David*Macinnis*Gill.com

I have this week been pay­ing close atten­tion to Chris Crutcher and Lime­stone County, Alabama. Ear­lier this year, WHALE TALK was banned from Lime­stone County by its local school board fol­low­ing a nar­row vote. The super­in­ten­dent, Barry Car­roll, Ed. D. actu­ally opposed the ban, and he pub­licly sup­ported WT as an impor­tant book.

As he is wont to do, Crutcher took up the cen­sor­ship fight by vis­it­ing the area. After assur­ing the school admin­is­tra­tion of Clement High School that his talk would not con­tain the same curse words found in his books, Chris was booked to speak to stu­dents in the school. How­ever, the same man who had sup­ported WT pulled the plug on Crutcher, effec­tively cen­sor­ing him–not the book, but the author.

I took excep­tion to this. While I live in another part of the South, I felt the need to ques­tion Carroll’s deci­sion, which smacks of hypocrisy. I’ve been a pub­lic school teacher, and I’ve felt the effects of censorship—both overt and implied. In every school where I worked, teach­ers have been afraid for their jobs to speak out against admin­is­tra­tors who cen­sor them. They react to book ban­nings by refus­ing to use any so-called “offen­sive” works in their class­rooms. They self-censor. A cli­mate of fear is cre­ated. When I was a teacher, my col­leagues were afraid to speak up. Now that I have a dif­fer­ent van­tage point, I am not sub­jected to the poli­cies of school admin­is­tra­tors. Dr. Car­roll didn’t like what I had to say to him, but “what” I wrote doesn’t mat­ter as much as “that” I wrote. I see it as my duty to speak out in ways that some teach­ers think they can’t, to chal­lenge peo­ple who chal­lenge books, even if those peo­ple live hun­dreds or thou­sands of miles away.

Book ban­ning and cen­sor­ship chal­lenge the First Amend­ment. The right to hear and be heard is the cor­ner­stone of Amer­i­can free­dom. I’ve been told that it’s none of my busi­ness what peo­ple do in Alabama or South Car­olina or Michi­gan. But when it comes to steal­ing free­doms, it is my business.

It’s your busi­ness, too.