Folks of my vintage can well-remember how angry the right-wing southerners were back in the day when they took Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn out of circulation because of Twain’s liberal use of the N-word.
The self-righteous indignation suffered by the protectors of the First Amendment was palpable and the roar of protests coming from the letters to the editor in the daily newspapers was almost audible – and justifiably so. Literature is literature and even when classics contain objectionable words, they should not be censored. That was my position then and it is my position now.
(Full disclosure: I had an uncle named James B. Aswell, Jr. who was an early 1940s-‘50s author and his books were so racy for their time – one in particular, I remember, depicted a housewife doing the Lady Godiva ride through downtown Lake Charles – that a ceremonial book-burning was held in front of the courthouse in his hometown of Natchitoches.)
I also remember at Ruston High School we were not allowed to bring onto campus copies of the 1956 scandalous Grace Metalious book Peyton Place. The result was the determination of every student to sneak a copy into school to be read during recess, lunch and study hall. While I had my own copy, suffice it to say the curiosity of the female students was no less stifled – more than a few of them were sneak-readers as well.
All that hullabaloo was before we had a thing called cancel culture or something called CRT. It was just plain old censorship and by gawd, we were agin’ it. We had a right to read Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn if we wanted to. Hell, we could even read Little Black Sambo and Brer Rabbit – except we couldn’t anymore.
All you white supremacist John Birchers, Oath Keepers, Big Boys, Mamas Babies, and whatever else you are calling yourselves these days – do you remember those days? Of course not. Memories are selective and to throw those events into the equation would be to shine the spotlight on your hypocritical double standard of today.
That’s because we’ve gradually made a 180-turn back to the Jim Crow ‘50s. Today, you are invoking the vague term “critical race theory” and the equally vague word “decency” as grounds for redacting history and literature.
One Louisiana legislator actually openly advocates teaching only the “good things” in American History classes in our public schools. Really? Do you seriously wish to cease informing students that this country went through a disastrous Civil War? I suppose teaching the Spanish-American War (which the U.S. instigated with no proven provocation – we still don’t know what caused the explosion and sinking of the USS Maine) is okay. But the civil rights struggle in this country, obviously, is out.
History, good, bad or indifferent, is history. Period. And it should be taught with no artificial flavoring or coloring.
But that’s not what the Repugnantcan Party wants. While accusing political opponents of the so-called cancel-culture, they have set out dictating their own version of historical censorship.
Texas students, for example, cannot be taught the facts that led to John Wayne’s portrayal of Crockett’s standoff to the death at the Alamo. Crockett, Travis, et al died as heroes. End of story. Meanwhile, Texas State Rep. MATT KRAUSE (a Repugnantcan, of course) is personally reviewing 850 books on race and gender to determine if any of them might cause “discomfort” to students. If nothing else, Krause will emerge from the experience as possibly the most well-read member of the Texas legislature.
But does that qualify him to determine what may or may not cause reader “discomfort”? Hardly.
And Texas Gov. GREG ABBOTT, who can’t even keep the lights and heat on in the winter, has taken it upon himself to direct state authorities to develop statewide “standards” against “pornography” in Texas public schools.
That’s laughable. Hey, Guv, you want to guarantee teens will flock to get something? Just tell ‘em they can’t have it and then sit back and watch. And guess what, Guv? They have computers, they have iPads, they have iPhones – with cameras. Hell they can get all the free porn their little hearts desire by simply clicking on an icon.
And you’re going to be the self-appointed porn police who tells them they can’t? Good luck with that.
It’s the same in KANSAS and VIRGINIA and probably anywhere else there is self-righteous Repugnantcan “leadership.”
All these self-styled guardians against anything offensive, lewd, controversial or otherwise objectionable should remember the immortal (or was it immoral?) words of former New Orleans Mayor Martin Behrman who, when prostitution in the fabled Storyville District was finally official “abolished” by decree, said, “You can make it illegal but you can’t make it unpopular.”
