died

[s.petry]

I've made my point that Christians have no business banning books owing to their having used the Bible to murder millions, a fact that ought to serve, if we're banning books, in having it banned everywhere.

Which is somehow worse than the tyrants in history that burned libraries, or different than the special interests in the US that have been banning more books than any Christians? The same tyrants and special interests that have killed thousands of times more people than those Christians?

No matter how _YOU_ try and twist your ignorance on the subject, the facts are that non-Christians can be far worse than Christians. Ask some of the hundreds of millions of Chines that were murdered under Mao, or the 80 million that Stalin murdered. How about the millions in Iraq and Afghanistan to be more recent and killed by special interests than any Religious war. Or people like Genghis Khan if you want to go back in history to before the Crusades. Talk about selective history and facts, wholly shit.

Re:More people have died

[Anonymous Coward]

Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion

Steven Weinberg

Re:More people have died

[Anonymous Coward]

And they deserved to be.
Most were either traitors to their religion of country.
Or just chose the wrong religion, better luck next time.

Religion kills, nowadays we might have a chance to remove all religious nonsense but I'm not holding my breath.

Re:More people have died

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually I'm going to have to throw the Koran in there to really seal it up, owing to the efficiency of 20th century killing machines. BUT even at that, it's merely because the American Indians and Mexican Aztecs who died from infectious diseases aren't normally counted as having been "killed" by Cortez and the Manifest Destiny Christians .

Because they weren't. Upwards of 90% of the American population was wiped out by a disease whose recorded symptoms resembled a hantavirus known to the Central Americans. It probably would have happened if Colombus and Cortez had never shown up.

But this is wrong. Anne Frank died of typhus, not in the gas chambers but she is rightly counted as having been killed by Nazis anyway.

The difference is that the Nazis forced Anne Frank into a camp where her death was inevitable. The disease that struck the American natives was an American disease that affected places well outside of the reach of the Europeans, such as the US east coast (before colonization) and the Brazilian interior. The Europeans cannot be blamed for this.

Re:More people have died

[Anonymous Coward]

Religion kills, nowadays we might have a chance to remove all religious nonsense but I'm not holding my breath.

The countries that have tried that in the last 100 years have pretty much turned to mass murder and terrible oppression, and have tended to eat their own. You might think you'll be part of the oppressors, and maybe you will be for a while, but then you'll be fed into the sausage machine too. Be careful what you wish for, you might get it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtWkn5IhfqU

Based on your earlier comments that might not be the worst thing.

Re:More people have died

[Anonymous Coward]

More than 100 million people died in World War 2. Stalin caused at least 20 million deaths due to planned famine and other persecutions. The combined Eastern and Western Roman Empire in the 4th century A.D. is estimated at 50 to 60 million. Your assertion requires history to be far, far bloodier than we have any evidence for. Without machine guns, without bombs, without raiolroads and gas chambers, you suggest the equivalent of _two_ complete and total depopulations of Europe. Of course a case can be made that the Bible has been at the root of equal degrees (or more) of malevolence, but your "More people..." argument is sheer fantasy even considered by percent of population. Try not to "just say" things - take an interest in proving them as well.

Re:More people have died

[blue trane]

Ban "Lolita" ... again!

Re:More people have died

[Anonymous Coward]

Another fucktard who thinks the old testament is the teachings of Jesus. It doesn't condone any of the things you mentioned. What you read was history. You should read the New Testament. You are just another flamer who doesn't understand much of anything. You think you are witty, you think you are funny, you are not. Peace be with you.

Re:More people have died

[Anonymous Coward]

Reports, not condones. Still, it's pretty "filthy" reading.

Re:More people have died

[khallow]

More people have been persecuted, hounded, ruined, tortured, burned, murdered, and just exterminated en-masse because of a book called the Bible than any other document in human history including Mein Kampf and Das Capital put together.

The order is Das Capital, then Mein Kampf, then the Bible. Admittedly a large part of that is because there was a lot more people around to die from these other ideologies due to the population growth of the last few centuries.

Re:More people have died

[Anonymous Coward]

Pro tip: You can't fix stupid, and excuses for Lot's behavior are a primo indicator that the person(s) offering the excuse are stupid as a rock.

Re:More people have died

[Anonymous Coward]

Jesus explicitly said that the old testament remains in force. He was a jew, remember.

