What Is Book Banning and How Does It Affect Society?

Freedom of speech is a fundamental right in America—unless, apparently, you write a book that some people disagree with. Book banning is not new: This form of censorship began in what is now the United States in the 17th century and never went away, although there have been periods when politically motivated moral panics made these challenges against “controversial” books far more frequent. Unfortunately, we’re living in one of those periods right now.

This most recent wave of book banning began at the end of last year, at a rate outpacing previous decades, according to a November 2021 statement from the American Library Association’s (ALA) Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF). Between June 1 and November 29, 2021, OIF tracked 155 unique censorship incidents—numbers that OIF Director Deborah Caldwell-Stone called “unprecedented.” Most of the challenged books focus on LGBTQ issues, discuss racism in America, and/or “document the Black experience or the experiences of other BIPOC individuals,” the statement reads.

The crusade to suppress already-marginalized voices has picked up steam in 2022, with increasing numbers of parents, activists, school boards, and other local policymakers seizing the opportunity to enact bans and other restrictions on books in schools and public libraries. Some of the most frequently banned books include the graphic novel Maus by Art Spiegelman, The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, and All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M. Johnson.

There has also been significant pushback from individuals, publications, and groups like the ALA and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) who view book banning as a violation of our First Amendment rights. And many argue that whether they’re classic books or more modern works, banned books are actually some of the best books for people to read, because they offer new perspectives and insights from people with life experiences different from our own.

But what does book banning actually entail? Who decides which books stay or go? And is book banning even legal? Here’s what you need to know about this form of censorship and its cultural impact.

What is book banning?

Book banning is the act of removing materials from a school or library’s collection as a result of objections from groups or individuals who say that they need to protect others—typically children—from the difficult information or ideas contained in the books, according to the ALA. But there’s more nuance to it than that, says Emily Knox, PhD, an associate professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign’s School of Information Science and the author of Book Banning in 21st-Century America.

Though book banning as we know it today primarily focuses on attempts to keep certain works of fiction out of the hands of impressionable children and young adults, the first recorded instances of this censorship practice in Colonial America centered on objections to religious and political texts deemed too dangerous for the general public. Early examples include New English Canaan by Thomas Morton (1637), The Meritorious Price of Our Redemption by William Pynchon (1650), and The Christian Commonwealth by John Eliot (1659).

This form of censorship continued throughout the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, perhaps most famously as a reaction to the publication of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s 1852 novel about the cruelties of slavery, and the first American work of fiction to become an international best seller. Widely banned in the American South for being “abolitionist propaganda” at the time of its release, Stowe’s book continues to be challenged in the United States today for other reasons, like its inclusion of racial slurs.

Roughly two decades after the controversy surrounding Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Congress passed the Comstock Act of 1873, which made it illegal for anyone to possess, sell, give away, exhibit, or send obscene books, pamphlets, pictures, drawings, or advertisements through the mail, along with anything else considered lewd, lascivious, immoral, or indecent. Between 1874 and 1915, an estimated 3,500 people were prosecuted under this law, although only about 350 were convicted.

What is the process of getting a book banned?

While policies like the Comstock Act sound outdated today, censorship of books in the United States never went away. And if the current surge in attempts to ban books is any indication, it’s not going anywhere anytime soon. But the term “book banning” isn’t the most accurate way to describe what happens when parents, community members, organizations, or school board members decide that certain groups shouldn’t be permitted to access a book.

“What people do is bring a challenge against a book,” Knox explains. “Generally, this is done by filling out a ‘request for reconsideration’ form with their public institution—usually a public library or public school. And that starts the process of having the book reconsidered. Books are really only banned if they are removed.”

For this reason, instead of using “book banning” as an imprecise catchall term, Knox prefers to speak about “people engaging in censorship practices,” via what she refers to as the “four Rs”: redaction, relocation, restriction, and removal. “Redaction is when you put a line through something because you don’t like that word, or you cover up an image if you don’t like that particular image,” she explains. “Relocation is when you remove something from its intended audience [and aim it at] a different audience. This is when people say, ‘This book isn’t appropriate for seven-year-olds; it needs to be in the [young-adult] section.’ Restriction is when you require permission to read something. And then removal is what most people think about when they hear ‘book banning’—it’s saying, ‘This book needs to be removed from the collection, from the curriculum, from my sight.'”

As far as who has the authority to ban books, it depends on the institution where a book is located. “If you’re thinking about a school, it is generally the school board who will give the final approval on whether or not it will be included in the school curriculum, the school library, or on a suggested reading list,” says Knox. “Those are all very different, so most school districts have a committee that will give a recommendation to the board, and then the board will decide. Generally, public libraries work the same way.”

Why do people ban books?

In many cases, concerns about a book stem from what some people perceive to be explicit material, offensive language, or so-called “age-inappropriateness,” says Brent C.J. Britton, an attorney specializing in censorship and intellectual property at de la Peña & Holiday LLP. “Often, a well-meaning parent happens to glance at their student’s copy of Catcher in the Rye, sees the F-word, and initiates a chicken-little-sky-is-falling campaign to rid the school of smut, which then metastasizes into a full-blown witch hunt,” he explains. “So they bring it to the school board and the board caves under community pressure.”

But what causes people to read a book and believe it’s so “inappropriate” that they put time and effort into keeping other people—especially younger members of their community—from reading it? It largely comes down to two factors: whose story it is and how it is being told. “It’s not a coincidence that books about marginalized people are being challenged right now,” Knox says. “Our country is becoming a majority minority country. We are rapidly changing as a society. These are books that center people that have not been centered previously. They describe life circumstances that are quite different from what you might expect.”

