Perhaps there's a silver lining.
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As always, the impetus of the mania is simple, stupid and cynical. The Republican party has made a concerted effort to bring outré philosophic principles like critical race theory to the heart of our politics, which is why the Virginia governor-elect, Glenn Youngkin, spent much of his time on the campaign trail griping about Toni Morrison’s Beloved. Parents took the bait, and overnight high school librarians – those brazen extremists pushing their anti-American agendas by cataloging Pulitzer winners from 1987 – were put in the crosshairs.
These books are rarely inflammatory or obscene; instead, they simply contain narratives about race, gender and inequality that chafe against prescribed American ideology. That’s more than enough for an emboldened conservative movement.
But there is no evidence that the wave of book bans are actually accomplishing their intended ambition. If anything they’ve achieved the opposite effect. Sales of Beloved increased after Youngkin transformed Morrison into a partisan figure, and Jerry Craft, an author and artist who found himself on the Krause list for his 2019 graphic novel New Kid, has spoken at length about how legislative suppression is an unlikely boon for his career. “What has happened is so many places have sold so many copies because now people want to see what all the hubbub is,” he said, in an interview with the Houston Chronicle. “They’re almost disappointed because there’s no big thing that they were looking for.”
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