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[badboy78660]

ortable'

https://articles.al.com/news/index.ssf/2017/10/mississippi_school_district_pu.amp

"To Kill a Mockingbird" is being removed from a junior-high reading list in a Mississippi school district.

The Sun Herald reports that Biloxi administrators pulled the novel from the 8th-grade curriculum this week. School board vice president Kenny Holloway says the district received complaints that some of the book's language "makes people uncomfortable."

Published in 1960, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Harper Lee deals with racial inequality in a small Alabama town.

A message on the school's website says "To Kill A Mockingbird" teaches students that compassion and empathy don't depend upon race or education. Holloway says other books can teach the same lessons.

The book remains in Biloxi school libraries.

Correct me if I'm wrong (I remember reading this book in high school), but isn't one of the points of this book to make you feel uncomfortable? I mean, a book that deals with racism and racial injustice in the Deep South...I'd be more concerned if it didn't make you feel uncomfortable.

 

[HStallion]

They should ask exactly what makes them so uncomfortable about a book about doing the right thing even in the face of nigh insurmountable ignorance and hate. Atticus Finch is probably one of the greatest fictional heroes in American fiction.

 

[Malvolio]

Poor snowflakes.

 

[BenjiGAF]

It continues.

 

[Yoshimitsu126]

Yeah it’s suppose to make you feel uncomfortable and let you know of the racial issues in the past and compare them to today. Unfortunately, mockingbirds are still getting hunted today.

 

[Baron von Loathsome]

God forbid our students get challenged.

 

[Pyroclastic]

lol. fucking Biloxi, of all places.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biloxi_wade-ins

 

[Hispanic! At the Disco]

A book that makes you uncomfortable is often a book that makes you think about your personal life views.

Pretty disappointing they want to remove books that challenge ourselves.

 

[Betty]

They should ask exactly what makes them so uncomfortable about a book about doing the right thing even in the face of nigh insurmountable ignorance and hate. Atticus Finch is probably one of the greatest fictional heroes in American fiction.

Makes some of the south look bad, can't have that.

 

[DriftingSpirit]

I'm currently taking a banned books class and this is the type of stuff we're covering. Digging into the reason for challenging certain books. I see the reasons continue to be...questionable.

 

[Mammoth Jones]

So they got safe spaces in Mississippi? I'm shocked.

 

[gabbo]

So they got safe spaces in Mississippi? I'm shocked.

Have to have places where racist attitudes aren't challenged openly with critical thinking. Why, children might think for themselves otherwise!

 

[Aurongel]

If I lived in Mississippi I wouldn't want my child reading classic literature that has themes of equality and standing up for justice. Heavens no.

 

[Westbahnhof]

I'm currently taking a banned books class and this is the type of stuff we're covering. Digging into the reason for challenging certain books. I see the reasons continue to be...questionable.

Little off topic, but do you mention books like To train up a Child?
The banning of what is basically instructions for abuse? I don't think it happens, but it must have been proposed a lot, especially after children died. Wonder if you got any insight.

Actually, not really thar far off topic.
This is the only kind of book that should ever be considered banworthy.
This school sounds, frankly, pathetic.

 

[Mathieran]

Books like this should be required reading. Damn straight it's uncomfortable confronting our violent and racist past, how else can we learn from it?

 

[Hachimaki]

They're erasing our history!

 

[Matsukaze]

I'm currently taking a banned books class and this is the type of stuff we're covering. Digging into the reason for challenging certain books. I see the reasons continue to be...questionable.

Yeah, TKAM has a long history of being banned and every time the justification is ass-backwards as hell.

 

[Violence Jack]

Of course it's some district in the state that has the lowest education in the country for many years now.

 

[kirblar]

Yeah, TKAM has a long history of being banned and every time the justification is ass-backwards as hell.

It's ass-backwards because it's white supremacism every time. There is absolutely no good reason not to be teaching this book in Middle/High school curriculum.