Matthew 5:18, Jesus himself speaking about the OT (context: "Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them"):

"For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled."

Look around you. Has the earth passed? No. There you have it. Jesus, in the NT, telling you the OT is law. NO shellfish, no mixed fibers, nothing. You are so fucked.

Re:More people have died

[MikeBabcock]

That's FUD every time its said. Feel free to find actual facts to back it up (good luck).

I'm pretty sure if I made a guess, nation-building and racism have caused a lot more wars and death, as have fear and paranoia toward the unknown.

Its kinda sad when people actually believe random quotes on the Internet like that without doing the work to check it out.

Re:More people have died

[MikeBabcock]

A lot of people believe people are inherently good and need a book to tell them to do wrong.
A lot of other people believe people are inherently bad and need a book to tell them to do good.

Neither has been proven; spread salt liberally.

Re:More people have died

[Anonymous Coward]

Just like your USA is turning into.
Most people locked up, most religious nutters, most drone strikes on innocents, no rule of law, fuck the little people i've got mine jack attitudes.
Hows that religion turning out for you?

Re:More people have died

[91degrees]

Do you have numbers for these? And are these deaths where the book was just a factor or those where there was a direct chain of causality?

Re:More people have died

[Anonymous Coward]

Countries that have tried to remove religion? Or countries that installed/elected evil people?

Re:More people have died

[Anonymous Coward]

Both. Look it up.

Re:More people have died

[Kielistic]

"It's faster" technically counts as a reason. It's a bad reason but I'm not sure there's a good reason for genocide.

Re:More people have died

[TangoMargarine]

While the text doesn't condemn Lot's actions in that instance, it also does not endorse them. The overarching story of Lot is that he decided to live in an immoral society and it corrupted him.

In the society at that time, it was also supposed to be a sort of sacred bond that when you had strangers staying with you, they were under your protection. While Lot's actions were obviously not cool, what would you have done in the situation? (And please don't say "get out my guns and blow away the residents of the entire city outside my front door.")

Re:More people have died

[TangoMargarine]

At least we actually have a civil society in the West. Ask some of those sharia-law places about that.

Re:More people have died

[lgw]

No, you've missed my point entirely.

It's quite possible that most of the deaths on the continent were caused by a single black man: a slave on the Conquistador's ship who was sick with smallpox when they landed.

Any massacre of Indians in the 18th or 19th century is utterly trivial in scale when compared to the toll wrought by disease in the 16th and 17th. Those natives we fought in North America were the remnant population, still recovering after ~95% losses due to European diseases. Seriously, do they teach anything beyond "hate whitey" in history classes these days?

Information is dangerous

[Maquis196]

Words can hurt you, won't someone please think of the children!

Re:Information is dangerous

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup, we need them to stop thinking for themselves, that's proven to be dangerous, it leads to things like science, engineering and literature.

Re:Information is dangerous

[Anonymous Coward]

Well I have to say that during/after puberty there were a number of books that turned me on to some things... so to speak.

Plus, you know, the Internet.

What is the fucking point of banning books in the Internet age? It makes no sense. Everything is available.

Re:Information is dangerous

[JimSadler]

All I can see about the children is by the time you gut them and get them clean they really don't cook up any better than pork.

Re:Information is dangerous

[darnkitten]

'Cause not everything is yet available online--and not everything online is accessible.

I'd say that less than a quarter of the books in my (public) library are online, and about half of the materials available for download are crippled by DRM or format locks.

These people would all go into a snit if they knew

[kilodelta]

That my freshman reading list for high school included books such as:

Brave New World, Black Like Me, A Kiss Before Dying, 1984, Animal Farm, etc. Yes, a fairly subversive Catholic high school. Then of course during my years there we read the Greek Tragedies, one that stands out is Lysistrata, then of course The Hobbit, The Canterbury Tales, and Beowulf. Yes, read them.

Evolution disbelievers + book banning correlation?

[dysmal]

First there's a posting about 1/3 of Americans not believing in Evolution (http://politics.slashdot.org/story/13/12/30/2326229/new-study-shows-one-third-of-americans-dont-believe-in-evolution). Now according to this there's books being banned still. Coincidence?

title

[Anonymous Coward]

Ellison's book is "Invisible Man."

Not all that bad

[Anonymous Coward]

It would be a different story (pun intended) if they banned good books.

