I’m a proponent of freedom of expression, that authors should be able to write about any topic they please. Partly because I believe in self-expression, but also because I feel that writing about all topics – especially sensitive ones – is a good way to explore them and see them from different angles. I’ll admit, not every controversial book is well-written and I can’t state that all authors have the best intentions. However, at the very least, the controversies spark conversations, and the conversations can lead to education and understanding.

So I was annoyed to see that schools in Burbank, California have decided to ban five books due to concerns over racism. The titles in question are:

• To Kill a Mockingbird
• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
• Of Mice and Men
• The Cay
• Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry

The problem, from what I understand, stems from several white students making racists remarks to their black classmates, and when confronted about it claimed they said these things because they’d read them in these books. Understandably, the parents of the black children were upset about this and appealed to the school board to pull these titles from the required reading list.

Okay, I completely get where the parents are coming from on this. They want to protect their children. However, I feel that the problem here doesn’t lie with the content of the books, but in how the books are being taught.

To Kill a Mockingbird, for example, is a story about how a town deals with racism. No, it doesn’t have a happy ending, but it works as a teachable moment. Not all innocent men go free, and the guilty aren’t always punished. In this case, an innocent young black man is convicted of a horrible crime by an all-white jury in a small southern town. It’s not encouraging racism, it’s showing the terrible results of it. Huckleberry Finn is similar in that it shows a period of history where racism was normal and accepted, and how a young man experiences it while having adventures with his friend Jim, a slave. If nothing else, this story is a satire of the attitudes of the time period and a interesting piece of history.

With this situation in the Burbank school district, it appears these messages were lost on the students or possibly not conveyed in a meaningful way. This isn’t the fault of the stories. The anti-racism messages are there. I’ll admit, I’ve only read the first three books on the list, but I did look up the other two in order to have some perspective. To me, it seems like the schools need to reassess how these books are taught. It’s obvious that the students – or at least some of them – came away from these stories with the completely wrong idea.

But even so, instead of banning the books, the schools and parents need to use this as a tool to help their children understand racism, the root causes of it, the history of it, and how we can move beyond it. As I’ve noted in previous blog posts, I believe that racism stems from fear – fear of ‘the other’, fear of the unknown, fear of things that are different. Exposure to different ideas, different cultures, different ideas, and the ability to think critically, are some of the remedies. I know that there are other causes, but I feel these stories can be used as windows to the past, so show children how things used to be and how we can be better than we were.

I’m always anti-censorship, especially when it comes to fiction. I hope the schools in Burbank can reconsider their decision, reinstate these books, and teach them properly. Our future depends on it.

RB

I find it interesting how two people can see the same thing but come away with different perspectives on what happened. For example, studies have shown that when investigators interview witnesses to a crime, they often end up with wildly different explanations of the event. And it’s not that the witnesses are purposely trying to cause confusion. It’s all in how they interpreted what they saw.

It’s the same when people watch movies, listen to music, read books. We all get something different from the experience. Our takeaways may be similar or decidedly different, but no two people experience the same things in the same ways. It’s personal taste.

That’s what makes us individuals. If we all reacted and felt the exact same way about the exact same things, well, I think life would be boring. Nothing to discuss, debate, or defend. It would also be the death of creativity and art.

Try this sometime: When there’s something happening, a big event, watch the faces in the crowd. Let your eyes scan across the masses, watch to see how people react. You’ll probably see a lot of similar expressions – shock, awe, fear, surprise, wonder, depending on the event, but you’ll also see outliers. For example, when there’s a wreck during an Indy 500 auto race, you’ll see some people cover their mouths in shock, some will turn away, but there will be others who smile, laugh, maybe even cheer. The variances of human nature.

Or on a smaller scale, I occasionally like to watch a movie with my partner – one that I’ve seen but she hasn’t – so I can watch her face during certain scenes to see how she reacts. Sometimes she does what I expect, but there are occasions where she reacts unexpectedly, laughing when I expect her to cringe, or cry when I thought she’d simply frown. I think it gives me a little more insight into her feelings and how she interprets the world around us.

I’m not saying that any one way is right or wrong. It’s just human nature, who we are, the culmination of our lives up to that point in time. You and I may both look at an abstract painting and I’ll see something wonderful, a display of emotion, while you may simply see paint on a canvas. We are neither right nor wrong. But it will make for some interesting discussion afterwards.

I think of this phenomenon as a trick of light. We both see something, experience something, but depending on how the light hits our eyes, I may see it much differently than you do. When it comes to creativity, we are all going to see the images differently, hear the music differently, interpret the words differently.

We have to keep that in mind when we create something. We may have an intention, but that doesn’t mean the audience will see it the same way. We can’t take offense at that. Once we complete a piece of art – song, story, painting – and release it into the world, well, it’s no longer ours. It belongs to the viewer, the reader, the listener. And how they respond to it depends on things we can’t control.

RB