 

[Ithil]

"I don't like the part where it portrays black people as humans".

 

[HStallion]

I think one of the more hilarious reasons I've heard from someone about banning TKAM is that they portray the mentally ill in a very poor light in reference to Boo Radley. I damn near burst out laughing when I heard that.

 

[MechaX]

I really want to know what made them "uncomfortable."

Personally, Atticus Finch was a goddamn great role model when I read the book back in school, and should be a good role model for any child growing up.

 

[EGM1966]

Trump tells bigots they're right to hate speech will be protect while school pulls book that tells uncomfortable truths and asks for decent and tolerance in our behaviour.

Same old same old in full flow it seems.

 

[entremet]

Harper killed Atticus Finch for me in the sequel. Why did you have to that, Harper?

I'll just ignore the sequel in my mind lol.

 

[rjinaz]

So Confederate statues need to remain on display so that history is never forgotten, but books about confronting racism and that show the ugliness of the past shouldn't be kept because they make people uncomfortable?

ok.

 

[Phoenix RISING]

That's ok. Harper Lee is overrated.

Read Ernst Gaines' A Lesson Before Dying instead.

 

[HStallion]

Harper killed Atticus Finch for me in the sequel. Why did you have to that, Harper?

I'll just ignore the sequel in my mind lol.

Just pointing out that the sequel was never supposed to ever be released and was done instead by Harper Lee's care takers after she'd gotten very old and didn't have much say for herself.

 

[EGM1966]

Harper killed Atticus Finch for me in the sequel. Why did you have to that, Harper?

I'll just ignore the sequel in my mind lol.

It's not a sequel. It was a long lost first draft and shows the initial approach she was going to take with the novel before shifting it to its final form. It was pushed as a sequel but the evidence indicates it certainly isn't.

 

[RobotHaus]

Books like this should be required reading. Damn straight it's uncomfortable confronting our violent and racist past, how else can we learn from it?

Statues of course.

 

[Ionic]

That's ok. Harper Lee is overrated.

Read Ernst Gaines' A Lesson Before Dying instead.

Maybe this would be okay if this was the book replacing it, but I think you're being a little optimistic if To Kill A Mockingbird is already past parents' threshold.

 

[Derwind]

Mississipi of all places needs to be made uncomfortable when it comes to instutionalized racism.

 

[Ravensmash]

That's ok. Harper Lee is overrated.

Read Ernst Gaines' A Lesson Before Dying instead.

Ooo, I'd absolutely recommend this also.

 

[_Ryo_]

So what exactly made them uncomfortable? That the south is accurately portrayed as a racist hell hole? Because that's kind of the fuckin point.

 

[Oersted]

I'm expecting the usual Freeze Peach outcry

Oh wait

 

[legacyzero]

“First, the monuments! Then they’ll start digging up bodies. What about our history?!” Stop being SNOWFLAKES!”

**removes iconic book out of discomfort**

They're erasing our history!

Yep

 

[Zeouterlimits]

Uncomfortable...

That's an awful reason to remove this book in particular.

 

[Kite]

They should ask exactly what makes them so uncomfortable about a book about doing the right thing even in the face of nigh insurmountable ignorance and hate. Atticus Finch is probably one of the greatest fictional heroes in American fiction.

.. You guys understand the book was pulled for it's racial slurs right?

"Scout," said Atticus, "n___r-lover is just one of those terms that don't mean anything—like snot-nose. It's hard to explain—ignorant, trashy people use it when they think somebody's favoring Negroes over and above themselves. It's slipped into usage with some people like ourselves, when they want a common, ugly term to label somebody."

"You aren't really a n___r-lover, then, are you?"