Re:Not all that bad

[Mr D from 63]

It would be a different story if they banned gun books.

Re:Not all that bad

[Chris Mattern]

Gun books don't kill people, people books kill people!

Re:Not all that bad

[darnkitten]

Shelves of books falling on people will kill people--which is a good reason for safety standards.

Censorship is the ally of ignorance

[Anonymous Coward]

These kids need all the books they can get!

Less than 50 incidents for the whole country?

[jandrese]

This headline seems rather sensational since the numbers are so small. The US has roughly 100,000 public schools. The fact that only 49 of them (well, probably some of these are full districts, so the number of schools will be greater) are banning books should be celebrated. This is people fighting the good fight against highly local ignoramuses, not some big national problem. I'm glad they're doing what they're doing, but I'm more glad that it's almost unnecessary.

Re:Less than 50 incidents for the whole country?

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is that they're succeeding in removing books from schools where we learn our values and to think for ourselves as we grow up. These books are being banned forever at those schools, and it's happening in almost 60% of the states in the USA. That these attacks are increasing year by year, a 53% increase in one year is pretty serious. Banning books shouldn't even be on the table in even one state. It didn't used to be like this, when I was a kid I would have been stunned to hear this was happening. It does not fit with our society, with its focus on freedom of speech and personal liberty. We are handing over a hell of a lot of rights. I find it ironic that the religious right are behind a lot of the book burning at home while they preach delivering "freedom" onto our enemies. I don't think they even know what the term means anymore.

Re:Less than 50 incidents for the whole country?

[turning in circles]

OK but there are ten times as many reported challenges (where someone, usually a parent, seeks to get a book banned from a school or library), and maybe four or five times as many total challenges. Actual book banning only succeeded 49 times, but that doesn't mean many many more people tried to ban books. ALA website discussion here

Re:Less than 50 incidents for the whole country?

[Anonymous Coward]

I find it ironic that the religious right are behind a lot of the book burning at home while they preach delivering "freedom" onto our enemies.
 
No one is burning any books. And the left is just as guilty.
 
But let's talk irony... How about the liberal left being racist and protecting their own? I thought only the right did that? Oh, that's right. When the right has anything even close to this people are fired without question. Amazing! Fucking leftist liars always play the victim. That shit's done. I don't accept their fucking lies anymore.

Re:Less than 50 incidents for the whole country?

[Idarubicin]

The fact that only 49 of them (well, probably some of these are full districts, so the number of schools will be greater) are banning books should be celebrated.

The concern I would have here is that we have no way of knowing what fraction of all book bannings come to the attention of NCAC. Particularly if a ban is implemented by a single school, banning a book from the curriculum may only directly affect one or two classrooms' worth of children. Not all of those students (or even their parents) may necessarily be aware that a ban has been applied. In subsequent years, no one may have any inkling that the ban exists; the book will have silently disappeared from the curriculum. The syllabus doesn't usually include a list of the books that aren't being taught. So for those reasons, I suspect that the number given - 49 instances - represents a very significant under-reporting.

On the other hand, that same under-reporting gives me a (small) measure of comfort with respect to the other number in the summary: the purported 53% year-over-year increase in bannings. Without ready access to more data, it's entirely possible that the increase in cases is not due to an increase in bannings (undoubtedly a bad thing) but due to an increase in awareness regarding the NCAC and their Kids' Right to Read Project which would make these incidents more likely to be reported and challenged when they do occur (which would be a good thing).

Re:Less than 50 incidents for the whole country?

[Anonymous Coward]

The "book burning" was a well placed metaphor. Note that you are comparing someone using their right to freedom of speech to state an unpopular opinion of which they apologized for to the banning entire books of knowledge from public consumption. That is not even an apples and apples comparison. Also, I am a conservative, I have voted republican my whole life. I am far from a leftist liar playing any victim that you would like me to be. Having said that I do not mind that people make up their own minds and choose to be liberal if that is what they believe in, everyone is entitled to an opinion. And, our democracy is based on the belief that it is the existence of these opposing values that represent as much of the majority of society as is humanly possible, i.e. a good thing. I do not subscribe to what seems to be the predominant belief in our party of scorched Earth policies that only conservatives should be allowed to walk the Earth. The only subjects I do not agree with our party on are; denial of evolution (humans were not riding pterodactyls and t-rex, life adapts and natural selection is a real driving force even today as seen in the Galapagos islands and elsewhere, go read some books if you don't believe me if they aren't already banned where you are from), going into frivolous wars (Afghanistan was justified, whereas Iraq was not!) and banning books (are you afraid of someone making up their own mind?)

