Slippery slope concerns: validated.
https://twitter.com/memeorandum/status/1367606156617687040
For those who are baffled by why this concerns anyone, or advancing wrongheaded, uncharitable theories that purport to explain concern, let me help you out. There is a higher order question here than the fate of 6 relatively obscure books:
How should we treat books with words or images that we have come to see as immoral or wrongheaded or bound up with ideas or ideologies that caused harm?
(And who decides which books are in that category?)
(And who decides which books are in that category?)
My view is that we should retain all older cultural artifacts, and when appropriate, present them with context that causes people to grapple with rather than erase problematic aspects of the past. Children's books are a bit more complicated:
Some kids are old enough for certain books but not old enough for the context lessons. I have no objection to, *we are no longer reading this title to children in our schools.* But *no more copies of this will be printed* AND *online marketplaces will ban its resale*?
That takes a step closer to *let's erase problematic aspects of the past by purging books* than I'd endorse, and I see no principled difference between the logic that justifies this and similar moves against, say, The Sun Also Rises.
What I find most frustrating about the *lol you're freaking out about 6 obscure books* brigades is that *most of you also think we should contextualize rather than banish problematic old books*.
But you're demagoguing concerns like mine.
But you're demagoguing concerns like mine.
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