"I certainly am. I do my best to love everybody... I'm hard put, sometimes—baby, it's never an insult to be called what somebody thinks is a bad name. It just shows you how poor that person is, it doesn't hurt you." Ch 11



Lula stopped, but she said, "You ain't got no business bringin' white chillun here—they got their church, we got our'n. It is our church, ain't it, Miss Cal?" ch 12



"It's right hard to say," she said. "Suppose you and Scout talked colored-folks' talk at home it'd be out of place, wouldn't it? Now what if I talked white-folks' talk at church, and with my neighbors? They'd think I was puttin' on airs to beat Moses." ch 12

 

[SpaceWolf]

I look forward to them replacing it with the "sequel".

 

[Narroo]

Harper killed Atticus Finch for me in the sequel. Why did you have to that, Harper?

I'll just ignore the sequel in my mind lol.

There is no sequel! What you're referring to is basically a canned draft of 'To Kill a Mocking Bird." Basically, after talking it out with the editor they decided to rework that thing into "to Kill a Mockingbird." That's why Harper never published it; it was a cutting room floor draft.

 

[entremet]

Just pointing out that the sequel was never supposed to ever be released and was done instead by Harper Lee's care takers after she'd gotten very old and didn't have much say for herself.

It's not a sequel. It was a long lost first draft and shows the initial approach she was going to take with the novel before shifting it to its final form. It was pushed as a sequel but the evidence indicates it certainly isn't.

Ah, so an alternate take?

Thank goodness. Atticus is one of my favorite characters of all fiction, such a paragon of virtue.

 

[DietRob]

But yes.. liberals are the snowflakes..

This is far far from the first example of the hypocrisy of those that use the term 'snowflakes'

 

[elrechazado]

.. You guys understand the book was pulled for it's racial slurs right?

Yeah, I love all the implications that this is because racists don't want to confront hard truths. This, Huck Finn, other great literature gets regularly banned because someone gets offended by the use of the n word, completely missing the context.

Liberals keep trying g to ban these books, and the conservative weenies keep trying to get rid of stuff like catcher in the rye and anything that mentions teh gayz.

 

[Shoeless]

Ah, so an alternate take?

Thank goodness. Atticus is one of my favorite characters of all fiction, such a paragon of virtue.

Sad to think that by today's Republican standards, he's now just another elitist libtard that traitorously puts facts over feelings. If you feel in your heart that the black guy did it, what evidence do you need? Facts are just lies cooked up by the mainstream media to turn you away from God.

 

[ascii42]

Harper Lee’s letter to one school board that banned the book is one of the greatest things ever written:

Editor, The News Leader:

Recently I have received echoes down this way of the Hanover County School Board's activities, and what I've heard makes me wonder if any of its members can read.

Surely it is plain to the simplest intelligence that "To Kill a Mockingbird" spells out in words of seldom more than two syllables a code of honor and conduct, Christian in its ethic, that is the heritage of all Southerners. To hear that the novel is "immoral" has made me count the years between now and 1984, for I have yet to come across a better example of doublethink.

I feel, however, that the problem is one of illiteracy, not Marxism. Therefore I enclose a small contribution to the Beadle Bumble Fund that I hope will be used to enroll the Hanover County School Board in any first grade of its choice.

Harper Lee

 

[Aztechnology]

It's ok, just make them read Black like Me instead.

 

[Kinyou]

.. You guys understand the book was pulled for it's racial slurs right?

Couldn't they just censor the slurs like in that excerpt? I'd still consider that stupid but better than pulling the book.

 

[kirblar]

.. You guys understand the book was pulled for it's racial slurs right?

You do understand that people's stated motivations are often different than their actual ones?

 

[geomon]

Of course it's Mississippi. Of course it is.

 

[tbm24]

It’s pretty tiring when people are surprised they are made uncomfortable reading or hearing about racism. What do they expect?

 

[_Ryo_]

Yeah, I love all the implications that this is because racists don't want to confront hard truths. This, Huck Finn, other great literature gets regularly banned because someone gets offended by the use of the n word, completely missing the context.

Liberals keep trying g to ban these books, and the conservative weenies keep trying to get rid of stuff like catcher in the rye and anything that mentions teh gayz.

What the fuck are you talking about? Which liberals are trying to ban these books?