School Board Demeans Parents Over Controversial Books

On January 31, 2022, the Orange County NC School Board held a special meeting, reviewing the books Out of Darkness, Gender Queer, and Lawn Boy. 

The board voted unanimously to keep these books in the public school libraries.  The board then waived the procedure stating the status of the material as indefinitely approved, unable to be challenged after two years per the stated policy.  Parents needed to be punished for raising concerns!

Towards the end of the meeting, board member Sarah Smylie implied that parental concern is a “distraction” from real work.  To imply that parents are only doing this for the sake of “distraction” is incorrect.  Trust me, there are better things I could be doing with my time than reading and researching these books.  Parents, like myself, participate in this conversation because public school students deserve the highest quality academic and creative materials and resources available.  These books do not meet that standard. This has nothing to do with the ethnicity or sexuality of the characters.  This has to do with the level of discourse and gratuitous nature of the sexual and violent passages in these books.  Plenty of books make people “uncomfortable” that absolutely should be kept in school libraries.  For example, if the board members read anything by (minority) Thomas Sowell, they would probably feel “uncomfortable,” not because of grotesque sexual descriptions (of which there aren’t any), but because of his massive intellect and dealings with facts.  And yet his books are not present in these school libraries.  OCS has “weeded” books like Indian in the Cupboard  because of “uncomfortable” stereotypes, yet on 1/31 all the board members emphasized they won’t “ban” books.  These board members already have agreed to ban books — readily and enthusiastically and just a few months ago.

Also, Ms. Smylie implies that parents are merely questioning these books as part of a larger well-funded racist effort.  Parents are not parents, but members of well-funded political groups, bringing frivolous concerns on behalf of partisan politics, according to her uncited salvo.  I am part of a volunteer parents’ rights organization.  It is nonpartisan: a recent financial donation was given by a registered Democrat.  Expecting a higher standard of intellectualism in public schools is a non-partisan issue.  And we aren’t “well-funded” like Megan Squire of the SPLC (SPLC has over 150 million dollars in offshore accounts) or others from Equality NC — specialty groups the Orange County School Board has used for policy decisions that are grossly partisan.  For board members to make that claim without any research, self-examination, or direct discussion with people like me is close-minded, hardly “tolerant,” and outright incorrect (not to mention hypocritical).

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