Re:Less than 50 incidents for the whole country?

[darnkitten]

Part of the problem in this discussion is that we are dealing with almost NO concrete information.

The article on which the NPR "article" is based tells of 49 "incidents" this year with no additional details--we may presume that it has to do with children, based on the project name. They say that they investigated "three times the average number" in November, without revealing the number. They do give concrete numbers for this school year so far (31 compared to 14 last year), but give no context. The ALA reported 464 challenges in 2012 (referenced by turning in circles, above), but we don't know how these organizations relate or how this statistic relates to the KRRP statistics.

We don't know what percentage of challenges were successful, only that there was [a] "notable increase in positive outcomes to book challenges." They indicate clusters of challenges around racial and LGBT subjects, and suggest coordination, but give no corroborating evidence, and no links to the underlying data.

We are left with the vague impression that we should panic and with a link to their websites, where you have to hunt around to find any information related to the articles in question.

Yes, this IS slashdot, but doesn't it strike anyone as odd that we've been discussing/arguing/namecalling based on what is essentially a poorly-written press release?

Re:Less than 50 incidents for the whole country?

[darnkitten]

No?

Okay, Carry on.

Obligatory

[iriecolorado]

"It tells me that goosestepping morons like yourself should try reading books instead of burning them!"

Re:Obligatory

[l0n3s0m3phr34k]

“I suddenly remembered my Charlemagne. Let my armies be the rocks and the trees and the birds in the sky”

Neither one

[Anonymous Coward]

Whenever one of these "banned books" stories comes out, if you click through and RTFA (I know) you'll find out it's a list of "challenged" books. Meaning that someone, somewhere, complained. It almost never means that a teacher, librarian, or administrator actually removed or prohibited the book.

Re:Evolution disbelievers + book banning correlati

[cold fjord]

Coincidence? Not if you factor in progressive political correctness.

Obligatory joke

[dkleinsc]

People with loose morals often read books that have been banned. People with strict morals, by contrast, form censorship committees and study those books in a group setting.

Banning for everyone vs by age

[Anonymous Coward]

They lump a school decides that a book with graphic language and violence is inappropriate for 3rd graders into the same category as a district that bans "Catcher in the Rye" from the high school library.

Only a moron would think that they're the same thing.

School officials will likely confiscate it

[tepples]

K-12 school officials routinely confiscate electronic devices not issued by the school as "disruptive".

Re:School officials will likely confiscate it

[SuricouRaven]

That's because they are. Try keeping a class focused on their lesson when half of them have a phone hidden under the desk to check their facebook page.

Re:School officials will likely confiscate it

[Anonymous Coward]

That's because they are. Try keeping a class focused on their lesson when half of them have a phone hidden under the desk to check their facebook page.

The school system can either fight this, and continue to piss off students and parents when they take their OMG-what-if-I-have-to-dial-911 emergency candy crush device away, or they can give in and bring the electronics to the TOP of the desk and welcome tech by issuing or allowing iPads and other devices in the classroom for learning.

If the student wants to continue to fuck off and play around, then the failure will eventually catch up to them. We MUST bring back individual responsibility. I grow tired of the fucking pandering and tiptoeing around the risk of offending someone when we tell them to stop being a fucktard, regardless of age.

Re:School officials will likely confiscate it

[Anonymous Coward]

I vote we continue to piss off students who don't want to pay attention, and the parents of those students. If they don't like it, they can fuck off home.

And I don't want more corporate welfare for electronic junk which won't help with learning. We were better BEFORE we introduced this shit into the classroom.

Re:School officials will likely confiscate it

[Pseudonym Authority]

They're fucking children, they don't know what's best for them. If you expect them to excessive "individual responsibility" and pay attention to the teacher for a payoff 20 years in the future then you're a stupid, incorrect ideologue and out of touch with reality.

Re:School officials will likely confiscate it

[SuricouRaven]

"If the student wants to continue to fuck off and play around, then the failure will eventually catch up to them."

You overestimate teenagers. Even the smart ones are quite stupid, and few have gotten the hang of that 'delayed gratification' thing.

