I shouldn't have to say it, but I will - we're discussing To Kill a Mockingbird, and I'm quoting some strong language.
So here we have one of the granddaddys of banned books - To Kill a Mockingbird. Published in 1960, it still shows up on the "Top 10 Frequently Challenged books" list as recently as 2011 - 51 years after it was published. Reasons listed for its being challenged are offensive language, racism, and "unsuited to age group."*
Let's examine these, shall we?
Offensive language and racism:
Because of the story line of the book, offensive language and racism partly go hand in hand. There has been a lot of activity lately about trying to prevent people from seeing, reading about, and being aware of awful things that people used to do to each other. I won't get involved in any of these specific arguments - you probably can think of at least one that I'm talking about. [The sad thing is I wrote this 2 years ago, but it might as well have been yesterday.] But here we have a book, written at a very tumultous time, about subjects that were very inflammatory then (and apparently remain inflammatory now). (For what it's worth, the book was written during the Civil Rights movement, but set at the tail end of the Depression.) You can't remove a book like this from the social context of the time. Yes, people used language that we now consider racist and offensive to casually describe other groups. It happened. You can't change that. What you can (and should!) do, is look back and say, "gee, look how far we've come."
Yes, there are things that are very offensive in the book. It is offensive that a man should be falsely accused of a crime simply because of the color of his skin. It is offensive that the one person in the county willing to defend him was harassed and his family threatened. It is offensive that the accusers get away with lying under oath and using racial slurs against a man who is, in fact, innocent of the crime he is eventually convicted of.
It is offensive enough to read about these things in a work of fiction; it is even more-so that events like these happened. But, if no one reads about it, no one knows about it. And if no one knows about, what's to prevent it from happening again? Which brings us to...
"Unsuited to age group."
Ok. So there is a point at which you might say, "my child is too young to read about a racially-charged rape trial." And you would be right. But there is a point at which young people are mature enough to handle it. There is a point at which they are experimenting with those words that get bleeped out on the radio and TV, words they hear in that "explicit lyrics" cd they borrowed from a friend. There is a point at which they are at school and seeing other kids hang out in groups and maybe disliking some of those other groups and coming up with words for them - jocks, nerds, losers, loners, whatever. Maybe these words are offensive and maybe they aren't. Maybe these groups are about common interests rather than race lines. Whatever. The point is, at what age does your child need to learn that one group shouldn't pick on another group, just because they're different?
It's interesting to note that the age at which students are reading To Kill a Mockingbird and learning about the Civil Rights movement has a decent overlap with the age at which they learn about the Holocaust. I read To Kill a Mockingbird in 8th grade, which put me somewhere in the 13-14 year old range, depending on when it was in the school year. This would actually be smack-dab in the middle of my Holocaust obsession (obsessed with the victims and survivors, not the perpetrators, for the record). While Mockingbird was assigned to me, I had picked up the Holocaust fascination kind of on my own. However, I remember very keenly that I was eager to read Mockingbird, once I got into it. We were supposed to be reading and discussing 1 chapter at a time as a group, but I had to know what was happening and couldn't resist the urge to read ahead. I finished the book quickly and went back and reread each chapter as it was due, so that it would be fresh in my mind.
In fact, there is one scene and line in particular that had such an effect on me that it stayed fresh in my mind, lo these 20ish years later. I remember reading, with the urgent need to find out if Tom would be convicted, as the testimony got... shall we say, heated. I remember the accuser's father testifying, in a way that I realise now was meant to scandalise and inflame the jury, "I seen that black nigger yonder ruttin' on my Mayella!" I remember being shocked and aghast (after I looked up what "rutting" meant).
It's worth noting that when I went too look up the line just a few minutes ago, I had remembered it completely accurately despite not having reread the book since 8th grade. And by comparison, it's worth noting that despite having re-read and listened to Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban many times since my first reading, I had to go and double check the lines I quoted in my post yesterday. That's the power of language - the shocking, offensive passage was apparently more memorable to me than enjoyable passage.
Shocking. Offensive. Important to remember.
So what I'm getting at is this - we need to read these books. We need to be offended and outraged. We need to be offended enough and outraged enough so that we remember what we used to do, what we have changed, what we need to continue to change, and what we must not repeat.
*These statistics are compiled by the American Library Association - you can read more about it here: http://www.ala.org/bbooks/frequentlychallengedbooks/top10