American culture as a whole experienced a civil rights reawakening throughout 2020. Although there has been a dramatic increase in calls for social justice, representation and inclusion, this progressive movement still has plenty of detractors, especially in the educational space.
According to a new report from the American Library Association, titles that touch on race, talk about racism and racial justice or tell stories focused on people of color or members of the LGBTQ community still tend to be the books most often challenged as “inappropriate” for school libraries in 2020.
“As the nation attempted a reckoning in 2020 over the issue of race in the wake of the killing of George Floyd, parents took issue with books that dealt with some of the same issues,” Shirin Ali of CNN reported. “For the first time in the survey’s history, six of the 10 most-challenged books — out of 273 books that were targeted in libraries, schools and universities — touched on issues of race,” with complaints ranging from “divisive language” to anti-police views.
