When Is A Book Ban Not A Book Ban? Are Reading Restrictions Just Curation In Action?

As the call to remove certain books and materials from schools has spread, so has the backlash against it. Americans, it turns out, are not fans of banning books.

Responding to that backlash, groups leading the charge, like Moms for Liberty, insist that they are not calling for book bans. “We’re not looking to ban any books,” M4L co-founder Tiffany Justice told Newsweek. Yet, M4L leaders repeatedly appear doing just that. And their complaints move beyond just porn to complaints about books portraying amputees, sexy seahorses, “gay” penguins, children’s biographies of Black Americans, and Amanda Gorman’s inauguration poem, “The Hills We Climb.”

PEN America has emerged as one of the primary trackers of book bans, finding thousands of instances of books being banned that contain “themes centered on race, history, sexual orientation and gender.” But not so fast—Jay Greene and Madison Marino of the Heritage Foundation charge that PEN America’s list of books removed from schools during the 2021-22 school year is “simply false.” Those books aren’t banned at all.

But not so fast so fast—on Twitter, Jeffrey Sachs (Acadia University) pointed out that Greene’s “debunking” of the PEN America list called a book ban false if the ban was reversed later (as was the case in one example from Missouri, where a ban was reversed after a suit by students and the ACLU).

The arguments that book bans aren’t really happening cover a broad spectrum. On the one hand, it’s reality that there is finite shelf space in a library. Librarians and school officials must pick and choose, and that includes picking and choosing which books will not be placed on those shelves. On the other hand, if a book ban isn’t a book ban when it is rescinded, overruled, or circumvented, then no books have been banned, ever.

So when are we talking about a ban, and when are we simply discussing “curation” of a library collection. Here are some key questions to consider.

Did the school follow a policy and procedure for the book challenge? In some cases, works have been quietly, pre-emptively removed from libraries by administrators who want to avoid controversy, or by administrators who received a single angry phone call. If a book was removed outside of the district’s policy, that’s a ban.

Has the policy been followed in a more than cursory manner? The woman objecting to “The Hill We Climb” incorrectly attributed the poem to Oprah Winfrey, and in response to the question, “Are you aware of professional reviews of this material,” replied “I don’t need it.”

Was the book excluded based on the judgment of professionals? Back in the late 1970s we saw a similar book panic, and one case (Island Trees Union Free School District No. 26 v. Pico) made it to the Supreme Court. Nine books were challenged, a book review committee made a recommendation, and the school board ignored it, instead removing all nine books for being “anti-American, anti-Christian, anti-Sem[i]tic and just plain filthy.” When books are removed because a few people just don’t like them, that’s a ban. If education professionals determine that the book is not suitable for the school library, that’s curation.

How many people are involved in the process? The Washington Post found that in 2021-22, individuals who filed ten or more complaints were responsible for two-thirds of the challenges. In many cases, just one person filed a complaint about a particular book. If a single person’s complaint takes a book out of circulation, that’s a ban. If the process of assessing the book deliberately excluded some voices, that’s not curation.

How long was the book off the shelves? If the book review committee pulled the book, reviewed it, and returned it expeditiously, that’s one thing. But if building leadership said the book would be considered, and then it simply gathered dust for months, that’s a ban.

Did a teacher remove the book out of professional judgment or out of fear? When the state of Florida gave schools the herculean task of reviewing every single book to be used in a classroom, while threatening serious consequences for any inappropriate books that slipped through, they were working to create a ban without having to call it a ban.

In the curation process, there is always room for disagreement and discussion, and unanimity is unlikely. Nor do all objections carry the same amount of serious weight. It is one thing to be concerned about a book for teens that depicts graphic sexual acts; it is another to call to remove a children’s book because it simply depicts characters who are (or might be) gay. While there is room for debate about how to discuss U.S. history and racism in the classroom, advocating to remove books that portray actual historical events, including the racism displayed, is an attempt to crush debate, not enhance it.

Ultimately, book bans don’t work. James Joyce’s Ullyses achieved more fame from being banned than it ever would from being read. Mark Twain embraced the banning of Huck Finn as a great advertising opportunity.

But along the way, the bans do damage. Lesser-known authors may be hit hard by an attack on their works. More importantly, some students receive a damaging message that persons like them should not be seen or heard, that their concerns don’t matter enough to be part of the picture of the world drawn by schools and libraries. That’s damage that is hard to heal.

Curation can be a difficult process that sorts through many hard and nuanced questions: Does this work have relevance today? Does it match the interests and concerns of students? Is it appropriate for the students we serve? Does it have literary merit? Does it help maintain the balance of our collection as a whole? And after asking all these questions, and more, the curators may still get it wrong.

Book bans only really ask one question: does this book offend my personal values? And book banners assume an affirmative answer to another question: is it okay to impose my values on everyone else?

“But,” the reply comes, “other people are imposing their values on me when they put And Tango Makes Three or I Am Rosa Parks in my child’s library.” But putting a book in the library does not force a child to read it, while banning the book denies all children the right to read it. Saying “we choose not to acquire this book right now” is different from saying “we demand that you don’t buy this book ever.” Trying to challenge and change the language so that nobody says the word “ban” doesn’t change what you’re doing.