That Librarian: The Fight Against Book Banning in America

by Amanda Jones

My huge crime was speaking out against censorship at my local public library board meeting on Tuesday, July 19, 2022. In retrospect, it was a pretty tame statement, compared with the reaction it elicited.

Citizens is a dark-money nonprofit group in Louisiana whose director often posts the usual conspiracy theories about “the jab,” hate rhetoric toward the LGBTQIA+ community, and your typical far-right nonsense. But it’s nonsense that is believed by a lot of people.

You only mock people who have awards when you have no real accomplishments of your own.

I have spent countless hours looking at where this nonsense is happening to librarians across the country. Sadly, my experience is by no means unique.

I wondered if they even thought it was true or if it just made them feel good to spread hate.

I worried that my friends and family would be targeted next. Spoiler alert: they were.

These men wanted to make an example out of someone and scare the community into silence.

Men like Michael and Ryan are intimidated by strong women, and when people have nothing of value to contribute to the conversation, they turn to personal attacks.

Members of the group Citizens for a New Louisiana laughed when several of the sexual assault survivors spoke out at the meeting. The people from Citizens are horrible examples of humans, but I was still shocked that someone could laugh at another person’s trauma.

A man dies when he refuses to stand up for that which is right. A man dies when he refuses to stand up for justice. A man dies when he refuses to take a stand for that which is true. —MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.

attacks on the Lafayette Public Library,

That library system had seen a significant loss of funds and librarians after a push from Michael Lunsford of the group Citizens for a New Louisiana.

This group also managed to heavily influence library board decisions in Lafayette Parish and pushed to stop library book displays, including displays on Cajun heritage.

The only gay agenda I have ever seen is one in which the LGBTQIA+ community wants to be treated equally and have people leave them alone.

no one on the right side of history has ever been on the side of censorship and hiding books. I said, “Hate and fear disguised as moral outrage have no place in Livingston Parish.”

In fact, none of the books in our public library even contain sexually explicit material as defined by law. This is something important to note, because in the days after the meeting, it was insinuated that anyone who opposed censorship was for pornography being in the library, or sexually explicit material being available to children. Age-appropriate books on sexual reproduction in the teen section of our library is not giving children pornography.

Michael suggested that there were explicit materials right next to Green Eggs and Ham on the shelves. As if. It was a bunch of bluster with no evidence.

Book censors will often say there are books containing pornographic or sexually explicit material in children’s sections of the library to rile up public fear. They decry the need to protect children from the evil smut they say is next to Dr. Seuss books. As if a kid could be looking for The Very Hungry Caterpillar and whoops, there’s The Joy of Sex or the Kama Sutra right next to it. That’s never the case.

Public libraries do not purchase pornography. Adult books are not in the library’s children section, and to suggest otherwise is ridiculous.

But some of these people were also about using the library as a pawn to stir up drama for monetary or political reasons.

Ryan Thames himself has implied that he wants to see the library defunded because he doesn’t believe in taxes going toward a public library.

Where was Ryan Thames during this meeting? He sat dead center of the room, one row back from me. He never spoke during public comment, which is ironic, since he would go on weeks later about how he was there to “protect the children.” I guess protecting children means just sitting there, looking sullen.

A challenge is an attempt to remove or restrict materials, based upon the objections of a person or group. A banning is the removal of those materials. Challenges do not simply involve a person expressing a point of view; rather, they are an attempt to remove material from the curriculum or library, thereby restricting the access of others. —AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION

People willing to knock down others on a climb toward power are not the kind of people I want to be around.

all libraries have collection development policies, which describe how books are chosen for their library. These usually require guidance from professional review sources,

Professional reviews are found in journals like Kirkus Reviews, Booklist, School Library Journal, and Publishers Weekly. Librarians should never use crowdsourced reviews from Amazon, where anyone, including children, can write reviews.

Librarians will read reviews to help determine purchasing and placement in public libraries. In public libraries, patrons can also request books to be purchased.

A public library serves patrons from birth to death, and the collection is usually broken into sections: children, young adult/teen, and adult. This means that books are ordered for all age ranges and then placed accordingly based on librarian expertise and professional review sources.

Librarians cannot possibly read every single book before making a purchase, although we do try.

am given a very small budget. I must make decisions wisely. I ask for student and teacher suggestions, provide book catalogs so that students can make requests, and check all reviews for age relevancy before ordering books.

There’s a science to placing book orders, and there are entire classes in graduate school on how to create and follow collection development policies.

The American Library Association has created Guidelines for Reconsideration Committees, which states, “Challenged materials should not be removed from the collection while under reconsideration.”

Most public libraries also have guidelines for unaccompanied minors, which state that parents should accompany their children in the library. It is the responsibility of parents to monitor their own children and which sections they are allowed to browse in public libraries.

“Libraries are not daycare centers.” A parent shouldn’t just drop off their child at the local courthouse or Walmart, just like they shouldn’t be dropping their minor children off at the library. Public libraries have adult sections because they also serve adults. If you don’t want your child near adult material, you should monitor your own child.

board member suggested that we should not allow anyone under the age of eighteen in the library without a parent in case they go into the adult section.

anyone thirteen years old and younger should be with an adult.

sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds can drive, and that person would rather they go to the library to study or check out materials than go somewhere else where they could get in trouble.

in Louisiana sixteen-year-olds can get married. I hadn’t even thought of that. Sixteen-year-olds can also have jobs. Wanting to ban a sixteen- or seventeen-year-old from entering the library without an adult when they can work and get married at that age is perverse to me.

All across the country hate speech is running rampant, funding is being threatened, and our libraries are under attack. People are no longer hiding their racism.

“since the fall of 2020, reports submitted to the ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom document a precipitous rise in the number of attempted book bans in school and public libraries across the United States.

Pro-censors challenged 2,571 books in 2022, a 38 percent increase from the 1,858 books targeted for censorship in 2021. Of those titles, the vast majority were written by or about members of the LGBTQIA+ community or by and about Black people, Indigenous people, and people of color.”

As we have seen here in Louisiana, the challengers often have never even read the books. They copy and paste from erroneous websites, and the complaints are frequently rife with errors.

I know of a book that was removed from the shelves of a neighboring school by the school’s principal because a parent came and complained. The parent did not file a formal book challenge. The principal did not follow the book challenge policy, did not consult the district, and forced the librarian to remove it from the school’s library all at the request of one parent who admittedly hadn’t read the book. The fact the book was professionally reviewed for that school’s age group did not matter. The decision was made by a principal whose only experience in the classroom was as a PE instructor, who hadn’t read the book, and who had no training in library science.

You start banning one thing, and you’re on a slippery slope to banning everything.

“Each attempt to ban a book by one of these groups represents a direct attack on every person’s constitutionally protected right to freely choose what books to read and what ideas to explore. The choice of what to read must be left to the reader or, in the case of children, to parents. That choice does not belong to self-appointed book police.”

Ben Shapiro is spreading lies about school librarians, and when he states these things to his followers, librarians’ lives can be endangered by the type of fans he is seeking to enrage for money and views and political power.

Nobody is shying away from debate, but librarians are absolutely right in denouncing defamations of their character. Those making the accusations aren’t interested in civil debates.

This nationwide movement is exacerbating a teacher and librarian shortage, with many in the field switching careers or retiring early to avoid these threats to their lives and livelihoods.

“The accusations that someone, a teacher or librarian, is trying to harm a child is, really, it’s indefensible and the emotional toll that it’s taking is significant.

Utah saw an uptick in censorship attempts and anti-library laws created by legislators with little to no library training, with schools immediately experiencing a precipitous rise in book challenges.