W
e hear the expression “Great minds think alike” when two people arrive at the same conclusion, or come up with the same idea, at the same time.

At its core, “great minds think alike,” celebrates intellectual synergy, the cooperative interaction of creative thinkers working toward the same answers or solutions. [1] Like Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace who, independent of one another, were both writing about natural selection during the mid-nineteenth century.[2]

We seldom hear the other half of this saying, however, the often-forgotten, “but fools seldom differ.” Which is a warning against groupthink and the dangers of blindly agreeing with others.

Intelligent thought is about more than simple agreement. It’s about reasoning and analysis. So, when you find yourself thinking the same way as someone else, stop to consider whether that’s a result of insight or a lack of critical evaluation.

When taken as a whole, Great minds think alike, but fools seldom differ, this aphorism highlights the importance of independent thought and the ability to entertain diverse ideas. Bearing in mind all the book banning and full-throttle attacks on diversity taking place these days, that’s something we could use a lot more of.

#Aphorisms Unplugged 

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Endnotes:

[1] Nguyen, Spring. “Great Minds Think Alike Full Quote: Oriign, Meaning, 55 Best Variations & When to Use It.” Snugfam.com  snugfam.com/great-minds-think-alike-full-quote-origin-meaning-55-best-variations-when-to-use-it/

[2] “What about Wallace?” Charles Darwin & Evolution. https://darwin200.christs.cam.ac.uk/what-about-wallace

Image:

Great Minds Think Alike: Photo by William Felipe Seccon on Unsplash

T
hanksgiving is just around the corner! So, let’s Talk Turkey, as the saying goes. The actual story of the first Thanksgiving is banned.

This holiday typically revolves around a roasted Turkey with all the trimmings (whatever scrumptious morsels that might include at your house). And as we learned in school, it commemorates a Day of Thanksgiving observed by the Pilgrims in 1621, one celebrating a successful harvest…   not to mention the fact that they survived a harsh first year after landing on Plymouth Rock.

Historian David Silverman sums up the story of the first Thanksgiving that virtually all of us were taught as kids like this:

The myth is that friendly Indians, unidentified by tribe, welcome the Pilgrims to America, teach them how to live in this new place, sit down to dinner with them and then disappear. They hand off America to white people so they can create a great nation dedicated to liberty, opportunity and Christianity for the rest of the world to profit. That’s the story — it’s about Native people conceding to colonialism. It’s bloodless and in many ways an extension of the ideology of Manifest Destiny.” [1]

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What really happened around the first Thanksgiving, however, is much more nuanced, and a lot more complicated than this version — which was clearly written from a colonist perspective, and obviously with no Native American input.

That is why it’s important for Indigenous peoples to write their own stories – to counter damaging narratives written about them by non-Indigenous people, and correct historical inaccuracies.

Unfortunately, efforts toward a full understanding of our country’s history are systematically being squashed. From the book banning that targets works about any sort of diversity, to the curriculum scrubbing that nullifies teaching about race and ethnicity at all levels of education, to the dismantling of the Department of Education itself.

Which is why books like If You Lived During the Plimoth Thanksgiving, written by Chris Newell (a proud citizen of the Passamaquoddy Tribe), are essential. This book may have been designed with elementary and middle schoolers in mind, but anyone interested in learning facts about the first Thanksgiving will gain new knowledge.

In a recent interview, Newell talks about the uninformed questions he frequently fielded during his tenure as Education Supervisor at the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center in Maine. The erasure of indigenous peoples’ role in early American history is so complete that Newell would get questions like “are the Pequots still alive?” [2]

This is the type of widespread misinformation his book addresses. Effective education about events like the first Thanksgiving requires moving beyond a singular, colonist-focused view to one that includes multiple perspectives. In this case, the Indigenous viewpoint in particular given the significance of their role in the first Thanksgiving.

That is what Newell has set out to do in If You Lived During the Plimoth Thanksgiving. He exposes truths about this major American holiday that have been suppressed, beginning with the original spelling of Plimoth (as opposed to Plymouth).

He addresses unexplored subjects like epidemics brought by European settlers that decimated Indigenous communities, the enslavement of Indigenous people by English colonists, and the loss of land associated with European contact.

