Imagine if you will, an upscale, suburban school district embroiled in conflict over three books on a middle school suggested reading list. One: Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglass, An American Slave by Fredrick Douglass. Two: A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry. Three: Summer of the Mariposas by Guadalupe G. McCall. Oh, and the fourth. A picture book: On the Top of the World–Climbing Mount Everest by not reading sections about harm or death on Mount Everest. According to some members of its school board, these aforementioned selections violate instructional protocols for the prohibition of DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.)

As a former high school and college English teacher, and as an adjunct professor in American Educational History, I am not a fan of banning books, unless they’re pornographic trash. Allow me to digress and make an analogy. I grew up in an ethnically-diverse city in a WASP (White Anglo Saxon Protestant) family, and by virtue of birth, qualified for membership in the DAR (Daughters of the American Revolution.) I was a monolingual, minority in a vast melting pot of Italians, Greeks, Czechoslovakians, Hungarians, and Irish, who could all converse with their grandparents in another language. Of course, there were Blacks and Hispanics too.

Our elementary school had no cafeteria; it was just a lunch room where everyone brought a lunch box and a thermos. And it was there that my eyes and my taste buds were forever changed! I tasted pizza, Mexican wedding cookies, strudel, kolachi, cabbage rolls, and wiener schnitzel. I ate baklava, pierogi, tacos, and chow mein. Foods that my mother certainly couldn’t cook; foods that my grandmothers found objectionable. As a college student, I worked at a resident Camp Fire Girls camp, where the Black cook taught me to barbeque chicken and ribs on a wood fire. I became such an expert my grandmother insisted I take over the Sunday menu when it called for barbeque. Indeed, I would have grown up with a limited, insular palate had it not been for my experience.

For politicians to force the removal of books and other educational materials from schools based on DEI is not only irresponsible, but ludicrous. In this high-tech age of information, do they not realize students can explore the world from their cell phone or laptop? Are they so naive to think they can rewrite history by just removing Douglass’ autobiography or mention of the Navajo Code Talkers from the history books? Since the current leadership is anti-science, do they think they can ignore and simply erase the harsh realities of scaling Mount Everest?

Your attempts to suppress history and ban Mark Twain, Harper Lee, J.D. Salinger, and Dr. Seuss are unconscionable and ignorant. Now, while you may deny and/or justify your motives as “protecting children,” that’s absurd. You know, without a doubt, who openly mocked a disabled American, who makes disparaging remarks to women news reporters, who has turned the White House into a gilded slum, and who’s in the Epstein Files. And it’s not Edmund Hillary. It’s The Twilight Zone!