Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

1,626 Books Were Banned Across America Last Year We Reviewed All of Them

yarn.joinstatecraft.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 99 posts

Re: 1,626 Books Were Banned Across America Last Year We Reviewed All of Them

#11

Post by arcticbull »

jiveturkey42 wrote: post #6

"Banned in the United States" does not mean the same thing as "Removed from Middle School Libraries"

Hm, seems pretty similar to me. Especially when the article itself identifies only 1.6% of the books as having a 17+ rating.

[edit] Anyone who believes in freedom of expression and the first amendment should recognize this as a negative step, and a clear thin-edge issue. These are ideological decisions made by partisans with the goal being to shape the corpus of thinking of youth. "Will someone think of the children" is a well worn path. There's plenty of books about this kind of thing, like The Giver, but you know, it's probably on the list.

Re: 1,626 Books Were Banned Across America Last Year We Reviewed All of Them

#13

Post by [deleted] »

arcticbull wrote: post #11
jiveturkey42 wrote: post #6

"Banned in the United States" does not mean the same thing as "Removed from Middle School Libraries"

Hm, seems pretty similar to me. Especially when the article itself identifies only 1.6% of the books as having a 17+ rating. [edit] Anyone who believes in freedom of expression and the first amendment should recognize this as a negative step, and a clear thin-edge issue. These are ideological decisions made by partisans with the goal being to shape the corpus of thinking of youth. "Will someone think of the children"…

[deleted]

Re: 1,626 Books Were Banned Across America Last Year We Reviewed All of Them

#14

Post by constantcrying »

>We Reviewed All of Them

Am I blind? Where are the reviews? The website is also utterly broken on my device...

What I always find interesting is what exactly "banned" means. Certainly there is no government which punishes distribution, printing or reading of those books.

Re: 1,626 Books Were Banned Across America Last Year We Reviewed All of Them

#15

Post by panick21_ »

Its kind of funny to ban books when so few specially kids actually read. Clearly these policies are far more symbolic, an act of signaling.

People feel powerless and have no actual control, but going after the local book-shelf gives a feeling of accomplishment.

Not at easy to ban content from TikTok or Youtube.

Re: 1,626 Books Were Banned Across America Last Year We Reviewed All of Them

#16

Post by JumpCrisscross »

thfuran wrote: post #8
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #3

Book banning seems like a strange red line to have forgotten. If your kid is going to be corrupted by going into a library and finding a book that's naughtier than your taste, they're probably ahead of their similarly-corruptible peers who aren't in a library at all.

I'm not in favor of banning books, but "it's not the worst thing that could possibly happen" isn't exactly a strong argument for supporting something.

> "it's not the worst thing that could possibly happen" isn't exactly a strong argument for supporting something

Point is if your kid has the initiative to go into a library and find a book, they're probably fine. If they're not, they're going to get far worse from the internet and their peers-the library isn't your problem. Raising them to believe libraries are unsafe is more likely to backfire in the specific aims you're pursuing.

(Going out on a limb and assuming most of the people pursuing these book bans don't have kids in school and, if they do, they aren't in the top 90% of students checking out books from any library.)

Re: 1,626 Books Were Banned Across America Last Year We Reviewed All of Them

#17

Post by shakow »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #3

Book banning seems like a strange red line to have forgotten. If your kid is going to be corrupted by going into a library and finding a book that's naughtier than your taste, they're probably ahead of their similarly-corruptible peers who aren't in a library at all.

> Book banning seems like a strange red line to have forgotten

Has book banning ever been a red line? Many Western countries, from Canada to France through US and New Zealand have banned many books for most of their existence.

Re: 1,626 Books Were Banned Across America Last Year We Reviewed All of Them

#18

Post by doingmaths »

version_five wrote: post #9

[flagged]

Not sure why virtue signal is being used ironically? Every political and social group is capable of virtue signaling. Plenty of folks left, right, and center who Virtue Signal their beliefs.

IMO, it's a useless term, since it's essentially saying, "someone did something they didn't genuine believe in", but there's little to no ability to demonstrate someone's actual intent.

Call people hypocrites (if that matters from you) or unauthentic.

Re: 1,626 Books Were Banned Across America Last Year We Reviewed All of Them

#19

Post by femiagbabiaka »

npstr wrote: post #7

> it’s important to note that they are to the end of positive social change The end does not justify the means. Name me one single objectively bad political movement which internally thought of themselves as bad or negative. There isn't one. They all claim and for the largest part of their membership believe to serve the greater good. Therefore I find this argument of the author extremely weak. Surely they can come u…

To move away from sophistry and towards some concrete understanding, which of the sample books they provided for that blurb would you say is "true negative"? Others which aren't explicitly highlighted would also be acceptable.

- Enough! 20 Protesters Who Changed America

- Gays and Mental Health: Fighting Depression, Saying No to Suicide

- I am Martin Luther King, Jr.

- Peaceful Fights for Equal Rights

- Tomorrow Will Be Different: Love, Loss, and the Fight for Trans Equality

Post reply on HN