And, he doesn’t restrict his outlook to the first Thanksgiving. Newell also casts a proverbial eye beyond the dialog where other writings leave off, with questions like: “How and when did Thanksgiving become a national holiday?” “Do Indigenous peoples celebrate Thanksgiving?” He also poses the very important question, “what are holidays that honor Native history?”[3]

So, before you sit down to whatever delicious foods make up the Thanksgiving feast at your house, be sure to check out If You Lived During the Plimoth Thanksgiving. And, have a heaping helping of Thanksgiving history to offset the myth we were fed as children.

Pair this with

It’s Native American Heritage Month:
Shining a spotlight on Zitkála-Šá

and

The “American Experience”
Embodied in the Childhood Reflections
of Zitkála-Šá and Laura Ingalls Wilder

           #Benefits of Humanities           #Celebrations           #The American Experience

Endnotes:

[1] Bugos, Claire. “The Myths of the Thanksgiving Story and the Lasting Damage They Imbue.” Smithsonian Magazine. November 26, 2019. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/thanksgiving-myth-and-what-we-should-be-teaching-kids-180973655/

[2] If You Lived During the Plimoth Thanksgiving by Christopher Newell, Conversation Club, Nov. 18, 2021

[3] Zotigh, Dennis. “’If You Lived During the Plimoth Thanksgiving.’” By Chris Newell Exposes New Truths About a Major American Holiday.” Smithsonian magazine, November 23, 2021. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/blogs/national-museum-american-indian/2021/11/23/if-you-lived-during-the-plimoth-thanksgiving-by-chris-newell-exposes-new-truths-about-a-major-american-holiday/

“Native-American Slavery in New England.” New England Historical Society. https://newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/native-american-slavery-in-new-england/

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Images:

The First Thanksgiving by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris. Public Domain Library of Congress. ID cph.3g04961

B
ook banning constitutes what is known as a dignity violation. And it’s easy to see how such experiences negatively impact one’s mental health. But, it’s important to realize that dignity violations impact our physical health as well.

Here at This Book is Banned, we talk a lot about how reading books with characters whose lives are different than our own fosters empathy. We also stress how important it is to see ourselves in the books we read. Because being represented in the books we read gives us a sense of dignity.

But, what if that wasn’t the case? What if you were excluded, and never saw yourself in the only books you have access to? Or when you did see characters who look like you or those with the same gender identity as you, they were consistently depicted as criminal, morally deficient, or somehow inferior to the other characters in the book?

That would be quite a hit to your dignity, and therefore your mental health. But, it isn’t only our mental health that suffers when we’re stigmatized by society. Stigma affects our physical health as well.

The following article, by Anindya Kar and Dinesh Bhugra, outlines how being stigmatized by society negatively impacts the physical health of marginalized communities.

Which is yet another reason why it’s essential for all of us to have access to books that not only represent us, but depict characters with our life experience fairly and in a dignified manner. And, why the current epidemic of banning books about marginalized communities is so detrimental.

Dignity is not a metaphor. It is a method and mechanism. In this article, the authors critically explore the concepts of tolerance, respect, and dignity through the lens of ethnic minority mental health, arguing that dignity must become a diagnostic principle within psychiatry. Drawing on recent findings in stress biology, social psychology, and global policy, it presents how dignity violations, ranging from subtle exclusions to structural violence, leave biological, psychological, and cultural impacts. At the cellular level, chronic stress linked to exclusion activates inflammatory pathways, shortens telomeres, and predicts psychiatric morbidity. At the meso-social level, cultural othering, forced migration, and political authoritarianism incite stigma and internalized shame. At the macro-structural level, austerity, hostile immigration laws, and regressive policies erode collective mental well-being. The article further explores the concept of double jeopardy, where ethnic minority status and psychiatric diagnosis intersect to multiply vulnerability, institutional mistrust, and diagnostic harm. We argue that dignity must be restored as a measurable outcome, not a rhetorical flourish. The proposed model of the “Dignity Constellation for Ethnic Minority Mental Heath” outlines a multilevel framework where dignity injuries can be identified and repaired, from clinical to legislative spaces.

