PA Black voters want more Black history, less book banning according to new election poll

More than half of Black voters in Pennsylvania oppose banning books from public school libraries and most want African American history taught in schools, according to a recent exclusive USA TODAY/Suffolk University poll.

Almost 70% of the 500 voters polled said they opposed or strongly opposed banning certain kinds of books in schools, while about 96% of voters polled said they supported teaching African American history in schools.

The USA TODAY/Suffolk University poll was conducted in Michigan and Pennsylvania, two key swing states in the Presidential Election, and focused specifically on Black registered voters to find the issues important to them in the race between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump.

In the years following the coronavirus pandemic, a parental rights movement championed nationally by groups like Moms for Liberty have pushed for control over curriculum and library resources.

Pennsylvania has been ranked by nonprofits PEN America and the American Library Association among the top states with the most attempts to ban books since 2021.

Many of the most challenged titles, which often appear curated on a website created by a former Moms for Liberty member, deal with systemic racism or LGBTQ issues.

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A growing number of school districts have also adopted restrictive policies on culture war issues like library books on gender identity written by religious law firm, the Independence Law Center.

David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center, said the Pennsylvania results showed that Black voters are opposed to classroom censorship by and large.

“Black voters don’t want the classroom to be a filter of any kind against any people, and it's clear from this poll that the opposition runs deep in this community,” Paleologos said.

What voters said

Nathan Grace, 36, said he plans to vote for Biden in November. His top issues this election include health care and infrastructure. Less on his radar is the issue of book banning.

“I would say just like my immediate peers and myself, it's not really a motivating factor. But that's primarily because where I live, that's, at the moment, it's not really like a topic of debate,” said Grace, a city planner in Philadelphia.

Still, Grace said he sees the issue as problematic and potentially growing.

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“I get pretty irate,” he said. “You know, me being a Black male and knowing a lot of the books people are banning are things that show Black representation or the accurate history of how African Americans have been treated in this country ... essentially whitewash history to try to paint the US in a good light at all times of its history, when that hasn't always been the case.”

He also said he sees book banning and curriculum censorship as a localized issue in Pennsylvania and more of a statewide issue in places like Florida and Texas.

“I mean, I used to live in the south, so like, I'm not shocked,” Grace said. “It's not a huge majority of states. But yeah, I definitely can see a domino effect down the road and more states adopting those kinds of policies.”

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Sammy Walker, 55, said he’s concerned about increasing calls to pull certain library books and wants more Black history taught in schools.

“When I grew up in Texas, I could go to the library, and I could look up things that I really wanted. I could read about Nat Turner, I could read about Brown, I could read about other figures like Medgar Evers,” Walker, a 20-year Pittsburgh resident, said. “I could read all these things because they weren't banned books. You just had to find them or have interest in them.”

As an avid history reader, Walker said book banning is “too close” to Nazi book burnings and worries about where that could lead.

“If you forget the past or take these books about the past out, then how are you going to ... What's that saying? It'll repeat itself,” Walker said.

This article originally appeared on Bucks County Courier Times: Black voters in PA oppose parental rights culture war and censorship