Not only do these books feature stories that have long been overlooked or willfully ignored by mainstream publishers and wider popular culture, but they are also written in a way that paints a vivid picture of situations and circumstances that may be unfamiliar to White, middle-class, heterosexual audiences. These frank descriptions of what life is like for other people may cause readers to see groups of people—and themselves—in a new light. “They expose parts of our society [and] our history that are difficult to discuss,” Knox explains. “This is called ‘difficult knowledge.'” Some parents also worry that this difficult knowledge will lead to their children having different values than their own, she adds, especially when it comes to lifestyles or political ideas they believe are wrong or immoral.

Is book banning illegal?

This question is much harder to answer than one might think. Because so much is determined at the local level on a case-by-case basis, it’s impossible to classify book banning as either legal or illegal. In fact, multiple legal experts Reader’s Digest reached out to were either unwilling or unable to answer this question. But here’s what we do know: Removing materials from public libraries solely based on their content could be considered censorship and a violation of the First Amendment. Public school libraries are not permitted to remove materials because of political content, but according to a 1982 Supreme Court decision, schools are allowed to remove materials that are “pervasively vulgar.” That said, even in situations when book banning can be considered illegal, that doesn’t stop concerned parents and educators from challenging books…and lawmakers from enacting policies to ban them.

So, when is book banning considered legal? When the federal government deems a book or other materials to be legally obscene—which “mostly means that it is utterly devoid of any literary, artistic, political, or scientific value, and is patently sexual,” says Britton. This is largely because of the protections provided by the First Amendment, which have been bolstered by decades of court rulings on all levels.

“The U.S. Supreme Court has held repeatedly that students do not shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate, and that the First Amendment limits the power of public junior high and high school officials to remove books from school libraries because of their content,” Britton explains.

Is banning books against the First Amendment?

It is a violation of the First Amendment for the government to “ban books merely because it dislikes the ideas contained in those books, nor may it do so for partisan, political, or viewpoint-based reasons,” says Vera Eidelman, a staff attorney with the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology project, adding that “the First Amendment protects the right to receive and explore ideas on the federal, state, and local levels.”

Libraries—whether public or affiliated with a school—are places where people can exercise their First Amendment rights by exploring a wide range of viewpoints, genres, and experiences, Eidelman explains. And our First Amendment protections apply whether the government bans books entirely or limits access to them in other ways, such as putting them in a separate section of the library or behind the librarians’ desk. “When the government tries to use its power to indicate that certain ideas are unacceptable or not worthy of discussion or consideration, that message is not lost on students or library patrons,” she notes.

According to Eidelman, nine states, including New Hampshire and Texas, enacted classroom censorship bills in 2021, and state officials and local school boards across the country continue to wage campaigns to remove books from schools that are by and about communities of color, LGBTQ individuals, and other marginalized groups. However, she says that the ACLU is actively pursuing litigation to block these laws and policies.

What are the most commonly banned books in America?

The most commonly banned books in America include children’s books, te en books, and titles written for adults that address topics like race, mental health, LGBTQ issues, politics, and/or include offensive language, gun violence, or sexist content. Here are a few examples:

1984 by George Orwell
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Forever… by Judy Blume
The Giver by Lois Lowry
Beloved by Toni Morrison
Fallen Angels by Walter Dean Myers
Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller
Ulysses by James Joyce
American Psycho by Brett Easton Ellis

What is the effect of banning books?

Banning books has both short- and long-term effects. As soon as a challenged book is banned, it will promptly be removed from places like school libraries, bookstore shelves, reading lists, and curricula—making it more difficult for a specific audience (usually students) to access. The message behind a specific book’s banning can also have a lasting impact on students, teachers, schools, and communities as a whole. “When the government bans a book, it sends a clear message that certain ideas are not acceptable in society,” Eidelman explains. “That is precisely what the First Amendment forbids. And yet the message many school boards are choosing to send today is that they won’t accept stories that they don’t like—including those by and about Black, queer, and immigrant communities.” Some students may carry that unfortunate lesson with them moving forward.

This can also have much wider implications, beyond students and schools. “A society in which book banning is acceptable is no longer a free society,” Eidelman says. “It is instead one in which the government tells the people what books to read—and therefore what ideas to encounter and, ultimately, what to think. It weakens education and prevents people from learning to think for themselves.”

We’re already seeing the effects of this most recent wave of book challenges and bans. Take North Dakota, for example. It’s one of the nine states that have passed classroom censorship laws, and it’s currently taking aim at Critical Race Theory. But it doesn’t stop at prohibiting educators from endorsing or promoting Critical Race Theory—it prohibits them from even discussing it in the classroom, so students aren’t given the opportunity to learn that a different approach to understanding race issues in America even exists. This is how bans can snowball and extend far beyond their initial scope.

You’ve probably heard the oft-repeated maxim that people who don’t learn about the past are doomed to repeat it—and it’s as true now as it was when philosopher George Santayana wrote it in 1905. The effects of book bans and classroom censorship laws may be pushing American society closer and closer toward that becoming our reality.

Sources:

Emily Knox, PhD, associate professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign’s School of Information Science and author of Book Banning in 21st-Century America
Brent C.J. Britton, an attorney specializing in censorship and intellectual property at de la Peña & Holiday LLP
Vera Eidelman, staff attorney with the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology project
Freedom Forum Institute: “Banned Books”
New York Times: “Book Ban Efforts Spread Across the U.S.”
ALA: “Banned and Challenged Books”
ALA: “The American Library Association opposes widespread efforts to censor books in U.S. schools and libraries”
First Amendment Museum: “Banned Books Week: Maine Authors”
The First Amendment Encyclopedia: “Comstock Act of 1873”
Institute for Humane Education: “Windows and Mirrors and Sliding Glass Doors: Ensuring Students See Themselves and Others in Literature”