It’s not perfect. Far from it. And while we lurch back and forth on the march to perfection, sometimes getting better, often getting worse, we make mistakes.
That’s inconvenient.
So to compensate, often we overcompensate.
That’s a mistake.
For example:
After months of deliberation, the organization behind a prestigious book award has decided to remove the name of author Laura Ingalls Wilder because of her portrayal of Native Americans. The Association for Library Service to Children gives out the "Laura Ingalls Wilder Award" yearly to authors hose work has made a lasting impact on the world of children's literature. The honor will now be known as the Children's Literature Legacy Award.
Now, I’m about to make a silly comparison.
Silly, because the ALSC says it’s silly on its face. And for what it’s worth, I believe what they say:
"Changing the name of the award, or ending the award and establishing a new award, does not prohibit access to Wilder's works or suppress discussion about them. Neither option asks or demands that anyone stop reading Wilder's books, talking about them, or making them available to children. These recommendations do not amount to censorship, nor do they undermine intellectual freedom."
Yet, since I get that poem quoted at me when I dare suggest that comparing the current situation on the US border to the Holocaust is a bit of an overcompensation, I’m going to go there.
Memory holes.
George Orwell describes memory holes in his novel 1984 thusly:
“In the walls of the cubicle there were three orifices. To the right of the speakwrite, a small pneumatic tube for written messages, to the left, a larger one for newspapers; and in the side wall, within easy reach of Winston's arm, a large oblong slit protected by a wire grating. This last was for the disposal of waste paper. Similar slits existed in thousands or tens of thousands throughout the building, not only in every room but at short intervals in every corridor. For some reason they were nicknamed memory holes. When one knew that any document was due for destruction, or even when one saw a scrap of waste paper lying about, it was an automatic action to lift the flap of the nearest memory hole and drop it in, whereupon it would be whirled away on a current of warm air to the enormous furnaces which were hidden somewhere in the recesses of the building.”
So I will concede I’m wrong (a little bit) on the border issue. Because of the slippery soap on the slippery slope.
In compromise, can we say that renaming this award is a bit like the first step to shoving books we don’t like into a memory hole?
Now, I don’t have a dog in this fight. I’ve never read anything by Laura Ingalls Wilder. I didn’t even watch the TV show based on her books all that much. Maybe in passing when that prissy girl whose parents owned the store was on the screen, because she wasn’t as saccharine as the others. But not much beyond that.
Here’s something else to consider: Are we going to begin scrutinizing everything for stuff that’s bad? I mean, *you* can still read it, but the enlightened folks won’t because they know it’s bad. So scratch Tom Wolfe’s “The Right Stuff” because astronaut Alan Shepherd? He’s all sorts of racist with his Jose Jimenez impersonation. And he got his comeuppance. That’s all in the book. And the movie.
There’s this to consider: Who decides what is offensive?
I’ve read some books I cannot recommend because of reasons. Portrait of the Artist as A Young Man? Terrible. Yet if I I decided to denigrate the book or its author in some way for reasons, I’d get a snootful.
Whose reasons weigh more? And whose hands are on the scale?
Pick up that scrap of paper. Don’t read it. Just lift the grate and toss it in the hole.
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