by George M. Johnson
This article was originally published at Prism.
Across the country, the recent uptick in the banning of books written by marginalized people, especially Black queer authors, has never just been about banning books. It’s been about protecting white supremacist ideology and the indoctrination of children in the K-12 system with a false, revisionist history of the U.S. that continues to feed systemic oppressions. Contrary to school board talking points, it is less about protecting the innocence and purity of white children and more about denying and erasing the experiences of other races, genders, and sexual identities as the country’s demographics become more Black, brown, and nonheterosexual.
For Black authors, this is nothing new. Nationwide, our writings have continuously been under attack since Phillis Wheatley wrote her first book of poetry in 1773—a book Boston publishers refused to publish in the U.S. Books written by formerly enslaved people, referred to as “Slave Narratives,” faced much scrutiny and denial and even brought potential danger to their authors by those who felt their stories were anti-slavery and anti-American—a fear many of us writers are facing today.