Sunday, February 28, 2010

Racist Books

To what extent do you agree or disagree with the following statement?

Books that promote racism should be banned from all school libraries.

Please explain your answer carefully (all responses should be at least 3 lines long), and remember to be professional with your grammar, spelling, and word choice.

30 comments:

  1. I agree, books that promote racism should be banned.Everyone is created equally and any school who says or have books that say differently should be sued. It is not right for students to be discriminated upon by race.

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  2. I agree that books about racism should be banned. However, people who are racist should be able to have an opinion. It is definitely not okay for children to be okay with racism and for books to promote it.

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  3. I think it is important that books promoting racism should not be banned. It is an important issue where students can learn the history on racism. I think students are better than to go around promoting racism after reading about it.

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  4. I think that books that books that promote racism should be banned, but books that only talk about it should not. in a school environment that kind of book should not be tolerated and not allowed to even be on school ground. A book that does that just supports what we as a country have tried so hard to completley eliminate.

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  5. i agree and disagree to emilyw. people would like to learn about how far back racism goes to but racism books tend to give a biased opinion.

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  6. I do think that racist books should be banned from the library because it is very offensive to a lot of people. Those books can be aloud to people at public libraries if they are looking for information but not at the school library.

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  7. I think that books directly promoting racism to be used for educational purposes should be banned. In other words, if there are books that are teaching kids from a racist point-of-view, then they shouldn't have them in the libraries. If the books are from a historical viewpoint, though, to teach kids about racism, I think that would be acceptable.

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  8. I agree with Emily with the fact that they should learn the history of racism. Schools should not promote racism. They should not act like it never happened as well.

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  9. I agree that books that are racist should be banned because it is not right. However people that are racist should be able to have an opinion but it is not good to put it into books.

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  10. I think that books that promote racism should be banned but books should show that there was a time when racism took place but used for history resources and not promotion. Students should be influenced by what they learn at school and racism is something that is not taught at school.

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  11. I think books on racism should not be banned. Kids in the future should have the chance to learn about the history of racism just like we do today. I think in telling kids the history of it we will actually be preventing it in the future. We will be showing them that it is no longer acceptable in most parts of the world.

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  12. I agree with this statement because racism can hurt people and that is not allowed. We put racism behind us when slavery ended and it should not come back with promoting it in a book. If it was a book talking about how it is bad then it would be okay but talking about how it is good is not the way to go.

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  13. I partially agree with the statement that all book promoting racism should be banned. Although the promotion of racism is with out a doubt a bad thing to do I believe that people also need to be educated. If it weren't for the violent history of racism in the past students might push racism aside and ignore it but with education it can racism can be prevented.

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  14. I don't think that books promoting racism should be banned. I think that because some teachers may use them as references. Another reason why is that people may not them for projects that may involves groups promoting racism and areas where racism take place.

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  15. I disagree with that statement because like Emily said it is an important issue that every person is faced with. Racism is every where it has been in our past and it is in our present even though you may not hear it often its here. And the only way to get ride of it is to educate the people on the topic.

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  16. I agree with this statement because it is promoting racism. Of course people can believe what they want to believe. Promoting it though is not right because it is very offensive to people who believe it is wrong.

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  17. Books about racism should not be banned. Books supporting racism however, may need to be banned. By keeping the books in libraries it will educate readers about the issue of racism in the world. Without knowing of the issue the problem would never be acknowledged. Readers need to know what a struggle racism has caused and the history of our country. Books supporting racism thought leave it up to the reader to make a choice to whether they will be racist or not. That type of book may sway the reader to fall into those racist ways. The reader may not be mature enough to make their own choice at that point and will be guided by the book, therefore, the problem would be more severe then it is already.

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  18. I agree with Jake. He says that we should have history books about racism to show that it is bad. This way we would not repeat history.

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  19. I agree and disagree, like EmilyW said quite a ways up the page now, it's important for people to learn about racism, but I agree with the statement at the same time because like Alex said they tend to give a biased opinion on things, and I think that racism shouldn't be promoted.

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  20. I don't think that books promoting racism should be banned from schools. i think that schools are to learn about the world in which we live and our culture, the good and bad. Students do not have to agree with the content of the book but just as Emily said it allows us to learn about racism and learn what other people might believe.

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  21. I completely and totally disagree with the library banning these books, it is a part of our history! It may be a shameful truth about us but it is still the truth and deserves to be told. We need to be able to educate ourselves about these occurrences in order to know how to prevent them.

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  22. I agree with the statement because schools shouldn't promote racism. However, it would be mind of the reader who would carry out the actions. Even if the books aren't banned, the reader still has a choice about what is spoken.

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  23. i think that books that promote racism should not be banned because I think it is important for people to be educated on how the world once was. Many popular books promote racism, for example " To kill a mockingbird" That book promotes racism and same with "the Kite Runner". they both have rasicm but they educate people too. It depends on how the reader inturprets it. So a book that is racist may not be racist to someone else.

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  24. I think it depends on the book at hand. It's important for us to have certain one's describing the horror people went through so that we can grow and learn from these experiences so that we don't go through them again. If we didn't keep a record of any traumatic events in our history we have the chance of repeating mistakes that effect the way we live today, and no one wants people to keep making mistakes at the cost of our country, lives, and day-to-day life.

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  25. I disagree with this statement because some of the best books ever written have, in a way, have promoted racism. The book "To kill a mocking bird"In a way promoted racism. Most of the characters in the book were very racist and it was still a great book.

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  26. I agree with caleb, I think that if we show students books with racism in them they will see how bad it is and not use it then in their future.

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  27. I don't think books promoting racism are great for learning about history. There are many books that simply state the facts without taking an opinion. Books that tell the reader that they should kill a person because of their race do tell us what people thought back, but so do modern, neutral textbooks. I don't think that we should destroy these books because everyone does have the right to express themselves. However, I just don't think that they should be available in a school library.

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  28. Shane think about this before you sue someone-Discrimination against a certain race or group is wrong,and the United States has been fighting this issue for a long time. If we ban books that tell the story of this fight for freedom, aren't we depriving our children of education of the past? Doesn't the past repeat itself unless you learn from your mistakes? Without books, you will not be educated, you will conduct independent thinking, and most importantly, you will conform. Books give us different points of view from the same incident, so we can come to our own conclusion about something, rather than getting spoon-fed our information.

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  29. Why would you ever ban a book? Why wouldn't you let the quality of ideas within the text speak for themselves?

    Now, I probably, as a school librarian, wouldn't go ordering every book that came along advocating a position of pro-racist ideology, but I wouldn't be in a hurry to purge all such books from the world.

    Let's extend the question - should such books be published at all? I'd say yes, they should. Not because I am a racist or agree with racist thought, but because I don't want anyone in the position of deciding for me or my children what intellectual property can and can't exist in the world.

    This is a fascinating discussion. Thanks for allowing me to contribute to it. (I know I'm quite late to the conversation.)

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  30. I would ban a racist book, because since the 1800's, racism has always been spreading world wide and racism is always been a violent and cruel thing. Having these types of books will only hold information which is false, but it could create even more racism to more people.

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