The Arrogance of Perspective That Sanitizes Words and Censors Writers
Several years ago, I listened to a bright young teen argue that to write fiction about a black character, the author must be black to avoid misappropriation. We were discussing Jodi Picoult’s “Small Great Things”, a novel written because, as Picoult explains in the author’s note, “I desperately wanted to write about racism”. In defense of her book, Picoult also addressed the issue of focusing on an experience she had not lived and the pushback she might receive because of it. I thought her novel was excellent and her research appropriate. I argued she did not need to live as a black woman to write the story but I am certain that teenager, now a matriculating young adult at Yale, would beg to differ.
“Small Great Things” was published in 2016. Fast-forward to 2019 and “American Dirt” by Jeanine Cummins, an Oprah book club pick. I was in the minority when the writing community on Twitter excoriated Cummins and sided with prevailing harsh criticism and the sweeping social media uproar against the book. The criticism began after a few Latinx writers and readers asserted Cummins was not of Mexican heritage and the book had inaccuracies about Mexico and stereotypes of Mexicans. Following this, major publishing houses were subject to much-needed scrutiny as largely white businesses where decisions about who gets published are skewed against BIPOC writers. Such scrutiny and the resulting introspection are beneficial, but I maintain language should not be policed, and authors should not have to self-censor or claim their right to create a work of fiction. Scrutiny does not mandate censorship.
If it’s not outrage against authors who dare to craft fiction that doesn’t belong to them, then it’s certain words that are now interdicted. In 2021, Dr. Seuss Enterprises announced it would cease publication of six books by Theodore Geisel because of racist and insensitive language. Just recently, a decision to edit Roald Dahl’s books by eliminating language deemed offensive (words such as ‘fat’ and ‘ugly’) met with enough of a public outcry for the publisher to decide to keep the original texts in print. On the heels of that, we have learned new editions of Ian Fleming’s James Bond books will be published with racist language removed. History can and often is offensive. We can’t learn from past mistakes if instead of contextualization and discussion, words are changed and sanitized to appease present sentiment.
Don’t even suggest a correlation can be made to the issue of leaving in public places statues that honor men who fought to preserve slavery. You have a choice whether to read or support an author whose words you find objectionable, but you may not have the option to avoid walking under the shadow of a monument that celebrates slavery and serves to rally proponents of racial segregation. These monuments belong in museums where historical context becomes a learning tool.
In a speech to Pen America, historian, professor and Director of the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research at Harvard University, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., said “Social identities are not protected but betrayed when we turn them into silos with sentries.” Different perspectives and ideas intrinsic to freedom of expression should be guarded as a principle of democracy that benefits all of us, in the context of past, present and future.