Book Banning
June 3, 2025
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Book banning, or book censorship, is the act of taking books out of libraries and schools because of their content. This banning or censorship can either take the form of complete removal or restriction, and they are often performed by government officials or organizations.
Books can be restricted for some age ranges (due to language deemed inappropriate, sexual content, and graphic violence), and these restrictions are not harmful if parents decide to individually limit exposure to their children. Often in this day and age, however, book banning has taken on a more harmful connotation because they are conducted by entire government organizations that aim to censor ideology—a goal that goes against the ideal of free speech in the United States. While some restrictions due to age can be implemented, those in favor of book bans have banned books that deal with unsavory parts of world history that they wish to erase to maintain white supremacy and false histories—such as slavery, the Holocaust, and prevailing discrimination due to race, sexuality, gender, religion, culture, disability, and much more. In very recent years, book bans have been implemented on literature that pertains to such injustices with the argument that these conversations make (white) people “uncomfortable.”
Book banning is most prevalent within the realm of children’s literature, and those in favor of such book bans believe children will be swayed in the “wrong direction.” One (of many) pitfalls with this argument is that every book in the world—children’s or adult’s—has an agenda that can and will sway their audiences. Who gets to decide what the “wrong direction” is? Book bans, therefore, are implemented with the goal of only promoting a narrowed viewpoint, encouraging children to solely consider what is mainstream or deemed socially acceptable by a certain party. These book bans prevent children from considering a wide variety of perspectives and worldviews, thereby closing off their minds and decreasing their ability to have empathy for others.
Often, advocates for book bans will make their arguments under the guise of the desire to protect children from reading about excessive violence or inappropriate sexual content, while their ulterior motives remain to dictate the education of children of not considering critical histories or contemporary realities that pertain to diversity and inclusion on all fronts. For example, Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings was banned because of claims of violence, racism, sexuality, and sexual assault. While such themes can be tough for children to handle or fully comprehend, it should be up to the parent’s discretion for when/if their child should read it, not for the government to remove or restrict from public spaces. What is more, such issues of racism and sexual violence are very real parts of our nation’s—our world’s—history as well as present, and to ban books that deal with these realities is to ignore the experiences of many, instead offering a watered down or fake portrayal of life.
Book bannings are not new to the 21st century. Rather, its roots can be traced far back into world history. According to Harvard Library’s research guides, the first book ban in the United States was Thomas Morton’s New English Canaan in 1637 by the Puritan government of what is now Quincy, Massachusetts. His book was banned for its critical opinions of Puritan tradition and hierarchies of power. Fast forward to the 20th century, Nazi book burnings were another extreme form of public censorship organized by the German Student Union in the early 1930s. This organization burned and eliminated works that they deemed in favor of theologies or ideologies that went against the Nazi regime in public spaces, acts of violence meant to scare dissenters and prevent uprising against the corruption. Both of these historical events are reminiscent of what is happening now in the United States: the censorship and punishment of ideas and writings that question established power structures in order to dismantle these paradigms of injustice.
All in all, book bans or book censorships fundamentally go against American ideals of free speech and liberty “for all” because those at the core of the movement desire to silence voices that oppose the status quo. This silencing can be traced all throughout world history, and we ought to recognize this pattern in order to not continue feeding the cycle of regression and injustice.
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