A resident of Katy, Texas, a city about 30 miles west of Houston, penned a message to Newbery Medal-winning author and illustrator Jerry Craft six months ago that some of his books were being pulled from the shelves of a school library. “I was caught off guard,” Craft, the author of the graphic novel New Kid, told NBCBLK in a piece published on Thursday. “I felt bad for the kids because I know how much they love ‘New Kid’ and ‘Class Act.’ I know what my school visits do … I felt bad if there was going to be some kids that would not be able to take advantage of that.” 

Craft’s books shed light on the experiences of Black boys who experience racism at school, but racists have redefined his work as a pursuit of critical race theory, a framework for interpreting law that maintains racism has an undeniable effect on the legal foundation of American society. The framework would be pretty exclusively confined to law schools if not for Republicans taking advantage of public ignorance about the theory to assert that it translates to anything revealing the truth of racism or prejudice in America. 

The American Library Association found in its special COVID-19 report released last April that 273 books were challenged in an attempt to have them removed or restricted based on content. The most challenged books in 2020 were author Alex Gino’s George for LGBTQIA+ content, author Ibram X. Kendi and Jason Reynolds’ Stamped for not encompassing “racism against all people,” and authors Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely’s All American Boys for “profanity, drug use, and alcoholism and because it was thought to promote anti-police views.”

The Cooperative Children’s Book Center at the University of Wisconsin–Madison reported a 34% increase in books by diverse authors between 2017 and 2018, but those books only represented about 15% of total books available for young people.

The American Association of School Librarians president said in the summer of 2020 following the death of George Floyd: “Our students have lived through a global pandemic, national protests, societal shifts, and possible untold personal turmoil since we all were last together. Along with formal teaching and learning, our students will need to talk and we will need to listen. Some of those conversations may be difficult or even a little uncomfortable, but those types of interactions are often the ones that have the greatest impact on our students.”

Deborah Caldwell-Stone, the director of American Library Association Office for Intellectual Freedom, told NBCBLK the number of books challenged that are about people of color is disheartening. “We’re particularly disheartened that elected officials who do have a duty to uphold the Constitution and the Bill of Rights are pressing forward with efforts to remove these books, as well,” she said.

Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin unseated Democrat Terry McAuliffe running on a campaign cemented in opposition to the Republican rebrand of critical race theory. Last October, Youngkin tweeted a campaign video featuring the outrage of Laura Murphy, a white mom who years earlier tried to get the late author Toni Morrison’s classic novel, Beloved, banned from Murphy’s son’s Advanced Placement English curriculum. 

“As a parent, it’s tough to catch everything. So when my son showed me his reading assignment, my heart sunk,” Murphy said in the ad. “It was some of the most explicit material you can imagine.” 

The novel, like much of what’s taught about slavery in classrooms, would be inaccurate if it wasn’t jarring. It is, after all, about the devastating effects of slavery, and it’s one of many works of people of color that Republicans have targeted, deeming them to be promoting critical race theory.

In the American Library Association report, author Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird was also challenged “for racial slurs and their negative effect on students, featuring a ‘white savior’ character, and its perception of the Black experience.” Opposing right-winger Rhonda Thurman’s attempt at censorship, Karista Jones, a Hamilton County Board of Education member at the time, made an essential point about the book when Thurman brought it up at a school board meeting.

“Libraries give you choice,” Jones said. “You can’t censor when it’s uncomfortable for you.” 

In May, Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee signed a law allowing Tennessee Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn to hold funds from schools that teach specific aspects of “racism, sexism, bias, and other social issues.”

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed a similar bill into law aiming to ban critical race theory in K-12 public schools. “Apparently I’m teaching critical race theory,” Craft tweeted in response to news of his books being banned.

Cinderella Is Dead author Kalynn Bayron’s told NBCBLK she doesn’t consider challenges to her work “a badge of honor … These things speak to the level of bigotry that still exists, specifically within our public education system,” the author said. Her book reimagines the classic fairy tale into what The New York Times called a “captivating story where girls finally decide for themselves who lives happily ever after.” 

When Texas Rep. Matt Krause launched a probe into literature with racial or sexual content in Texas school districts in October, Bayron tweeted: “Cinderella Is Dead is on this list. I’d like Matt Krause to know that nothing he does will keep my work out of the hands of young readers.”

Mikki Kendall, author of the nonfiction title Hood Feminism, told NBCBLK such bans are nothing more than publicity stunts. “It’s spreading, and all it’s going to do is undermine education for the kids who are not lucky enough, not risk-seeking enough, not prepared enough to seek out the information on their own,” she said.

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