Accomack County school district in Virginia recently announced its decision to ban two pieces of literature: To Kill a Mockingbird and Huckleberry Finn. After a parent raised concerns for the use of racial slurs in the novels, the school county decided that the books should not be available to use in curriculums for the students.
Book banning is always a subject that draws much attention because the controversy that arises between whether the book is valuable enough to look past the minor indiscretions or whether they are distractingly present.
I believe that these books should not be banned because they reflect a time where it was acceptable to use that language. They give students a more comprehensive understanding of the history of the nation. I read To Kill a Mockingbird for a class in high school and it was a great learning experience. We were able to have mature, analytical conversations without interference by the language.
The parent who raised concerns and earned the book its disapproval stated that “There’s so much racial slurs and defensive wording in there that you can’t get past that. Right now, we are a nation divided as it is.” In my opinion, it is quite possible to get past the wording with just an introduction and forewarning of the language beforehand and simple mature attitudes when discussing it. The woman stated that "the nation is divided as it is", but I just don't see that. Sure, there are incidents that occur and hit the front page, but that's just the media putting it in our faces. When I go outside, I don't see racist tension between everyday interactions. Sure, there is a percentage of the population that is racist and parts of the nation that can be worse than others, but it is certainly not everyone and certainly not enough to say that we live in a divided nation. A divided nation is Civil War America.
These books provide a situation of what kind of atmosphere we do not want to live in and give context of what real life was like back then. Just because the books aren't perfectly conservative should not take them away from a learning curriculum. There is so much more to be learned from a book that deviates from the norm than one that perfectly fits into a little happy bubble. Just because a book can no longer be discussed and used in a school county, does not mean it went away. The books were still published and are used in schools across the country to teach students about the history of our nation.
Maybe it would be different if the books were reported to have caused racial incidents between students, but that's just not the case. One person's comment should not affect the availability of a classic piece of literature to a whole county of students.
