For years now, conservative activists have decried “cancel culture,” the phenomenon of suppressing any speech or writing that offends liberal sensibilities. And it is, in fact, an alarming and annoying trend from the left. But in Wentzville today, conservatives have provided a disturbing example of what might be called the original cancel culture: book banning.
The Wentzville School Board last week banned from its high school libraries a bona fide literary classic, the 1970 novel “The Bluest Eye,” by the late Nobel laureate Toni Morrison. The book tells the story of a young Black girl in post-Great Depression America whose self-esteem has been so diminished by racism that she wishes for blue eyes — a fittingly poignant narrative in exploring America’s painful racial history.
Inevitably, the book-banning parents and school board members claim they’re protecting high schoolers from the book’s scenes of sex and violence. These are the same teens who have unlimited access to plenty of both on their cellphones and streaming services. It strains credulity to suggest these kids might steal into the school library, sifting through hundreds of pages to seek out a few salacious passages from serious literary works for prurient purposes.
