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“. . . not one cent of taxpayer money should be used to define or divide young Oklahomans about their race or sex,” said Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt about the bill H.B. 1775 after he signed it in May, 2021.

The wave of state legislation about the K-12 curriculum seems to ask: Does knowledge of race and gender identity unite us or divide us as U.S. citizens?  When books address race or gender discrimination does that give us pause to think about the other or does it turn us against the other? Should classroom curricula illumine the social stress outside the classroom or should it be gender and color blind?

The slogan for Banned Books Week is “Books Unite Us.” Is that a fair generalization? It is a challenge to this legislation designed to control student reading and public school curricula. Let’s look at the objection to one popular young adult novel as a case in point.

1. The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
   Reasons: Banned and challenged for profanity and violence and because it was thought to promote an anti-police message and indoctrination of a social agenda [https://bannedbooksweek.org/about/]

The novel depicts a police shooting of a teenager from multiple points of view, showing the tension within a community, BUT ultimately bringing some groups together to recognize a police over-reaction. The story crosses racial boundaries as we see some Black characters blaming the teenager and some White characters blaming the police officer. Is this a divisive book or does it energize our thinking about race and society?

The Criteria for Banning

The existence of profanity in the novel only acknowledges the coarseness of expression we see in realistic fiction. For example, the following list of books have been banned by public watch dogs in part for their “language.”

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald; The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger; The Color Purple by Alice Walker; The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck; Beloved by Toni Morrison; Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck; Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston; Native Son by Richard Wright; Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut; A Separate Peace by John Knowles.; Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson.

Three books are by Nobel Prize Winners (John Steinbeck and Toni Morrison), two won the Pulitzer Prize (The Color Purple and Beloved ), and one is a Newbery Award Winner (The Bridge to Terebithia). What does this suggest? That offensive language does not mar critical excellence.  It may be part of the portrayal of real characters. If we want to expose students to professionally- recognized literature, we may have to read past the objectionable language.

The objection to violence in the novel fails to consider the subject matter. There is more graphic violence in The Red Badge of Courage, in All Quiet on the Western Front, indeed in the Bible (see Judges 5:24-27) than in this novel. At the core of the story is a violent crime, so the subject matter entails violence. Violence may be the subject of great literature.

Then comes the claim of an anti-police message. You have to read the book to decide if this is true, because it gives the law and order point of view alongside the victims’ points of view. It would be a bad novel if it reduced its characters to the good guys vs. the bad guys, and most teachers would avoid such over-simplification in their assigned reading. An “anti-police message” would be too simplistic. My personal view is that the novel avoids stereotyping the “Black” point of view against the “White” point of view by including a Black policeman as a significant character in the story.

The indoctrination of a social agenda smells strongly like one person’s personal disagreement with the over-riding themes of the book.  Critical reading, an essential skill for teen-age readers, requires a mature reader to engage with the themes of a book and decide whether the reader agrees or disagrees. No secondary reading curriculum should lack this skill, regardless of the proficiency expected in the reader. Even a hilarious book like the Newbery award winner Maniac Magee by Jerry Spinelli might have a social agenda, and I imagine some parents might detect one. It is the role of critical reading to ferret this out and make decisions about the point of view.

The “indoctrination” claim addresses the way a book is taught. Only bad teachers teach by telling the students what the author’s message is. It kills critical thinking, and students hate when teachers do that. If the book, itself, takes an indoctrinating approach, it is bad fiction. As I commented above, “It would be a bad novel if it reduced its characters to the good guys vs. the bad guys, and most teachers would avoid such over-simplification in their assigned reading.”

If readers can get past the language and give The Hate U Give a fair reading, I think they will find an even-handed approach to police responsibility, racial identity, and community dialog. It is precisely the community dialog that is lacking in many American communities today, the very reason this book should be read, not banned.

This book should unite, not divide communities. At the very least it would be a great read for parent groups that want to read what their kids are reading. In the interests of dialogue some high schools and middle schools organize such groups to shed light on books that parents may want to be informed of. Such reading groups would be a good test of the theory that “Books Unite Us.”

I think The Hate You Give is the kind of book that unites us.