The Negative Effects Of Banned Books

A child sits in front of a TV screen, year after year they never see themselves in their favorite shows. Other kids of other races, ethnicities, cultures, and sexualities are seen on the TV accomplishing new and amazing things. The child feels they are not able to do the amazing things they see others do. They go to books to find that representation that they are missing, but any books that represent them in a positive light are banned from their school. The child has no source of representation in any form of media; they have no role model to look up to and relate to. Book banning takes away a source of representation for young children. Banned books commonly include main characters and experiences of people of different races, cultures, ethnicities,

When those books are banned, both the child being represented, and the child that isn’t, are negatively affected. The represented child no longer has a role model to look up to, or a person to relate to, the child that isn’t represented can no longer put themselves in the others’ shoes and be more aware of other experiences they will never encounter. It inhibits a child from looking into other cultures, subjects, sexualities, and more. These factors make book banning in schools an obstacle to representation, and exposure of marginalized races, cultures, sexualties, and ethnicities to children.It also indicates that book banning is usually done with personal and political motives, rather than intent to help children and teens in America. Some defend book banning by saying it empowers parents and families, but it is not the only solution to do

Nowadays, book banning is still so prevalent, but is hidden behind a motive that it is empowering parents. Most of these books are not banned for sexually explicit content and/or language, instead they are banned for the characters that they portray. The most common subjects that banned books contain are LBGTQ+ themes and characters, and people of color (US School). About 41% contain LGBTQ+ themes, 40% people of color, but only 22% contain sexually explicit content (US School). This is a huge gap, themes of sexualities and minority races having a much higher prevalence than sexually explicit content in banned books is unexpected, and indicates how much banning books is done to further personal, political, and religious agendas. Not only does it indirectly indicate the use of banning books for political agendas, but actual people running for political office have used book banning to help their campaign. Glenn Youngkin, who was running for governor in Virginia, used book banning to promote the idea of empowering parents to have more control over the public education that their child receives (The Virginian-Pilot). Though book banning may seem like it empowers parents, it often does quite the opposite. Only one or two sets of parents are empowered by a book being banned from a school. Their child no longer has access to the book, but neither do all the other children in that