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Thursday, October 10, 2013

BANNING TONI MORRISON

The State Board Of Education for Ohio has voted to BAN Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye and called for its removal from state teaching guidelines for Ohio's high school students. State Board President Debe Terhar called the book "pornographic". Mark Smith, a Board member, was quoted as saying that the book was part of "an underlying socialist-communist agenda."

Have they actually read the book? I have, and I find it to be an uncompromising condemnation of racism and violence in America. It is neither pornographic nor political.

Toni Morrison, a native of Ohio, won the Pulitzer Prize, was awarded the Nobel Prize For Literature, and was presented with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, our nation's highest civilian honor.

Professor Morrison was quoted as saying, "I resent it; I mean if it's Texas or North Carolina, as it has been in all sorts of states, but to be a girl from Ohio, writing about Ohio, having been born in Lorain, Ohio, and actually relating as an Ohio person, this is ironic at best!"

I hope you will join with me and write, call, and e-mail Debe Terhar and Mark Smith and let them know that they should be encouraging Ohio's students to think for themselves, rather than censoring their opportunity. The Law Of Unintended Consequences: I predict there will be quite a rush from high school students to libraries and book stores to obtain the book.

Contact information:

Debe Terhar and Mark Smith
25 South Front Street
Columbus, OH 43215--4183

1-877-644-6338

contact.center@education.ohio.gov

1 comment:

Exploring Almost Forgotten Gravesites in the Great State of Ohio said...

Toni Morrison is a native of my hometown of Lorain, Ohio !!!