Myron B. Pitts: Cumberland County school system caves to pressure, removes books

The people who want to ban books won a round against Cumberland County Schools.

The school system surrendered when it removed two books from school shelves, with two more books still under review.

I am disappointed.

More: Cumberland County Schools committee removes 2 books from circulation, redistributes 6

Two people complained last fall about a list of books, and the system put more than 80 under review. As I’ve written, that move was already an over-the-top response by school officials.

The books and authors targeted were telling: 25% of writers on the list were Black and 8% were Latino or Latina; 58% were white. Seventeen percent of authors were LGBTQ.

The figures were presented by Sabrina Steigelman, the district’s media services coordinator, in a report on April 4 about the book review committee's actions, which also included redistributing books to different grades.

More: Pitts: Here is the full list of ‘reviewed’ books — Cumberland schools must halt book-killers

Consider that between 75% to 80% of writers and authors are white, according to the U.S. Census Bureau and other sources. Consider also that children’s books and educational texts in school library systems are dominated by white characters, according to Education Week.

So it stands out that nearly 40% of flagged authors on our school system’s review list were people of color.

Coordinated assault on books

This attempted ban is part of a nationwide effort by culture warriors to hunt down minority and LGBTQ titles in school libraries, a movement that has gone so far, even some conservatives are pushing back. It is part of a coordinated assault against “woke.” Woke has become a fictional concept that in reality means, “anything we don’t like or that challenges our worldview.”

Nobel Prize laureate Toni Morrison was among the authors targeted in Cumberland County Schools. Many titles that deal with anti-racism or LGBTQ themes were also on the list.

The book review committee decided to remove “Push” by Sapphire from shelves as well as “Sex is a Funny Word” by Cory Silverberg.

School spokesman Lindsay Whitley said the books were removed because they did not circulate frequently — seven times for “Push,” since 1996, and zero for the Silverberg book, which published in 2015.

Now that is interesting.

My understanding is that the 80-some books were being reviewed because of content, not because of a low number of checkouts. If that’s the standard, a whole lot of books might wind up under review, including a few classics.

“Push” is a novel about an overweight, 16-year-old girl Black girl who overcomes awful circumstances, including rape, and an abusive home environment to pursue her G.E.D. The book is the inspiration for the movie, “Precious,” which in 2010 won two Academy Awards, including a Best Actress Oscar for Mo’Nique, who played the sadistic mother of the teenager.

Maybe a student who wants to go into writing or moviemaking would have an interest in the book. Even if a book is checked out by one young person who is inspired to greater heights by it — that is plenty.

Cumberland County Schools is majority-minority, including 46% Black students. If anything, the system should be adding more titles by Black authors and other minorities, not subtracting. These kids need to see themselves in literary role models and in my opinion, too much is not enough.

Bias plays a big role

We should not miss the main point, which is bias.

If random people present to the school system lists of books to ban, and the lists include a bunch of Black and LGBTQ authors, the titles eventually removed will reflect the same bias.

School system officials do deserve credit for having thoughtfully assembled the committee that reviewed the books. Included were media coordinators, teachers and parents. But that does nothing to correct the bias as to which books were brought before them in the first place.

We can compare it to systemic bias in other areas, such as drug arrests in the hood vs relative lack of same on college campuses, and school suspensions, where Black students are punished more often and more severely than their white counterparts.

We can compare it to “driving while Black” where historically the Fayetteville Police Department has been more likely to target Black drivers for consent vehicle searches, despite Black and white drivers having similar moving or technical violations.

There was even a classic study of preschool teachers that tracked their eye movements and found that they observed Black boys in class more than other students, which led to more discipline.

Representation matters

When I think of bad influences that beset our young people, reading books is about last on the list. Books are the solution, not the problem.

Books that remain under review in our school system are the graphic novel “Deogratias: A Tale of Rwanda” by Jean Philippe-Stassen and “Lucky” by Alice Sebold.

The former title no doubt has violence because genocide is violent. But the 1994 Rwandan massacre contains important lessons about the consequences of hate and intolerance.

The Sebold book is about how she was raped as a college freshman and how it shaped aspects of her life long after. She would have been not much older than high schoolers who might read her book and who must themselves navigate a world where more than half of women have experienced sexual violence, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Books can teach us and transport us into the lives of other people, cultures, eras and circumstances. That is a great and good thing.

But library shelves are also about representation and belonging — so important in those developmental years and throughout life.

Katrinna Marsden, president of Fayetteville PRIDE, said Cumberland County has more than 55,000 people who identify as LGBTQ. She sees people seeking to ban titles with LGBTQ themes as part of a political movement to make her community the “others” who people fear.

“People are trying to scare parents and other individuals into thinking there is this influx, and it affects the way their child is going to grow up — which we know is not the case,” she said. “I think people fear education. The more education you have the harder you are to control.”

Finding that you’re not alone means so much, she said, and books are one way members of the LGBTQ community do so.

She said: “When you talk to individuals who are 30 and over, you find very similar stories repeated over and over again. And that’s, ‘I was a child. I felt alone. I felt I was wrong. I didn’t know why I was different from people.’”

People who wish to ban books wish to ban people’s stories and lives.

We mustn’t let them win, and the choice is ours.

Myron Pitts can be reached at mpitts@fayobserver.com or 910-486-3559.

This article originally appeared on The Fayetteville Observer: Pitts: Cumberland County school system caves to pressure, removes books