Re:School officials will likely confiscate it

[Anonymous Coward]

If the student wants to continue to fuck off and play around, then the failure will eventually catch up to them.

Yeah, because no school in the nation has a performance-based metric...

Only in schools

[nurb432]

If that continues to hold the course, then its not a huge deal. As long as parents who disagree with the content can still buy the books and let their children read them. 90% of the books in primary schools don't need to be there anyway, as they are 'fluff' and not directly related to the curriculum.

Public libraries should retain the titles however.

OTT headline?

[YrWrstNtmr]

"53% More Banning Incidents"

No, they're investigated 53% more requests. The linked article says nothing about how many were actually banned.
And the majority of requests were from parents or library patrons, not school districts or state/local govts.

49 cases. Is that idiocy? Are these idiots? Sure. But good grief....49 cases out of how many million kids and parents?

Alternate non-OTT headline - "0.002% of parents in the US have requested a book be banned in their local school library."
You could find a greater percentage of people complaining about just about anything.

Re:OTT headline?

[Gh0st_Preacher]

Actually decided to brave the comments section to post just this - the headline is wrong. This system (at least where I live in Northern California) works something like this: 1. Parent finds "objectionable material" in a book their child was assigned. 2. Parent ignores the packet they got before the school year started that tells them the reading list and letting them know that if they don't approve of any book/material for their child, they can work with the teacher for an alternative. 3. Parent goes to local school district and files an official complaint. 4. After processing said complaint, the district must pull all copies of said book while it is under "review". 5. Parent feels morally justified. 6. Book returns to shelves for the whole cycle to restart. That's probably the kind of "incident" the article was originally referencing.

What about "The Turner Diaries"?

[hessian]

I hear that never even made it into the libraries in the first place.

That's a better form of censorship than letting it in, and then trying to ban it.

bad reportage/bad stats/just plain bad

[turkeydance]

and we take their word for it.

Saudi Arabia and other area coutries

[Anonymous Coward]

This makes headlines but how many books, including the Bible, are banned in Saudi Arabia and or other nearby countries? Some perspective would be nice. Not saying that a VERY FEW number of schools banning books is ok but the fact that this is not a national issue while ignoring what other countries do........... I guess it is always fun to pick on the US and ignore the misdeeds of other nations.

Re:Saudi Arabia and other area coutries

[Anonymous Coward]

I find it extremely annoying when the eurotrash\Canadians with inferiority complexes shows up with comments like "How dare the US criticize North Korea for threatening to nuke the US, Japan, and South Korea when they are still slaughtering millions of innocent Muslims every day in Iraq!", but that's not even close to the case here. The US is supposed to be a free country, with freedom of the press. It's irrelevant what Saudi Arabia does because Saudi Arabia knows that it's a repressive country and likes it. We like to hold ourselves to higher standards.

And anyway, this is a domestic group doing this research and no comparison was made, so shut up.

And Saudi Arabia is by no means "nearby". It's on the other side of the fucking globe. You're doing your country a disservice by looking this stupid. Please stop.

Yawn

[sideslash]

Schools in general act "in loco parentis", and decide what material young people should be exposed to in order to have a good education. Schools may make good or bad choices, but they do make choices. I am not surprised that a book is banned at a school library. It is no more or less appropriate than a ban on taking kids to a field trip to a strip club. I as a parent would happily ban my children from attendance at a strip club, and a school (acting, again, in loco parentis) may do the same if it decides it's best.

Don't like that? Then homeschool your kids and be responsible for their welfare yourself.

For what it's worth, I homeschool my own kids. I won't show slasher movies to a 3 year old. I expect an 18 year old to be prepared to be an adult. At some point in there a transformation has taken place; every child is different, but parents can and do mess it up by exposing their kids to junk when they're not ready for it. Such junk could be bad friends (learning to be racists/dishonest/etc.) or (yes, Slashdot) bad media for their age and emotional maturity.

Re:Yawn

[KermodeBear]

Parents have a right to request alternate assignments if they are unhappy with part of the school's curriculum.

Also, please explain to me how allowing The Invisible Man to reside on a school library shelf is like taking your kid to a strip club.

Re:Yawn

[sideslash]

I have zero interest in debating the libraries individual choices. They may be right or wrong, I'm just saying that disallowing some kids from reading some books is a normal part of parenting or surrogate parenting.

