Individuals have been making an attempt to ban Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird for the reason that Nineteen Sixties. And for the reason that Nineteen Sixties, they’ve largely failed. In a single early occasion, the varsity board of Virginia’s Hanover County unanimously voted in 1966 to take away the e book after board member W.C. Bosher discovered his son, a highschool junior, studying it. The board gave little motive for the choice aside from Bosher calling the e book “immoral” and “improper for our kids.”
Letters to an area newspaper supporting removing targeted on the e book’s dialogue of rape, whereby white Atticus Finch defends black Tom Robinson in courtroom from a false accusation by a white lady. Lee herself in contrast the criticism to “doublethink” in George Orwell’s novel 1984 (which the board additionally eliminated), but she wrote that the “downside is one in all illiteracy, not Marxism” and despatched a examine to be put towards a first-grade schooling for the varsity board.
In the present day, campaigns in opposition to the e book continuously give attention to its use of the phrase nigger. Characters (principally white ones) use the phrase 48 occasions, as a result of that is how many individuals talked in Thirties Alabama. The phrase will get pushback within the e book on not less than two events. When younger Scout Finch asks what “nigger-lover” means, her father Atticus says: “Ignorant, trashy individuals use it after they assume someone’s favoring Negroes over and above themselves. It is slipped into utilization with some individuals like ourselves, when they need a typical, ugly time period to label someone.”
Lately, To Kill a Mockingbird has been challenged or eliminated in such locations as Accomack County, Virginia, in 2016 (briefly); Biloxi, Mississippi, in 2017; and Burbank, California, in 2020. A Biloxi college board member mentioned the e book’s language made some individuals “uncomfortable.” However not each e book is meant to be comfy, and typically individuals have to depart their consolation zone to find out about essential subjects. Within the case of this e book, these themes embrace racism, justice, and tolerance. That is why many progressives criticized the Biloxi ban, resembling President Barack Obama’s Secretary of Schooling Arne Duncan and the American Civil Liberties Union of Mississippi.
Others accuse the e book of getting a white savior complicated and shallow black characters. Whether or not or not these critiques are honest, the classroom is a good place to debate and debate them.
Regardless of a long time of censorship makes an attempt within the public sector, the non-public sector has met shopper demand for the e book. Greater than 40 million copies have been offered worldwide.
This text initially appeared in print underneath the headline “To Kill a Mockingbird”.
