Book Banning - What To Do

 I see a call to arms in Imani Perry's `We Read the Banned Books with this subtitle: 

To defeat the forces of exclusion, one must pursue that which has been prohibited. 

The thesis expands here:

Nevertheless, I understand that Black History Month remains significant. I find myself, in the lectures I’m giving this year, lingering on this: Once upon a time, in the antebellum United States, it was illegal for enslaved people to learn to read. For that transgression, they could be punished by death, maiming, or being sold away from their family. Yet enslaved people still endeavored by any means possible to become literate. And of course, after emancipation, freedpeople flooded into schools; in the late 19th century, a cadre of Black educators and scholars worked valiantly to write themselves into a history that had excluded them.

The point is that struggling against those who would keep us from learning and from being studied—and by us, I mean Black people here, but also all marginalized people—is nothing new in this country’s history. The forces of exclusion are old and resilient. Then, as now, the only way to defeat them is to pursue that which has been prohibited. We read the banned books, we study the verboten topics, and we share them, still.

We are Americans. We are free. We should be brave enough to face up to the truth. 

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