Re:Yawn

[LMariachi]

What the hell is wrong with taking a kid to a titty bar? The strippers love them.

Re:Yawn

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you're a bit confused. Most all of these instances of book banning have been at the demand of a parent, not by the schools desire. In at least one of those cases, against the school superintendents better judgement in fact.

But you raise a good point. You aren't surprised these books are banned at schools due to a parents demands that it be, and say this is understandable behavior.
Would you feel the same if some parent demanded the school DID take the class to a strip club, all the while that parent citing morals, ethics, and their religion?

In both cases the schools really do seem to know better than to do potentially or decidedly harmful things to the children in their care. Of course my only evidence for that is that to my knowledge no school has put strip clubs on the todo lists, so they seem to know better.
Likewise, the teachers and professors know the value of the lesson material at hand, as evidenced by them picking it out and assigning it as an assignment year after year and generation after generation. They seem to know withholding knowledge is harmful and at least until recently didn't seem to.

What about seditious literature?

[wjcofkc]

The government should quietly work to have 1984 banned from schools. It will make the rest of the transition all the more less resistive.

What about 'heemasex'?

[Anonymous Coward]

They've also BANNED any psychology books from before the 1970s too...
You know, the ones in which they state that homosexuality is a mental illness (which it is). Obviously the homosexual Jew paedophiles (you know, the ones who like torturing their own baby boys by cutting off their foreskins without anaesthetic, and then SUCKING THE WOUND with their own mouths - THOSE homosexual paedophiles) want to make sure that they can brainwash some more 'goyim' into believing that being 'gay' is completely normal.... It's not as if it's taken them fifty years of non-stop propaganda and threats to get to this point, is it - our parents and grandparents were obviously 'full of hate' for thinking that homosexuals were sick perverts... After all, the JEW says so, so it must be true...

Re:What about 'heemasex'?

[Anonymous Coward]

Meh. Obvious troll is obvious. I give him 1 of 10, only because he tried to tie it into the topic.

1984 is now confusing...

[geekmux]

...libraries no longer know where to file it. After all, anyone reading it these days would assume it's a work of non-fiction.

The government assumed it was an official training manual...

Re:1984 is now confusing...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, getting rid of books is more of a Fahrenheit 451 training manual.

Before the bell

[tepples]

What else are students supposed to do between completing the assignment and the bell, especially in a "flipped" class where lectures are delivered through Internet video on demand?

Re:Before the bell

[Anonymous Coward]

Same thing as the rest of us were. Get punished for finishing something early by having to write an essay or be sent outside the class because it looked like we were slacking.

Myth of PC

[Anonymous Coward]

"Political Correctness" has become a banner (no pun intended) cry within the so-called conservative sector of those who march to the drums of Rupert Murdoch and take their cues from Fox News Corp. I've listened to my 80 yr-old father harp-on for years about the PC movement and how it obfuscates political discussion. Now its the the anti-PC movement thats actually accomplishing the mission.

Book banning is nothing more than political denial on the part of people who would rather require ignorance than suffer opposition to their sacred cattle and dogmatic sense of authority. It's a no win situation when you can't discuss things openly, without distraction from those who can't debate because they can't identify the underlying issues.

Re:Myth of PC

[clarkkent09]

Sorry to spoil your crazy rant but actually these books are banned not because they are too PC (can you even imagine that ever happening? really?) but because they contain depictions of racism, sex, violence etc. It actually is the case of PC going too far yet again.

Re:Myth of PC

[epyT-R]

Uh not quite. The neocons want to push the bible as their narrative. They haven't been successful because of liberal backlash..and the liberals want to push their own narratives and have done so, largely because the schools are government funded to begin with. Censoring reality so that it appears to align with ideology is the definition of politically correct.

These socialists and fascists are so myopically focused, now, that 'liberty and justice FOR ALL' escapes them. They want privileges for select groups instead. They need to be voted out of office.

Re:Myth of PC

[Anonymous Coward]

but because they contain depictions of racism, sex, violence etc.
 
Perhaps they should replace these books with the Bible? Nope, not racism, sex and violence in there, nope, no sirree.....

Re:Myth of PC

[Sigma 7]

.and the liberals want to push their own narratives and have done so, largely because the schools are government funded to begin with.

