Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick recently turned up the heat on public school districts, vowing to push legislation that would penalize schools for keeping what he describes as “lewd” books on their shelves. Patrick plans to lower the annual school performance ratings of districts that fail to clear their libraries of these titles. Since the state uses these ratings to seize control of underperforming districts, the stakes for school administrators are incredibly high.
This issue went viral a few days after the announcement, thanks to a post by Dustin Pace (non_toxic_masculinity_) on Instagram and TikTok. Less than a day after he highlighted some of the books banned in Texas, the post garnered over 1.3 million views. Pace started his video with a clip of Patrick stating, “We’re coming for the books.” Pace then showed ten books banned from school libraries, some of which were There There by Tommy Orange, A Time To Kill by John Grisham, and Educated by Tara Westover.
