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PSA: I used to think banning 'Maus' was just about the swear words
For a long time, I figured the Tennessee school board just had a problem with the language and nudity in Art Spiegelman's graphic novel. Then I actually read the full meeting minutes from their 2022 vote. The main complaint cited was that it made the Holocaust look 'too hopeless' and was 'anti-German'. That flipped my view completely. It wasn't about protecting kids from bad words, it was about sanitizing a horrific history to avoid making a specific group look bad. I picked reading the primary source documents over just accepting the news headlines, and it showed me the real political reason behind the ban. Has anyone else dug into the actual minutes for a book challenge and been shocked by the stated reasons?
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thomas1051mo ago
Reading those minutes is a gut punch. They basically said showing the full horror is wrong because it makes Germans look bad. It's history, it's supposed to be heavy. Sanitizing it for anyone's feelings defeats the whole point of learning what happened. That complaint shows they care more about image than truth.
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