There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a bit of irony in the following, which concerns a re-heated topic of racism, as shown in the decision of several school districts to ban Harper Lee\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s award-winning novel, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153To Kill a Mockingbird.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
Touching on Lee\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s brilliant novel and of censorship leads me to make a couple of disclosures. First, my mother and I were virtual opposites when it came to tolerance for words and images that appeared in books; she favored censorship. Second, even as a child I never believed that learning and even using what we call profanity \u00e2\u20ac\u201d such as the f-word \u00e2\u20ac\u201d would corrupt me.<\/p>\n
But yet, when I lived with my parents in the mid-sixties, finishing up my last year of college, I discovered how diametrically opposed my mother and I were.<\/p>\n
Here\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s how: I was enrolled in an upper-level class as Highlands, and the professor assigned a book called \u00e2\u20ac\u0153A Psychiatrist Looks At Erotica.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d The only place that book, containing bold statements on nudity, pornography and profanity was available was in a bookstore on Douglas, which used to be our main business district. Why that book wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t at the Highlands Book Store still puzzles me.<\/p>\n
I honest-to-goodness needed that book to meet class requirements, but once Mom espied it and thumbed through it, I knew the book\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s shelf life was limited. Mom quizzed me on the book\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s content, and I matter-of-factly explained it was for a class I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d signed up for.<\/p>\n
Didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t matter.<\/p>\n
I assume that to my mom, the book was trash. But without actually begging, I begged to differ, based on my having read the first few chapters before mom gave the book a secret burial. No explanation. No apologies. It was impossible to get a replacement in such a short time, so I needed to borrow classmates\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 books, make photocopies at about a quarter a page, and practically take out a second mortgage on my car in order to reconstruct the book that sold for a buck fifty.<\/p>\n
Have I already mentioned that I believe any harm that comes to a person who reads a book like the one my mom purloined is self-inflicted? I went to the bridge with some older boys and must have learned all the four-letter words by heart. Even as an 8-year-old, seeing the f-word splayed a zillion times under the Independence Street bridge didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t faze me.<\/p>\n
I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even know what the words were, and the crude illustrations of sexual acts didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t faze me at all. At that age I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even know the names of (or even the euphemisms for) the body parts scrawled under that bridge.<\/p>\n
But yet, I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t believe any word considered profane gets more negative attention than the f-word.<\/p>\n
Only recently, the brouhaha over the banning of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153To Kill A Mockingbird\u00e2\u20ac\u009d by some schools has re-ignited. Recent news indicates that a number of southern schools in the U.S. have banned the book from their curricula \u00e2\u20ac\u201d and maybe even felt proud for doing so. Several articles on the banishment of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Mockingbird\u00e2\u20ac\u009d mention that many who favored taking the book off the shelves had fears that reading the it could corrupt readers because it contained the n-word and dealt with adult themes.<\/p>\n
The main theme \u00e2\u20ac\u201d really \u00e2\u20ac\u201d is about racial prejudice in the Deep South.<\/p>\n
A black laborer, Tom Robinson, is accused of sexually assaulting a young, white girl, and the defendant\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s lawyer, played by Gregory Peck does a masterful job of defending his client. But before the all-white jury renders a verdict, the defendant is shot and killed.<\/p>\n
There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s no need for a plot summary here, except to point out the irony of the book\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s banning because \u00e2\u20ac\u0153it made some people \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcuncomfortable.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
The rape trial consumes most of the action in \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Mockingbird,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and by standards and morals of the middle of last century, perhaps the tone was a bit too tepid. But yet, I wonder how it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s possible for any reader of the book or viewer of the movie to become corrupted.<\/p>\n
Compared to what we Americans hear routinely on school playgrounds, the language in the book and the movie is mild.<\/p>\n
But \u00e2\u20ac\u0153because it makes some people \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcuncomfortable,\u00e2\u20ac\u2122\u00e2\u20ac\u009d the censors began working overtime.<\/p>\n
Michael Gerson of the Washington Post Writers Group weighs in on the Bixoli, Miss., decision to remove the book from school shelves. He writes, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The purpose of Lee\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s classic . . . is to make people uncomfortable with racial prejudice. To do so, it reflects the language employed by bigots in the segregated South, including the N-word. Given a desire to present the repulsive reality of racism, it could hardly do otherwise.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
I wonder how many people can applaud the school board\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s decision and declare that censoring Harper Lee\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s book was wise, which \u00e2\u20ac\u201d some people say \u00e2\u20ac\u201d protects all children.<\/p>\n
Some critics recently have pointed out that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Mockingbird\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is only one of many books about which the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153uncomfortable\u00e2\u20ac\u009d index kicks in.<\/p>\n
Clearly, the book banning is due to several factors, including an alleged rape, profanity, and the use of the n-word which characters use in the film and book but which will not be printed in the Optic.<\/p>\n
As for me, I oppose censorship, and doubly so when it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s imposed for frivolous reasons. And if my stance proves harmful to the innocent children in school, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll apologize.<\/p>\n
And that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll give me another occasion to write even more on this censorship issue, which has festered for about 55 years.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 \u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 \u00e2\u20ac\u00a2<\/p>\n
We got our granddaughter home and in too short a time, shipped her back to school. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m referring to Carly Trujillo, a junior at the Santa Fe School for the Arts.<\/p>\n
You may recall the out-of-control fires that have blazed in the Napa-Sonoma region of California, near San Francisco. When the fires grew, destroying thousands of homes and killing dozens, officials at Oxbow Art School, where Carly attends, evacuated the campus and helped students find safer climes.<\/p>\n
In Carly\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s case, the only option was buying a plane ticket and returning to New Mexico. We enjoyed the handful of unplanned days with Carly, the daughter of Diego and Connie. And we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been assurred it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s safe for all students to return to campus.
\nWe drove her to the Albuquerque Sunport Sunday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a bit of irony in the following, which concerns a re-heated topic of racism, as shown in the decision of several school districts to ban Harper Lee\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s award-winning novel, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153To Kill a Mockingbird.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Touching on Lee\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s brilliant novel and of censorship leads me to make a couple of disclosures. First, my mother and I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1688"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1688"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1688\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1689,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1688\/revisions\/1689"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1688"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1688"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}