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@PENamerica is deliberately misrepresenting the *PAUSING* of these books’ in classrooms until such time as the school can guarantee they will teach them responsibly, ignoring that students & teachers are using these books to justify saying the N-word to harm Black students! https://twitter.com/penamerica/status/1316384383922835457
Frankly, I am unsurprised by @PENamerica ‘s hypocrisy, which saw them decry racism as part of this summer’s uprisings, but not addressing that they included as a 2019 PEN/Faulkner finalist a book by a white author that featured a FAKE Indigenous nation!!
That @PENamerica would issue a statement in defense of Black lives this summer only to condemn the activism of Black parents & students in the former *sundown town* of Burbank is everything first-rate neoliberal white supremacy. https://pen.org/press-release/toward-a-more-just-world-a-pen-america-statement/
The @latimes has improved their coverage of this but it, too, still has a ways to go. https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/books/story/2020-11-12/burbank-unified-challenges-books-including-to-kill-a-mockingbird
From the @latimes article: “a white student approached [a Black Burbank student] in math class using a racial taunt including the N-word, which he’d learned from reading ‘Roll of Thunder.” Another said: “My family used to own your family & now I want a dollar from each of you”
#Burbankunifiedschooldistrict you currently do not have the range to teach racist literature without reproducing racism so listen to the parents & students and do the work that is your duty as education.
