Knowing Your Triggers IX

 

I think the idea of keeping legitimate literature from children is repugnant. Full stop. 

I reviewed lists of books being banned from Florida school libraries to see what they contain. 

Legislators appear to have a drawn a bead on the novels of Toni Morrison especially, the works of race scholar Ibrahim Kendi and writings on the subjects of sexuality and gender identity. One list included Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men. Perhaps because Lenny is mentally challenged or because George shoots him in the head to keep him from being lynched. I don't have any idea. 

I failed to find mentioned Ernest Hemingway's classic short story from the 1920s The Killers (which has been adapted into a motion picture multiple times) or any of the other potentially racially problematic (as least from Black folks' standpoint) works. 

I think The Killers is a masterpiece, as do most people whose opinion I respect, despite the story containing this and similar passages between the two eponymous assassins and the workers in a diner where the killers are waiting to do a job:

 “Who’s out in the kitchen?” 

“The nigger.” 

“What do you mean the nigger?” 

“The nigger that cooks.” 

“Tell him to come in.” 

“What’s the idea?” 

“Tell him to come in.” 

“Where do you think you are?” 

“We know damn well where we are,” the man called Max said. 

“Do we look silly?” 

“You talk silly,” A1 said to him. 

“What the hell do you argue with this kid for? Listen,” he said to George, “tell the nigger to come out here.” 

“What are you going to do to him?” 

“Nothing. Use your head, bright boy. What would we do to a nigger?”

The last remark tolls like a bell, of course, but does not foretell any violence toward Sam the cook, who, as is often the case in such stories, has more sense than anybody else in the room.

I doubt if the reactionary legislators in Florida debated the inclusion of works by Hemingway or other great writers who used charged language or depicted violence against people of color or other marginalized groups. I doubt if law makers considered including works that reflected this marginalization, even if they did not perpetuate it, because they might be harmful to young people who read them.

And yet, Beloved, an indictment of the horrors of institutionalized slavery and a challenge to historical marginalization is on many lists.

What a world.