US Book Banning as Racialized Political Strategy

National Narratives, Public Pedagogy and a National Tug-of-Values War

Abstract

This paper argues that racialized political narratives articulated by US politicians are strategic, as well as potent forms of public pedagogy. In this instance, public pedagogy is defined as education in the public square, instead of in a traditional classroom setting. Such public pedagogical narratives are conceptualized here as designed to achieve yet another goal: demonstrating to large numbers of people that the political party in question aligns with the otherwise covert racialized values of those would-be constituents. My contention is that the current book-banning campaign in the US has been spawned, at least in part, by a powerful national narrative purposefully constructed to attract the votes of the citizenry targeted by this example of strategic political propaganda. Also, this paper will explore how nonpoliticians can use narrative tactics as public pedagogy to thwart biased political narratives. An historical analysis of race, politics, and religion comprises the methodology for this work, along with desk-top theory-building and an examination of recent book-banning research in the US. This paper deconstructs the concept of racialized political narratives to further reveal the complex conceptualizations that undergird this strategy, such as politics and privilege, Christian nationalism, and an idea I have labeled a racialized US values infrastructure (Becnel 2024). My argument is that white superiority and black inferiority are values that were inscribed in the country’s legal, institutional, and social infrastructure during the Slavery Era and largely remain in place today. Those racialized conceptualizations are contended here to have animated the choice of topic – book banning – for recent political campaigns dominated by cleverly-crafted narratives.