Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
UPDATE: According to The Washington Post:
“High school students in Randolph County once again can get Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison’s classic 1952 novel of alienation and racial discrimination, at school libraries. Nine days after the county school board banned the book, it reversed itself at a hastily called meeting Wednesday night, voting 6 to 1 to return the novel to school bookshelves. Several board members apologized for the ban and said they had been chastened by an outpouring of angry objections from county residents.”
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By a vote of 5-2 last week, the Randolph County, North Carolina Board of Education removed Ralph Ellison’s 1952 novel, Invisible Man, from its approved reading list, following the complaint of a parent.
“I didn’t find any literary value,” board member Gary Mason declared at the meeting. “I’m for not allowing it to be available.”
This kind of action sends shivers down my spine. And here’s why.
Those who know my views know that I revere the First Amendment and am squeamish about censoring almost anything short of extreme sadomasochistic or child pornography. But this is not a First Amendment issue per se. This is about an approved reading list and what is available to school children in the county, and just in terms of sheer volume and direction, a reading list has to be limited.
Still, the action does conjure up for me images of Nazi book burning as well as the American obscenity trials over Ulysses and Lady Chatterley’s Lover.
It also recalls the school systems and libraries that, over the past century, have attempted to ban Huckleberry Finn, because of its treatment of slavery and frequent use of the word “nigger.” The excuse is often that it is too difficult for modern school-age children to understand the context.
Well, all the more reason that they should have to read and discuss what is arguably the most important American novel ever written. Huck’s narrative of himself against the background of antebellum America in a slave state tells us just about everything we have to know about the American character, literature and the moral sensibility of that era, and banning it anywhere, as far as I am concerned, is an unpardonable sin.
By the same token, Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, which won the 1953 National Book Award for Fiction and was listed by Time Magazine as one of the hundred best novels in English since 1923, is the story of an African American man existing against the background of 20th century America. It is an explication of race, morality, discrimination and American values, as well as a profound psychological study.
So here’s the point: You may like the novel and what it represents, or you may dislike it. But anyone who claims it has no literary value is not in a position to judge literary value, and is therefore dangerous. I question whether anyone like this has any business being on a school board at all. And anyone who could make such a claim could just as easily make a claim about the inauthenticity of evolution or posit “creation science” on an equal footing.
Prejudice is not bred by knowledge; it is bred by ignorance. School children are not harmed by being exposed to complex moral and societal issues; they are harmed by being prevented from understanding them. There is nothing more powerful than an idea and nothing more threatening than the attempt to suppress it. That is what book burnings throughout history have been about.
Southern slave owners understood that the most dangerous threat to their way of life was education and knowledge for the people they subjugated. The Taliban understand this, too.
It is a tragedy that five members of the Randolph County Board of Education do not.
You know what books your local library, government school, government university, and other indoctrination centers don’t stock or teach?
“Unintended Consequences” by John Ross
“Molon Labe” by Boston T. Party (Kenneth Royce)
“Jury Nullification: The Evolution of a Doctrine” by Clay Conrad
“The Moon is a Harsh Mistress” Robert A. Heinlein
…Such books would teach young people how to value their own independence, instead of crushing it out of them, as the “schools” currently do. Here’s one such example of naked treason:
DEA Agent Lee Paige shoots himself in the foot while trying to terrorize a roomfull of impressionable kids into developing an unrealistic, cowardly, un-American fear of firearms.
Grow up white, in the suburbs, be taken hunting and learn skills necessary to defend yourself. Grow up in the inner city, learn fearmongering stupidity, servility, and how to submit to a strip search.
…And we wonder why America doesn’t manufacture anything anymore. (All those scary inanimate objects on the assembly line might pinch a finger!)
LOL
Mark: If only you (and millions of other socialists who call themselves “liberals”) revered the Second Amendment the way they revere the first, maybe the USA would still be a free country. Right now, it’s not.
I seem to recall Douglas disagreeing with the idea of “victimless crimes,” noting that the prosecution of such crimes detracts from the prosecution of ACTUAL murderers and rapists. Not sure where the quote is.
Ironically, Mark thinks that “we” should ban “assault rifles.” (That’s odd, I wouldn’t name a tool by its misuse, nor would any other sane gun owner. It’s like calling a hammer an “assault hammer.”)
