From my perspective, the news has not been good of late. The latest depressing tidbit is that, by order of the Defense Secretary, 381 books have been pulled from the shelves of the U.S. Naval Academy’s library. (Sidenote: I visited the Naval Academy last summer while vacationing in Annapolis. Awesome place.) The Naval Academy is an undergraduate college with a variety of majors (more on that later). But let’s be clear—it is a college. Now, I’m all for common sense and developmental appropriateness when it comes to kids and reading material. For example, when I was 12 years old, I got a hold of a copy of Rosemary’s Baby (remember that one?) that kept me awake at night for who knows how long, and I always wished someone had been interested enough in my well-being to monitor my reading and spare me from nighttime terrors. If it were possible to unread a book, that would have been it for me. But Naval Academy midshipmen (and btw, if gender-inclusive language was ever on the to-do list, now it’s definitely to-don’t) are not 12-year-olds. They are college students and the future military leaders of our country. After graduation, they are obligated to serve in the Navy or Marine Corps for at least five years. So, it appears that Naval Academy graduates are tough enough to become Navy SEALs, but not tough enough to read a variety of sources on important, albeit controversial, issues and make up their own minds about what they think. But perhaps a thinking military leadership is also currently on the to-don’t list.
So, what books made this now infamous list? (I’d like to note that neither my academic text nor my novels on race/gender relations made the list—ya think maybe because they were never included in the library holdings to begin with? I’m tempted to send them copies of my books and suggest they place them in their catalog so that they can ban them.) You can check out the list here: banned books. The books range from popular to scholarly, and include a variety of genres, from young adult fiction, to religion, to sports, to history, to politics, to philosophy, to literary criticism, to psychology. Some are common reading in high schools, such as The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelous—both wonderful, important works. Others are well-known and respected academic texts, many of which I used in my graduate school research. Anything having to do with race relations, gender identity, sexual orientation, woman’s rights, and even the Holocaust is out (which shows the complete lack of thoughtfulness of this action, given that the current administration is pressuring universities to do more to combat antisemitism. Which begs the question: do they really care about antisemitism, or are they more interested in punishing protesters they don't agree with?).
A few books on the history of the KKK and lynching are also included on the list, I guess because it’s not important we acknowledge that part of our history. Maybe it was just a big misunderstanding after all. Books about the First Amendment are on the banned list, which seems fitting, given that First Amendment rights don’t seem to matter anymore. Books about managing diversity in the military are also gone, even though the U.S. Navy is the most racially diverse of military branches, with 37% service members of color and over 20% women.
Currently the Naval Academy offers over 25 majors, including English, History, and Political Science; honors programs are offered in those area of study, as well. My sympathies to the students trying to write an honors level thesis without the research they need to support their work. Their writing will surely suffer and, if my graduate professors were right and writing actually IS a form of thinking, the absence of scholarly sources will result in incomplete research which will result in shallow writing and ultimately simplistic thinking (which is what got us here in the first place). But maybe that’s the goal.
One of the most well-known books pulled from the shelves in this sweeping ban is national best-seller White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo. The term "white fragility" refers to the defensive way that some white people respond to the topic of racism. For some, talking about racism causes feelings of guilt, shame, and anger and results in the backlash we’re seeing today. Interestingly (to me, at least), theories of racial identity development see these feelings as part of the developmental process for whites; feelings of guilt, shame, and anger can result when whites first begin to understand the devastation of racism and can be seen as natural and even productive because they show that the person is deeply grasping the pain and damage racism has caused. Acknowledging the horror of racism should be part of the growth process because, as James Baldwin famously said, “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” So, it’s normal to have some intense feelings when you first think deeply about these issues, but the goal is to move past them. Unfortunately, it’s possible to get stuck here and remain in the anger until it becomes toxic.
Of course, the banned books were not only about racism, but I think the fragility factor applies to the conversation as a whole. How ironic that the folks behind the book banning are the ones who need to read the books the most. Instead, they’ve rejected the idea of growth and have opted to remain stuck in their fragile state of toxic anger. This would be bad enough on the individual level, but what is truly frightening is that they have the seemingly unchecked power to impose their toxicity on the rest of us.
Let me end by saying that I admire the young people training to serve in our military. We’ve been taught from childhood that a strong military will ensure our continued freedom, a crucial American value. I’m just sad that academic freedom isn’t among the freedoms some of us think are worth defending.