I think such censorship is probably because of parents that think their special snowflakes shouldn't be exposed to such hateful material.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - banned because of the n-word, and changing it to slave made the book fine for reading. I find it very hard to believe a liberal agenda would be to deny well-known past history, especially when they replace it with something worse (i.e. "nigger" means the person could legally leave, while "slave" does not.)

The Catcher in the Rye - single use of the f-word.

Bridge to Terabithia - banned because of disrespect to adults. I've seen greater disrespect from shows where kids are highly effective at knocking out international criminal organizations as those imply that adults are useless (and practically waving a big flag in front of the radar).

Re:Myth of PC

[ultranova]

The neocons want to push the bible as their narrative.

Well, their version of it, anyway.

Re:Myth of PC

[Bartles]

So predictable. Of all religious texts, why did you pick the bible?

Re:Myth of PC

[Anonymous Coward]

So predictable. Of all languages, why did you pick English?

Maybe it has something to do with the audience with whom you are speaking, knowing that they will find English more familiar than, say, Russian? Or perhaps it was your environment growing up, you are more familiar with English than any other language, so that is the one you use when trying to communicate with other people?

Nah, must be because you want to persecute English speakers.

Re:Myth of PC

[lgw]

Uh not quite. The neocons want to push the bible as their narrative

I don't think that word "neocon" means what you think it means. A "neocon" is someone who supports a strongly pro-Israel policy in the middle east, and is often used with a wink and a nod as an anti-Semitic epithet. So, no, the Bible isn't the correct book for a "neocon" rant.

Putting things In context.

[westlake]

In the 2002 Census of Governments, the United States Census Bureau enumerated the following numbers of school systems in the United States:

13,506 school district governments
178 state-dependent school systems
1,330 local-dependent school systems
1,196 education service agencies (agencies providing support services to public school systems)

School district

In a statistical universe this size, "49 incidents" tells me nothing.

I need to know where these incidents took place.

I need to know if decisions were being made on the state or local level.

I need to know how these incidents were resolved --- and how that has changed over the years.

A breakdown by age group, title, author and subject is essential as well.

Re:Putting things In context.

[darnkitten]

This.

I can't even find the information on the KRRP website, aside from the two news articles referenced in TFA.

H.G. Wells wrote "The Invisible Man"

[jimhill]

Ralph Ellison's book is "Invisible Man". It's hard to take seriously the literary lamentations of someone who biffs something as basic as the titles of the books being lamented.

Welcome to insanity!

[Anonymous Coward]

Banning literature of at least minimal positive influence to the readers (depending who you ask) meanwhile, they're handing out condoms...

I love the United States, but this is the fundamental problem of the country currently. Why don't people realize this? It's perpetuating and hard to stop, which only makes it that much more sad.

-Moron Slashdotter who's too lazy to play Password Olympics

More good things too

[mveloso]

And on the other hand, stuff that actually benefits humanity has been done because of the Bible. So where is your god now?

Ploy?

[jblues]

Is this a ploy to get teenage kids to read more? Scene1: Pa: Hey kid, don't read these books - they're BANNED. . . go play GTA7 on Xbox or something. Kid: Omfg! Banned you say? Scene2: [Kid reading and expanding horizons]

Use a bicycle

[tepples]

Last time I checked, cycling to a branch of a public library and requesting that a book be brought in from another branch didn't require parental assistance.

Re:Use a bicycle

[Anonymous Coward]

Last time I checked, cycling to a branch of a public library and requesting that a book be brought in from another branch didn't require parental assistance.

That's if a child knows about a book. Most of the favorite books I found prior to the "internet age" I stumbled across by accident in the library. That includes books like the "Lord of the Rings", which I may have heard something about but it would never have dawned on me to actively look for it (and I could walk there). Also, if a book is banned in a local area the ordering option may not be available.

What the hell..

[log0n]

We still ban books? JFC, that's embarrassing. Aliens are laughing at us.

Obviously

[Anonymous Coward]

Because if someone writes a book then it must be something children should be able to read in school. It doesn't matter about the content or of it's a pile of steaming mind shit.

But of course, here is Slashdot to the rescue to defend the steaming piles of mind shit under the guise of Saving Our Liberties(tm).

Banned? Not so fast...

[kenh]

It appears that dropping a book from the curriculum now passes as being 'banned'?

So when the new Norton Anthology of American Literature is published, are we now saying that the previous version/edition was 'banned'? Of course not, but if a school district decides to drop, for example Huck Finn, BUT the district keeps the book in the school library, is it considered 'banned'? By this group, the answer is yes.

