Letter to the Editor: Banning Books is Embarrassing to Burbank

The decision of Burbank Unified to ban numerous literary classics because they contain racial slurs is not only idiotic and fascist, it is a tragedy for young Burbank students.  To Kill a Mockingbird, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Of Mice and Men, Roll of Thunder, Hear my Cry are among those banned!  The essential point of each of them is anti-racism; each teaches not only the evil but the ignorance and stupidity of racism in all its forms.  How can the powers that be at Burbank Unified not know this?  Have our teachers and administrators been so indoctrinated with the scourge of identity politics, the idea that none of us have value as individuals but merely and only as members of a victimized group (unless we are white men) that they cannot grasp the message of those novels?  It appears so. 

As for the alleged incident that instigated the ban, a student – one student – used a racial slur he “learned from the book Roll of Thunder, Hear Me Cry”!  Shouldn’t that student be given some remedial education that he did not get from his parents?  Should not his parents be advised that there is a problem?  Where is the wisdom in  banning those wonderful and instructive books from all present and future students in our schools?  You are only promoting an exodus from public schools.  Thankfully, my own children and grandchildren were all assigned those books in Burbank schools and took from them the lessons intended by each of those authors:  racism is an unmitigated horror based on a form of foolishness that must be  carefully taught.  The district is buying into exactly that same form of ignorance.  MLK would be adamantly opposed to banning these books.  It is a terrible decision; that it made national news is an embarrassment to our city.

Patricia McCarthy