Book Bans in the Real World (Part III)

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Last school year, book restrictions, challenges, and bans hit a fever pitch across the country. In South Carolina, as in the country at large, the challenges came from a statistically tiny number of people.

Every indication is that the trend is continuing, and in South Carolina a new regulation passed quickly by Superintendent of Education Ellen Weaver has added fuel to the fire of confusion.

While proponents of that regulation claimed it would lead to greater transparency and uniformity among school districts, the first month of school instead saw widespread confusion and differing approaches to its requirements. Greenville Schools, for example, “paused” all book fairs, while neighboring districts did not. A spokesperson for Lexington One schools— target of last year’s anti- “CRT” lawsuit from the SC Freedom Caucus— told me that district was not preemptively removing books, but was “working with school librarians on a process for identifying books that may include descriptions or visual depictions of ‘sexual content’ as the term is defined by Section 16-15-305(C)(1) and which the regulation states is not ‘age and developmentally appropriate’ for any age or age group of children”.

A small sampling of the books which have already been challenged in SC school districts, and which can be challenged statewide under the new regulation.

Based on that broad understanding, Lexington One and other districts might well have to consider removing a vast number of books— because the part of law being referenced targets far more than just “pornography,” bringing in everything from “excretory function” (Everybody Poops) to “caressing” (Ezekial 23:3) to a definition of “sexual content” that would include roughly half of Shakespeare’s plays, as well as books like 1984, The Handmaid’s Tale, The Bluest Eye, and many other classic (and frequently-challenged) texts often taught in upper grades. (This could have been avoided if the Board had included the same law’s definitions of “obscenity” and “prurient interest,” or its requirement that definitions of obscene materials take into consideration “literary, artistic, political, or scientific value”. The Board pointedly decided not to do so, despite widespread public support for doing so.)

And despite this confusion, the Department declined, through a spokesperson, to offer further guidance on a regulation that even some leading legislators, like Senate Education Chair Greg Hembree (R- Horry) felt was passed too hastily.

So it’s a good time to look back at who exactly is challenging these books, and why, since any of these folks who have children in an SC school district could challenge virtually any text and potentially have it removed from every school library and classroom in the state:

As these previous pieces demonstrate, it’s fair to say that, broadly, book bans in SC most frequently meet several of the following criteria: