![]() “For over 30 years,” said Helligar, “these books have been on this list. Notably, the BUSD’s reading list hasn’t been revised in three decades. Narrated by a young Black girl growing up in the South during the Great Depression and Jim Crow era, it’s the only novel on the list by a Black author. “Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry” may have instigated Helligar’s complaint, but it is something of an outlier. Its white-savior story line reads much differently nearly 60 years after its publication. “To Kill a Mockingbird” stars Atticus Finch, a white lawyer who defends a Black man accused of raping a white woman. ![]() “The Cay” and “Huckleberry Finn” feature white children learning from the suffering and wisdom of older Black men. According to Destiny’s mother, Carmenita Helligar, a white student approached Destiny in math class using a racial taunt including the N-word, which he’d learned from reading “Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry.”Īnother time, Helligar added, a different boy went up to Destiny and other students and said: “My family used to own your family and now I want a dollar from each of you for the week.” When the principal was notified, the boy’s excuse was that he had read it in class - also in “Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry.” Helligar believed the principal was dismissive of the incident. Destiny Helligar, now 15 and in high school, recently told her mom about an incident that took place when she was a student at David Starr Jordan Middle School. Young America’s Foundation announced Monday that it would provide students in the Burbank Unified School District free copies of five books recently removed from the curriculum.Īnd at its root, it stems from a painful personal story. More specifically, it’s about what should be taught to the district’s roughly 15,200 enrolled students - who are 47.2% white, 34.5% Latino, 9.2% Asian and 2.6% Black - and how Burbank can move forward on race boldly but sensitively.īooks Conservative youth group will offer Burbank students free copies of sidelined books In the abstract, it’s a dispute about the meaning of free speech and who gets heard. And while book banning has a long history in America, the situation in Burbank - once a sundown town that practiced racial segregation - is freshly complicated. As a result, many institutions and school districts like BUSD are taking a hard look at themselves, their policies, curriculums and practices, in many cases publishing antiracist statements. ![]() ![]() The debate within the district comes after a summer of mass protests calling for an end to the unjust treatment of Black people. The charge against these books - racism - has been invoked in the past, but in contrast to earlier fights across the country, this one is heavily inflected by an atmosphere of urgent reckoning, as both opponents and defenders of the novels claim the mantle of antiracism. The ongoing case has drawn the attention of free-speech organizations across the country, which are decrying it as the latest act of school censorship. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |