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

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

#41

Post by gmiller123456 »

femiagbabiaka wrote: post #29
gmiller123456 wrote: post #12

Sadly, the word "ban" has been used all too inapropriatley lately. And this website doesn't seem to help as nowhere did I see exactly what they meant by banned, who banned them, or exactly what the ban entails.

Banning, in this case, means removal from libraries. Sometimes it is by state order, sometimes it is via independent action taken by the school district (although that is usually also in an attempt to adhere with state board of education guidelines). The linked data source cited for this article provides ban classifications for each and every book they list as banned.

Where did you see that? I saw where they explicitly state that is not what they mean:

>Namely, they are not and have not been about the physical removal of a book from a shelf.

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

#42

Post by JumpCrisscross »

xyzzyz wrote: post #28

> Irregular bans are ideologically driven. > They are supplemental to and fall outside of the standard book exclusion process at schools and libraries. Standard exclusions prevent books that promote violent, hateful, or mature/17+” topics from being placed on school bookshelves while irregular bans do not have robust processes and can be influenced by interest groups or local officials. Seems like when the book is re…

> whole “banning” narrative is simply describing removal of books from libraries through democratic instead of bureaucratic process

Put another way, through a political versus administrative process. That's rightfully problematic. It's not a ban, but we purposely ring-fence libraries from politics.

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

#43

Post by xyzzyz »

doingmaths wrote: post #22
constantcrying wrote: post #14

>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.

> Certainly there is no government which punishes distribution, printing or reading of those books. Yes, state and municipal level governments have banned books in the US? Here's a list of some example laws in, e.g., education: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Tj5WQVBmB6SQg-zP_M8u...

None of these laws punishes possession, printing and reading any books, and the only distribution restrictions are about some public libraries (typically school ones), which are directed to not stock these books, but otherwise there are no restrictions on distribution of these books.

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

#44

Post by constantcrying »

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"…

>These are ideological decisions made by partisans with the goal being to shape the corpus of thinking of youth.

You support neo-nazi propaganda not being in school libraries, so certainly you too believe that it is the duty of school libraries to curate the content. It is just incredibly dishonest to pretend that you are upset at this for any reason other than that you want these particular books available to children, which is exactly as partisan as demanding their absence.

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

#45

Post by femiagbabiaka »

gmiller123456 wrote: post #41
femiagbabiaka wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Banning, in this case, means removal from libraries. Sometimes it is by state order, sometimes it is via independent action taken by the school district (although that is usually also in an attempt to adhere with state board of education guidelines). The linked data source cited for this article provides ban classifications for each and every book they list as banned.

Where did you see that? I saw where they explicitly state that is not what they mean: >Namely, they are not and have not been about the physical removal of a book from a shelf.

It's in the linked dataset: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vRKM3peCW-ND...

They're not being literal in that comment, they're alluding to the fact that such broad bans, which even DeSantis has called overreach in some cases, are moreso about aligning to an ideological narrative than actually caring about which books are in school libraries. But the books are also being removed, from school libraries and from classroom libraries.

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

#46

Post by krapp »

xyzzyz wrote: post #38
krapp wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until relatively recently in the US, "banning books" was widely considered one of those morally reprehensible things that only authoritarian governments did, and people were outraged that the US did it at all. It is legitimately weird how quickly that seems to have changed within the culture in the light of the moral panic over transgender "groomers" and the antiwoke movement. That, and the sentiment that the governm…

> Until relatively recently in the US, "banning books" was widely considered one of those morally reprehensible things that only authoritarian governments did, and people were outraged that the US did it at all. This is why I loathe the “book banning” activists, because their entire goal is to confuse people by using deliberately misleading language. The fact of the matter is that nowhere in the US has any book been…

Calls to remove books from libraries on the basis of ideology driven by a political party are a form of book banning, the distinction between it and a "ban by government" is one without a difference.

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

#47

Post by xyzzyz »

doingmaths wrote: post #35
xyzzyz wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every single book is “banned” from “somewhere” in the US, so your 1) is true, but vacuously so.

I don't think that's the case. Where is "Where the Sidewalk Ends" by Shel Silverstein banned in the US by a state, local, or federal government?

You cannot bring it to a final calculus exam in many public universities, for example.

If you want to complain that this is not what you meant by “banning” books, I fully agree with you, but that’s the whole issue here: activists decided to name some normal stuff like removing some books from some public libraries to be “banning”, despite the fact that this is not anywhere close to what normal people think of when they hear “book banning”.

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

#48

Post by krapp »

pfannkuchen wrote: post #39
krapp wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until relatively recently in the US, "banning books" was widely considered one of those morally reprehensible things that only authoritarian governments did, and people were outraged that the US did it at all. It is legitimately weird how quickly that seems to have changed within the culture in the light of the moral panic over transgender "groomers" and the antiwoke movement. That, and the sentiment that the governm…

I’m so confused. Book bans in authoritarian nations mean that you can’t purchase the book because the government prohibits it. Is that happening anywhere in the US today?

You're not confused, you're just playing semantic games.

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

#49

Post by constantcrying »

doingmaths wrote: post #40
constantcrying wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Tj5WQVBmB6SQg-zP_M8u... Why are you posting google doc links? These things are made to track you. Do not ever click such a link or share it. Absolutely one of the worst ways to share information. In any case, when was the last time a book printer faced criminal charges for printing a book? A book reader for reading a book? A shop for selling a book?

> Why are you posting google doc links? Because that's the way the organization makes the information available. Is Google docs on topic? > In any case, when was the last time a book printer faced criminal charges for printing a book? A book reader for reading a book? A shop for selling a book? You forgot: "A book owner for owning a book." School librarians in the US face prison time for owning books in parts of the…

>Is Google docs on topic?

No. I had to open it in Tor.

>School librarians in the US face prison time for owning books in parts of the US

No they don't. Stop lying.

>The government telling you what books you can ow

No. The government tells them which books to put into their libraries, read your link. Can you tell the difference? It is public vs. private.

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

#50

Post by xyzzyz »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #42
xyzzyz wrote: post #28

> Irregular bans are ideologically driven. > They are supplemental to and fall outside of the standard book exclusion process at schools and libraries. Standard exclusions prevent books that promote violent, hateful, or mature/17+” topics from being placed on school bookshelves while irregular bans do not have robust processes and can be influenced by interest groups or local officials. Seems like when the book is re…

> whole “banning” narrative is simply describing removal of books from libraries through democratic instead of bureaucratic process Put another way, through a political versus administrative process. That's rightfully problematic. It's not a ban, but we purposely ring-fence libraries from politics.

I do not believe there is any sort of “ring fence” between schools and politics. The entire point of public school boards and elections thereto is to enable voters to exercise the political control over the branch of government that is providing public educational service. If your argument indeed is that the public schools should be fully and wholly independently ran by nonelected bureaucrats entirely as they please, with no input from voters whatsoever, while being publicly funded, then well, let me just say that I am adamantly opposed to that, and so is most everyone else. You cannot just claim that “we ring fence schools from politics” and expect people to acquiesce to relinquishing control of the public service they fund and make use of.
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