Mullally and Ringel Reading Response

 The thing that stuck out to me the most in these two articles was the moral superiority that book banners feel regarding their actions of banning children's and young adult media––at the expense of everything else around them. 

Mullally cites the school board from the Island Trees School District on Long Island as saying, "it is our duty, our moral obligation, to protect the children in our schools from this moral danger as surely as from physical and medical dangers" (Mullally 3). This quote not only demonstrates the board members' arrogance and narcissism, but also the way they are justifying to themselves and the public at large their censorship of media in public libraries and schools. By taking a tone of moral superiority, they are heightening their own sense of importance as well as dissuading anyone else from speaking out against the censorship, since doing so is a testament to one's moral failings; ignoring the book your son is reading that has a gay character is equated to ignoring your son bleeding to death––both are instances of parental neglect and child abuse. 

Book banners are also enacting these policies not just at the expense of art and reader retention, but also at the expense of children's empathy and understanding of the world around them. The slogan from the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice "Morals, not art and literature" are emblematic of the harm that this censorship does to literature and art (Mulally 2). Book banning and censorship also harm books' appeal to young readers, since publishers move to only publish books that "cater to parents and adult cultural gatekeepers" rather than "to young readers themselves" in order to make the most money they can (Ringel 2). This results in less diversity of books being published, since authors have to appeal to parents rather than to readers, and also results in taking away a lot of the fun and appeal of reading: children often don't want to read about the same old story of a white boy or girl getting narratively punished for not listening to their mother, that story has been written a thousand times before, and readers will not only get bored of the lack of risk taken in books, but also will not feel the rush so many young readers feel at reading a sentence they know their parents wouldn't approve of. Book censorship and banning also limits a book's ability to "transport [readers] beyond their own experiences and instills the feelings of empathy and humility that are an essential part of the reason why we tell stories" (Ringel 5). If to read a book is to practice our humanity and empathy towards others, then book bannings serve to limit who gets to be human in our society, and who gets to have others feel empathetic to their lives and stories. These people then internalise the narrative that "your situation ... your family ... your life is innappropriate" (Ringel 5). What this means is that they are further marginalised and children who have had the privilege to live lives where their only worries are "abut friendships, summer camps, and maybe their first pimple or two" and society encourages them to remain ignorant of the realities of our world as well as to continue ignoring people who need help (Ringel 6).

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