Censorship Will Always Be With US

In this final week of the quarter, I have come to the conclusion that there is no way to get away from censorship, or at least attempts at it. And this is not due to ill-will on anyone's part. Would-be censors and other trammlers upon intellectual freedom are trying to protect us, and our children, from ourselves.

It is hard to conclude that attempts to remove reading material from libraries falls essentially under the same category as me trying to keep the dog from licking open the spot where she jabbed herself with a branch. I know she shouldn't do it because it will ultimately keep the wound from healing. Her brain tells her it itches.

What brought me to this conclusion about censors was looking at some of the history of censorship. Books by Mark Twain, Harper Lee and others have been protested in the past, because they essentially stated that blacks were people too. Now they are being challenged because of unflattering views on blacks. The same happens to books in the Little House on the Prairie Series (you heard me) because of the way the First Nations are depicted. I have to agree that there are unflattering portrayals, but not only is that the way people used to think, it is the way some still do and that is something we need to be aware of. If we try to clean up all objectionable references to everyone everywhere ever, we will have no unexpurgated reading material, along with a lot of people who're shocked senseless by the real world when they walk out of the library.

I know I've discussed this before, and if I keep up with this blog once the course is over, will probably come back to it again. This is because it matters to me. But I've never tried to look at it from the view of the censor. This is something that should be done as well, and is probably the best way to combat it.

What made me really aware of the challenger's perspective was looking at the regulations of Canada, where hate speech is banned. Overall, I like that idea. But it does cause problems when importing books which may appear to have hate speech in their pages. This is done at the discretion of the custom's agent and may never be known to the public, which leads to secret censorship as well. Keeping hate speech down is admirable, but protecting us from the knowledge that hate exists is not the same as making hate go away.

So, I guess the real trick is, convincing the challengers that they aren't protecting us from the evils of the world, but only giving them dark, quiet places to thrive.