Health Care/Joan Retsinas

More Egregiously Woke Books to Ban

The woke-police are here! On the chopping block are books that discuss gender (defined at birth, ordained divinely), homosexuality (a curse, a sin, or a confusion), racism (overblown), immigration, poverty … The righteous parents on the right are sanitizing books to protect children — ironically, children inured to school massacres, the opioid epidemic, broken families, and whatever headlines cross their laptops. But in the interests of creating Stepford children in a non-Stepford world, the book-trashers/banishers hold sway.

Let’s add to the figurative pyre some health-books that might shock young Stepford-minds.

Start with The Tuskegee Experiment’s accounts: “Bad Blood: The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment,” by James H. Jones, or “The Tuskegee Syphilis Study: An Insider’s Account of the Shocking Medical Experiment Conducted by Government Doctors Against African American Men,” by Fred Gray. The experiment began in 1932 as a test: does syphilis play out differently in African American men than in White men? With no sure-fire treatment, the researchers followed two samples. The horrific event: when penicillin was found to treat syphilis in 1943, the researchers didn’t stop the experiment, and treat the men. Only in 1972, after a press exposé did the experiment cease. That decision — not-to-treat — marks medical racism. Let’s keep it away from young minds.

“The Germ of Laziness: Rockefeller Philanthropy and Public Health in the New South,” by John Ettling, exalts science. Early in the 20th century, researchers determined that poor Whites in the rural South walked barefoot and were malnourished — a breeding opportunity for hookworms. The result: a general malaise, credited to “laziness.” Credit the Rockefeller Foundation for uncovering the hookworm villain, plugging the treatment. Science does trump false notions — a reason to take this book off any reading list.

“Polio: An American Story,” by David M. Oshinsky, a Pulitzer-prize winner (making it suspect) describes the mid 20th century ravages of polio among Americans, especially children. If there was no protection against polio — well-fed middle class children were more susceptible than poor children — there was no treatment either. Iron lungs, now sitting in museums, were the only way to keep some children alive, for a time. The solution: vaccination. The history of the solution shows the power of the state to spread the vaccines, to make this epidemic almost disappear. Truly a dreadful lesson for children whose parents eschew vaccinations, and loathe the federal government.

“The Cider House Rules,” by John Irving, features Dr. Wilbur Larch, an addicted physician who runs the St. Clouds Orphanage in rural Maine. But this orphanage would not delight the “right to life” enthusiasts plugging adoption. Appalled by the unwanted children and the backstreet abortions, Dr. Larch established an abortion clinic onsite. In the 1920s, abortion was illegal, expensive, difficult to procure — eerily like the world in at least 30 states today. Another book to banish.

Today, teenagers report more depressed symptoms than a decade ago, thanks in part to the COVID-fueled isolation. A slew of novels feature people who are clinically ill. While these novels might give readers insight into their own angst, the novels present a decidedly unhappy world. Consider Harry Potter. He suffered from post traumatic stress disorder, marked by isolation, nightmares, angry fits. Albus Dumbledore had a borderline personality disorder, along with depression. Many classics are gloomy. Fitzgerald’s “Tender is the Night,” Virginia Woolf’s “Mrs. Dalloway,” JD Salinger’s “The Catcher in the Rye” (Holden Caulfield first appeared in a short story titled, “I’m crazy.”), “Sylvia Plath’s “The Bell Jar” — their characters are sometimes suicidal. Although these novels have been on school syllabi for decades, take them off.

Spoiler alert: these books will make readers uncomfortable. In the woke past, parents and teachers sought to educate the next generation in the vast history of our world, so that they might, maybe, bring forth a more enlightened future. How strange: the new goal is to “dumb down” schooling to create a stupid generation.

Joan Retsinas is a sociologist who writes about health care in Providence, R.I. Email joan.retsinas@gmail.com.

From The Progressive Populist, August 1, 2023

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