JimBowie1958
Old Fogey
- Sep 25, 2011
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This novel along with 'Huckleberry Finn' was one of the top anti-racist novels ever written in American English and it made the irrationality of racialism obviously plain to anyone that would read them. I knew a kid whose parents were known Kluxers who would not speak of these beliefs he had after reading the books. The books made him ashamed into silence.
But as white racialism returns in the guise of White Nationalism, these books are ironically enough being banned and held back from kids by leftwing Identity Politics morons who object to the realistic language of that time.
The left has gone totally and completely insane and even their top leadership is so deep intot he Twilight Zone that they cannot see Reality any more and dont care to anyway.
To Kill A Mockingbird: How An Anti-Racist Book Became A Target For 'Anti-Racists' - Breitbart
All of which goes to prove that one should never underestimate the power of liberal stupidity.
But as white racialism returns in the guise of White Nationalism, these books are ironically enough being banned and held back from kids by leftwing Identity Politics morons who object to the realistic language of that time.
The left has gone totally and completely insane and even their top leadership is so deep intot he Twilight Zone that they cannot see Reality any more and dont care to anyway.
To Kill A Mockingbird: How An Anti-Racist Book Became A Target For 'Anti-Racists' - Breitbart
The American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom keeps track of complaints against Harper Lee’s most famous novel and the list of challenges to teaching the novel has been steadily growing since at least 1977. Indeed, To Kill A Mockingbird is one of the most banned books in America, mostly because of its alleged racism.
Let this stark irony not be lost on us. To ban Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird (1960) could not possibly be a more misjudged estimation of its worthiness as a novel about the odious nature of racism. To kill this good book by removing it from library shelves—as seems to be happening this week in my native Virginia—is to kill reason itself.
One recalls John Milton’s stirring words from his Areopagitica (1644): “[A]s good almost kill a Man as kill a good Book; who kills a Man kills a reasonable creature, God’s Image; but he who destroys a good Book, kills reason itself, kills the Image of God, as it were in the eye.”
That reason is not only a Platonic Form and an Enlightenment Ideal. It is carefully woven into Lee’s novel in the beautiful passages where the main characters are being kind, open-minded and reasonable with one another. In that reasonableness we find a counterpoint to the very ignorance, shallowness and unreasonableness of those who are moved to kill To Kill A Mockingbird.
In the misplaced zeal to do away with the alleged racial bigotry of the novel, censors tend to focus on individual words—especially the dreaded ‘n—–‘ word—and think their work of censorship is done. This microscopic, literalist view of language is a kind of parody of the spirit-letter distinction, focusing, as it does, on single elements in a narrative rather than on the general and generous spirit of an entire passage of the novel itself.
Anyone who has actually read all of To Kill A Mockingbird knows that the novel is a thoroughgoing critique of racism, not an advertisement for it. We are meant to feel the most profound sympathy for Tom Robinson, especially in the famous courtroom scene where Atticus Finch so compellingly defends him against the false accusation of the rape of a white woman....
It staggers the imagination how the novelist’s representation of fairness and its moral condemnation of racism can be easily twisted into its opposite. One simply cannot imagine a more desperately ignorant reading of the novel.
Let this stark irony not be lost on us. To ban Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird (1960) could not possibly be a more misjudged estimation of its worthiness as a novel about the odious nature of racism. To kill this good book by removing it from library shelves—as seems to be happening this week in my native Virginia—is to kill reason itself.
One recalls John Milton’s stirring words from his Areopagitica (1644): “[A]s good almost kill a Man as kill a good Book; who kills a Man kills a reasonable creature, God’s Image; but he who destroys a good Book, kills reason itself, kills the Image of God, as it were in the eye.”
That reason is not only a Platonic Form and an Enlightenment Ideal. It is carefully woven into Lee’s novel in the beautiful passages where the main characters are being kind, open-minded and reasonable with one another. In that reasonableness we find a counterpoint to the very ignorance, shallowness and unreasonableness of those who are moved to kill To Kill A Mockingbird.
In the misplaced zeal to do away with the alleged racial bigotry of the novel, censors tend to focus on individual words—especially the dreaded ‘n—–‘ word—and think their work of censorship is done. This microscopic, literalist view of language is a kind of parody of the spirit-letter distinction, focusing, as it does, on single elements in a narrative rather than on the general and generous spirit of an entire passage of the novel itself.
Anyone who has actually read all of To Kill A Mockingbird knows that the novel is a thoroughgoing critique of racism, not an advertisement for it. We are meant to feel the most profound sympathy for Tom Robinson, especially in the famous courtroom scene where Atticus Finch so compellingly defends him against the false accusation of the rape of a white woman....
It staggers the imagination how the novelist’s representation of fairness and its moral condemnation of racism can be easily twisted into its opposite. One simply cannot imagine a more desperately ignorant reading of the novel.
All of which goes to prove that one should never underestimate the power of liberal stupidity.
