In section one of Fahrenheit, Montague wrestles with the secret of keeping a stash books that he is most definitely not supposed to have. The gray and grim world that Ray Bradbury has created paints a very black and charred abstract painting of a thought-process as to what happens when books are not allowed to be read. Bradbury puts it best: "You don't have to burn books to destroy society. Just get people to stop reading them."
I think this book does a pretty decent job of showing people what happens when you get your population to stop reading books. However, we have a banned book problem in this country. An earlier post on this blog spoke about banning books in schools and the negative effects of doing such a feat. However, my question for you all today is what happens when a prison of all places bans a book?
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/18/us/new-jim-crow-book-ban-prison.htmlA
The New Jim Crowe is a book about the systemic racism in the American Prison system. Many prisons ban this book, but will allow classic literature from authors like Mark Twain and Harper Lee which all have very grim and racist depictions of people of color. What does it say about prisons who ban these types of books? What does it say about prisons who allow certain books? Should we let prisoners read any books?
Really interesting post! I hadn't thought about the relationship between prisoners and their access to books, or lack thereof. Recently there's been an article going around about a West Virginia prison that charges 3 cents a minute to read e books in their "free" library, which is horrendous yet unsurprising.
ReplyDeleteThe amount of gate keeping that goes into keeping prisoners from reading truly astonishes me. Especially when it is a part of the inherent racism within the American prison system. It's no secret that people of color are disproportionately affected by the aforementioned system, and a large amount of prisoners are part of that population. This is due to many things, but primarily the deep racism within the justice system, unfair treatment by the police, as well as trumped up charges for marijuana possession (particularly for young black men). The fact that prisons ban books about these topics yet choose to keep books with racist depictions is extremely telling of the message that they are spreading, and can lead one to believe that on some level there is a sense of self awareness within the system of the problems they are creating.
I had never thought of prisons banning books. It is such a strange concept. These people in prisons should be allowed what they want, including the New Jim Crow, which a few prisons have lifted the ban for. Do the prisons fear that prisoners will read something and form an idea to start an entire revolution while in or after leaving the prison? There have been people who have gone to prison, read a lot while there, changed, and became public figures in movements, like Malcolm X, and the only problem with him reading so much was his eyesight got poor and he needed glasses, but that happens to some readers. Reading is a good way to pass time in prison, so why not allow prisoners to read whatever they want. Hopefully their life changes for the better through their reading in prison. Perhaps through reading The New Jim Crow, a prisoner can figure out a way to rise in power after prison and change how the prison system works so that it isn't racist. It is difficult to find a problem in this. Anyway, banning any book in any place seems counter intuitive as people tend to want to read what they're not "allowed" to.
ReplyDeleteI've never heard about prisons banning books before, but it's definitely something that doesn't seem to surprise me. There are a lot of aspects about our US prison systems that I don't agree with, and this practice would just be adding to the list. I don't believe that the system banning certain books can be signed off by saying a prison should have a right to ban content for people who have committed crimes - this seems more like a situation of the prison systems unjustly trying to keep the people in the prison systems from taking in certain ideas, which, however you look at it, sounds a little fishy to me. While this is something that is a bit easy for me to clearly see both sides, at the end of the day, I can't say I agree with this practice.
ReplyDeleteUsually, I would argue no because it's an infringement on freedom but prisoners aren't free. They do not have all the rights that non-prisoners do. Thus, I think it is totally fair to ban this book because what would reading it accomplish for them? It won't shorten their sentence if they tell a guard "well I read this book and it says prison systems are racist so can I go now since I'm white?" Reading this book would only stir up anger in the jail systems which would lead to violence and riots, not anything productive. Regardless of skin color, people are in jail because they committed a crime. I know that African Americans are targeted more, but that needs to change at a judicial level, at the systemic level, not with the prisoners. I'm pretty sure most prisoners could tell you the system is racist; reading it wouldn't help, it would just bring up all the anger all at once in all the prisoners.
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