When reading becomes a problem.

OPINION POST!

I’ve recently fallen in love with reading again, although it hasn’t been fitting into my schedule lately. Reading is a genuinely beautiful thing. It allows information to cross all forms of boundaries, it causes emotions, and it forms thought. I have been extremely grateful that I live in a time when it is standard for me to be able to read. To think there was once a time [for my people] when reading was prohibited is insane.

But I understand because reading can become a problem. It was a problem for enslavers who wanted to keep other people enslaved. It is a problem for dictators and theocracies. It is a problem in relationships. Reading creates issues. 

I do not support the banning of books. I support everyone being able to read the works of others. In fact, I am actively looking for a way to read The Turner Diaries, a book that has inspired over 200+ murders. I personally believe I am strong enough to read it, but it's only available through resale and military libraries. I’m more inclined to get it from the military library because is it really something I want to have on my shelf? However, I think it will offer me better insight into certain people. (I’m looking at you, white supremacists/nationalists.) I am not promoting this book nor the violence displayed in it or that it has influenced.

The issue I have with banning books or making them only accessible to certain persons is that it is unfair. I am so glad I have the opportunity to read things, even things I don’t like to. I want to read The Turner Diaries as a form of research, not enjoyment. Obviously, I’m not going to enjoy it, but it is a resource that should be available to the public to further their thinking. I don’t believe in banning books that don’t align with my ideology, even when it is an extreme ideology. I want to read things that will make me feel emotion, including anger. I want to make connections. This book literally inspired two men to bomb a governmental building in Oklahoma City in the 90s. Turns out, one of them was connecting the book to what happened to the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas. That’s insane. And so interesting! I want to know what this man read in this book that made his brain go, “Yeah, I have to do this.”

The book isn’t going to turn me into a white nationalist, as I’m a Black person, so I feel like I’ll have the mental strength to not be influenced into doing things by a bunch of lines on paper.

I fully understand that the U.S. definition of banning books is not making it available in certain places, not erasing them from existence. However, I worry that it will evolve and snowball into pretending things don’t exist like a certain document or two or a few AHEM.

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*This blog is not written as cohesively as I’d like it to be, but I wrote my thoughts as they came.