I could launch into a long screed about how the Second Amendment (well, the gun culture, really) is the ONLY thing (other than trial by jury) that prevents the USA from becoming an “illiberal” dictatorship.
But I’ll let the following film make my point for me, because it condenses Professor R. J. Rummel’s statistics on democide (mass murder by government, during peacetime, not including battle deaths) in less time than you could read them all:
Innocents Betrayed – The History of Gun Control
Simply put: we need automatic rifles (not just semi-auto ones) if we wish to be equal to sociopaths with badges, so that they are not incentivized to murder innocent people, as they did at Waco, Ruby Ridge, and thousands of other instances.
If you turn a blind eye to the crime of murder when it’s badges doing the murdering, then you’re turning a blind eye to something far worse than serial murder. …By the numbers. 173,000,000 innocent civilians murdered by their own governments during peacetime in the 1900s, not including battle deaths.
Stanley Milgram’s masterpiece book on obedience to unjust authority should be required reading for you, and everone on this site. Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View
Here’s a summary of the information in the book, and far more, as a TED Talk from Milgram’s contemporary, Philip Zimbardo:
The Psychology of Evil
In order to be considered a crime, there must be a valid “cause of action” or “corpus delicti.” Without this, the entire concept of “law and order” is thrown out the window, along with the notion of western civilization. Every “corpus” must have two elements to be considered valid: “injury to a specific, named party” and “intent to injure that specific named party.” Without these two elements, no crime has been committed, no matter what the law says.
Since before the trials of William Penn and John Peter Zenger, the appropriate response to attempts by the state to punish innocent people has been for the jury to “nullify the law.”
Failing that, it has been to shoot dead those attempting to disarm (Lexington and Concord) or arrest (John Bad Elk) the citizenry. And lest you think that I’m yet another braindead “Tea Partier,” who supports a drug war that amounts to ethnic cleansing (in the land with the highest per capita prison population), here’s a quote from Founding Father Frederick Douglass:
“The only way to make the Fugitive Slave Law a dead letter is to make half a dozen or more dead kidnappers.” (Frederick Douglass, 1850)
Amen!
You present a passionate argument, JW, but what does it have to do with book banning? I don’t see what my support for the First Amendment has any bearing on the Second Amendment which, by the way, I am not against. I merely think the word “regulated” is just as important as the word “right.”
I’ve always thought the problem is the US elected school board system. The members don’t have to be educators, professional educators, or even educated themselves. Often they haven’t even read the books they ban, and some members couldn’t even understand them if they had.
Everyone complains about how bad US public education is…but these are the people largely running it choosing the text books, courses, and banning books. I always thought that system should be dumped and replaced in best case with:
a panel of local teachers elected from among themselves
(or) at least a hired professional educator with advisory panel from among the teachers.
IMO the uneducated public, parents, local politicians have no business running the schools/making these kinds of decisions…If they’re going to do the teaching and pick/ ban the books….why don’t they just keep the kids home?
Very true, Watson. As Mark Twain said, “In the first place, God made idiots. That was for practice. Then he made school boards.”
We’re the same age, you and I, and we remember the banned book lists from high school and the public libraries. I have this sick feeling when I read this, didn’t we already fight this fight?” Taking a page from the pro-war folks from when we were in college – if they don’t like out Constitution and our Bill of Rights, if they don’t like our rule of law, why don’t they go back where they came from? Censorship begins when these small inroads are made – it culminates in a bonfire.
I agree completely, but it does seem we have to fight these fights over and over again. I am reminded of the quote from the epilogue to Shaw’s “Saint Joan”: “Must then a Christ perish in torment in every age to save those that have no imagination?”
That’s the way I feel also about all the women’s rights that have been trampled in the past few years and the treatment of protesters as well.
I advise them first don’t make a huge issue of it, why is hate no fun unless it is shared? Last read The Invisible Man, now that is a classic!
Thank you for this elegantly written post. I am in total agreement in that I feel there is very little that should be “banned” as far as reading material goes except for those that are blatantly obvious. I find it amazing that so many people just do not understand how dangerous precedents like this are. Having said that, however, apparently there has been somewhat of a stirring up of the public and the Randolph County Board of Education is having a follow up meeting tomorrow (Sept 25) to reconsider the removal of this book from the approved list. Let’s hope that they make the right decision.
Sincerely,
MD Rice
I agree completely, MD.