Very small problem, really...

[kenh]

There are probably about 5-10,000 school districts in the US, and over the course of 12 months there were exactly FOURTY-NINE incidents is far from an epidemic. It's slightly less than one book by one school district per state.

That's one book in Texas, one in New York, one in Florida, etc., in exactly one school district each state.

Re:These people would all go into a snit if they k

[compro01]

I'm fairly sure a non-trivial percentage of the dominionist evangelical protestants would consider a catholic anything l to be fairly subversive.

Who cares.

[Charcharodon]

Banned books? I'm thinking that fall in the catagory of "who cares" anymore. In my time they hardly read anything anyway, and all the "classics" I had to read were painfully bad, which almost killed what I thought was the more important aspect anyway, teaching teaching children to love reading.

A ban now is pretty much hopeless. Amazon will sell you just about anything that exists and what they don't sell for a few dollars can be found elsewhere on the internet for the high price of your time and an internet connection.

authors

[LMariachi]

"Isabel Allende's The House of The Spirits. Sherman Alexie's The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. Alice Walker's The Color Purple. Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye. Ralph Ellison's The Invisible Man. What do these titles have in common?"

None of the authors are white?

Re:authors

[dozr]

why is everything about racism... did you want someone to make a joke about them not being white as non whites cant read?

and more it does not explicitely condamn

[aepervius]

Like slavery. In the old testament it even states how to handle a slave, and in the new it does not even condamn it really. If anybody really wanted evidence that the bible are a product of human within their time, then just look at what it excplicitely support or does not bother condamning, which we find today abbhorrent. It becomes quickly clear that the bible is nowhere near the moral guidance it is purported to be.

The GOP In Charge

[Anonymous Coward]

Experience demonstartes that it costs too much to buy seats in Congress but seats in the statehouses are a bargin.

The essential cowardice of conservatism grows ever more apparent.

It can't even stand up to ideas.

News Worthy?

[MissNoItAll]

Given that this forum pays some attention to scientific enquiry, lets question the basis for this original article. A 53% increase in ' investigated book banning incidents' in the past year??? Really? (1) Maybe the increase is due to a staff increase with the group doing the work or (2) exactly what is the definition of a book ban or, (3) if one county in Texas bans Humpty Dumpty did that action go directly to the bottom line of 53% without considering that it only represented ~0.0001% of all schools? Conversely, can I suppose that when 'Shades of Grey' got added to the list of banned books for grades 1-6, there was an increase in the number of banned books? School boards in fact need to set standards for what students read at what level. This implies both accepting titles and rejecting titles. Equating rejecting a title to a 'book banning' is a slippery slope. Investigatiing an incident and claiming that the investigation proved a probable cause for some undesired consequence are two different conclusions with two different impacts. No school can ever give a child enough read time for all of the stuff they need to become educated. Their job is to teach children to be capable readers and to enjoy it. This article only got us to the first step of defining a problem and that doesn't get it in my opinion.

so these books are banned

[itchybrain]

This is just a minor setback. Any concerned parents could essentially bought their children these banned books for them to read at home. Even if children are deprived of great literature in their early lives do not mean that they cannot enjoy them at a later time.

One sure way to get kids to read

[tripwire45]

You'd think the best way to get kids to read books at all would be to ban them. If someone told me I couldn't read a certain book, I probably couldn't wait to get my hands on a copy.

same as it always was and will be. ...

[NelsChristian]

Folks have always been careful what kids are taught and always will be. This is just a tussle between schools and parents over what is important, and what will be taught. I'm rooting for the parents. Nobody is preventing you from making your kid read the books.

Somewhat sympathetic

[TangoMargarine]

While I wouldn't support book banning per se, I can sympathize why somebody might want to ban "The Color Purple." I read it for a lit course and the entire first half of the book is about a woman being beaten and raped repeatedly.

No suspicion required

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't want to live on this planet anymore. This shit is fucking sickening.

No suspicion necessary for forensic search of electronic devices at US borders due to "16,000 laptops gone missing internationally every week" "so use pen and paper to record documents and you won't be searched"

http://blogs.computerworld.com/security/23339/court-says-no-stinking-suspicion-required-govt-search-devices-us-border

Constitution void where prohibited by law.