Louisiana Voice 
Dr. Jim Bolner, who teaches LSU-OLLI courses and had a distinguished career before he retired from full-time teaching at LSU-BR, often expresses his belief that the genocide and utter subjugation of native Americans and the practice of slavery doomed our country from ever taking the moral high ground and seriously impacted our ability to be a true democracy, despite our forefathers’ best efforts – and they were not idealists. Whatever else might be the answer, ignoring our history is not.
Censorship is stupid, per se. As you point out, it is also impossible for it to accomplish what its purveyors intend.
Read early history, including the Federalist Papers, and you will come to the conclusion we have definitely become collectively stupider over time. Oh, there are plenty of smart people around, but do the masses listen to them? No, far too many condemn them. And what do too many modern politicians do in response to the wisdom of our founders? Why, ignore them, of course.
Just engaging in a little bit of “future fantasy”….what happens when the only thing left to guide the good folks of Texas is their own idea of what is “good” and they collectively decide that these Republicans who kill factual knowledge of our history become the targets of the uneducated because they don’t like their “good?” Surely, the uneducated can be persuaded by their own reasoning to get rid of what they don’t like or understand. Are these Republicans immune from such a happening? Do they not realize the “monster” they are creating…. Just wondering….
I wonder if they wonder about this, or if they are just hell-bent on power at all costs?
Sadly, I think a lot of people don’t think.
In this same vein, the Lafayette Parish Public Library Board has apparently undertaken a more serious role in censorship. MeanwhileThe citizens just renewed a library tax to keep branches – some of which are fairly new – open. However a hyper conservative group in the parish keeps pushing the myth that the library has too much money. The email quoted below gives some background; Joe can provide more.
“Hi Nancy,
Please take a moment & read this:
Thanks to everyone who worked on the Library millage vote. We have accomplished a great thing: with the support of voters, we have secured a continued $4M for the Library for the next 10 years. A $40M return on the efforts of such a small core group, is impressive. When contrasted against the Library setbacks of the past 3 years, we have much to be thankful for this Thanksgiving week, and to be hopeful about for the future.
But we need to resume our effort before we lose momentum. To my mind, there are 3 issues to be resolved. Please notice that I intentionally list the following out of order:
1) The Northeast Library. When I first enrolled in UL/USL in 1977, among the locals, one’s word was one’s bond. Something has happened since then, and it needs to be addressed.
In this case, when $10M was taken from the Library budget, we promised a Library to the children on the Northside. Notice I said ‘children’: not Kenneth Boudreaux or any of the other Northside leaders. They all have cars. They can drive to Main, or the Chenier Branch, or really, to any of our branches.
No, the promise was to our children on the Northside, who need a Library they can walk or bike to.
3) Despite our great success, the libraries are still operating at a $1.3M annual deficit. We need to restore our libraries to full funding.
2) Before we push for that, however, I argue that we need a long-range plan to justify that return to full funding. One bright aspect of the current conservative shift in politics, is that government should be very specific about what deliverables that each government investment will produce.
Anticipating that, I have been advocating a change in focus. Much of our efforts to date have targeted our existing supporters, those who already place great value on books, reading, education, and children. By shifting to economic arguments and the growing knowledge economy, however, we might begin to bring on board more of the business community .
To prepare for that knowledge economy, we need our Library and our volunteers to focus our efforts on strategies for producing life-long readers; or to use the older word, we need to cultivate bibliophiles.
In order to move in that direction, however, we need to have community-wide conversations about the most effective practices of libraries world-wide, and about innovative practices that might attempt ourselves, that will help us instill a love of reading in our children.
So going forward, I urge us to pursue a broad-based conversation, and equally, increasing volunteerism.
It is time for us to get back to work.”
Joe
—
Joseph N. Abraham MD
Kings, Conquerors, Psychopaths:
From Alexander to Hitler to the Corporation
Excellent article documenting some racial history as written in novels. We need more of this truth and fact telling to young Americans today because they have been hidden from the youth about a time gone by. It should not be eliminated from all factual history simply because the controlling Party decides it should be so! Communism works in that way by controlling all speech and thought and forcing the citizens to have one opinion simply by causing them to have no knowledge about anything else.