Recently, in the Accomack County, VA school district, administration is considering whether or not to ban two iconic classics - To Kill a Mockingbird and Huckleberry Fun due to complaints from one parent about racial slurs in the book.
One parent.
One person could have the power to take these books and their rich histories away from these students. Everyone might have to miss out because of one person's complaint. The whole message of To Kill a Mockingbird is that racism is wrong, yet one parent decided they did not want their child to read the beloved book at the very minor cost of having to read a negative word that the child most likely knows not to say anyway.
When we ban books, essentially "burning" them, we ban our history. These books are both products of their time and contain situations and language that would have been common at the time of their writing. That is not racism -- that is history, whether it is good or bad, and history should never be covered up because of someone's sensitivity.
I am lucky enough to attend a school where reading these "banned" books infiltrated every grade level. Yes, I read To Kill A Mockingbird, Catcher In The Rye, Fahrenheit 451, Animal Farm, 1984, and One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest; and I am better for it. These books have taught imperative lessons of standing up for whats right and not everything is how it meets the eye. Why should we be taking away these opportunities for others to read the same values?
In 9th grade I read Fahrenheit 451 and because I had an English teacher that was ardently against censoring literature, I never really understood why anyone would want to get rid of books unless they wanted to achieve the mind control obtained in Bradbury's novel.
Books are powerful, and they teach us about where we have been and where we are now. Our history contains some negative elements as all histories do, but they need to be acknowledged and learned from, not banned, censored, or burned
