Thoughts on Racism and Censorship in Literature

Linguistics develops and changes everywhere throughout history constantly. Ranging from Latin linguistics to Greek linguistics, a great example of this change is the beginning of America. After America gained independence from Britain, many foreigners willingly and unwillingly immigrated to this newly independent land which affected how the main language was spoken, Africans that came to America were discriminated and were forced to work without pay. The hate for blacks developed a word in the spoken language involving the “n-word” which is referred to black people and is very controversial today.

In literature, people find the “n-word” offensive, but in reality, these types of literature are preservations of history, A student that thoroughly explains these preservations is Stephen Shepherd.

Many books are banned because of this word, and he states that many book publishers revised historic books by removing the “n- word” and disagrees strongly with these revisions. Firstly, he states that the alteration is dishonest, It is better to face the problem rather than to ignore the problem.

Many people might consider that facing the problem is difficult, but racism issues including adjacent ones like sexuality, politics, and religion are shown in literature ranging from Shakespeare, Martin Luther, The Da Vinci Code, The American Psycho, and many more works. When publishers try to censor these topics, the problems pertaining to these issues are still there, It does not simply go away Shepherd responsively brings up Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. Censorship plays a significant role in this book, as the government tries to burn books that are controversial with the intention to keep society intact.

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Montag, the protagonist, shows throughout the book that the more books that circulate in the market, controversy will lessen. Another factor that contributes to the failure of censorship is the Streisand Effect. The Streisand effect is the phenomenon whereby an attempt to hide, remove, or censor a piece of information has the unintended consequence of publicizing the information more widely, usually facilitated by the Internet or groups, In the case of racist books, banning books, especially lesser known books, will publicize works making curious readers look for this banned book on the internet/archives. In conclusion, I strongly stand with Stephen Shepherd’s point of View on racism.