Tolerance, respect, and dignity are concepts deeply intertwined, each carrying distinctive implications for how we interact with and perceive others, especially in the context of mental health. This becomes even more relevant regarding the mental health of ethnic or any other minority groups at the individual, familial, and community levels. Although tolerance in contemporary culture is subscribed to a progressive stance, it inherently positions one party, the tolerator, as holding power or moral superiority, implicitly delineating a boundary between what is considered normative and what is perceived as deviant or requiring acceptance. In contrast, respect, derived from the Latin “respicere” meaning “to look again” or “to consider closely”, signifies an active and intentional acknowledgment of the other. To respect is to engage, value consciously, and genuinely attempt to understand another’s perspectives and feelings. Thus, indifference or superficial dismissal fundamentally contradicts the spirit of respect. Dignity encompasses a person’s inherent worth and is the cornerstone of human interaction, particularly critical in mental healthcare. In therapeutic settings, mutual respect is important from the concepts of “unconditional positive regard”, but if there are difficulties in acknowledging similarities and differences, mutual suspicion may take hold. Respect directly upholds and reinforces dignity, from simple acts of politeness to deeply valuing individuals’ lived experiences, emotional states, and cultural narratives. Dignity, therefore, is not merely an ethical ideal, it is a mechanism with measurable biopsychosocioanthropological effects and a method for clinical diagnosis and systemic intervention. This paper argues that dignity should serve as a central organizing principle in addressing mental health inequities, especially for ethnic and cultural minorities. We propose that dignity violations act as stressors across cellular, individual, social, and policy levels and that restoring dignity across these domains should be a therapeutic and public health imperative.

Although the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) enshrined dignity as a universal value affirming the right to a standard of living adequate for health and well-being, including medical care and social services, it remains an open question whether we have truly achieved this vision, particularly in mental health [1]. In its Diamond Jubilee year, the UDHR calls us not just to reflect but to act especially as political, cultural, and structural forces continue to challenge the dignity of marginalized populations.

This paper expands on concepts related to tolerance, respect, and dignity, integrating recent scholarly conversations and building a scaffold that spans biology, psychology, sociology, and policy. We end by proposing a model of “The Dignity Constellation for Minority Mental Health”—a multilevel framework designed to map where dignity is eroded and where targeted interventions can restore it. This model situates dignity harms across five levels, namely cellular, individual, interpersonal, community, and policy/societal levels, each with corresponding outcomes and practical levers for repair. This framework is especially critical in the context of intersectionality, where mental illness and minority status combine in forms of double jeopardy. For the purposes of this paper, “ethnic minority mental health” refers to individuals and groups who face structural disadvantages based on ethnicity, culture, migration status, sexual orientation, or gender identity.

While the primary focus is on ethnic minorities, we also consider how intersecting forms of marginalization such as those experienced by Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer plus (LGBTQ+) communities and refugees create layered dignity harms that impact mental health outcomes. This broader lens allows us to account for shared mechanisms of exclusion, stigma, and structural vulnerability across minority identities.

2.1. Allostatic load—disrespect entering the bloodstream

Allostasis is a bodily process through which the body maintains homeostasis in response to stress. Unsurprisingly, when stress is chronic, the adaptive system becomes dysregulated, resulting in “wear and tear” on biological systems, known as allostatic load [2]. Stress biology has mapped how social injuries become cellular scars, and this is particularly important in the context of minority stress. Repeated humiliation, exclusion, or coercion is an example of violations of dignity at the core level, which activate the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal (HPA) axis, maintain cortisol surges, and leave the immune system in a low-grade inflammatory state. Ravi et al. [3] showed that chronic perceived stress predicts elevations in C-reactive protein (CRP) and pro-inflammatory cytokines such as interleukin-6 and tumour necrosis factor-α, as well as other biological signatures strongly linked to depression and anxiety. Chronic stress not only fuels mental illness but also drives physical disease through immunological dysregulation—increasing the risk of hypertension, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and autoimmune conditions [4]. Minority groups, already facing barriers to healthcare access, experience these burdens more acutely. Structural inequalities persist across both psychiatric and general medical care, and mounting evidence shows that extreme stress leaves epigenetic marks. These findings echo Jacobson’s notion of dignity of self [5].

This framework refers to a person’s internal sense of worth, integrity, and self-respect, particularly how individuals experience and perceive themselves to how others treat them in a society. For people from ethnic minorities living with chronic mental health conditions, this has a broader implication as race and ethnicity, culture, and mental illness intersect to shape their perceptions about themselves. Hence, it is imperative to be intersectional because cultural misrecognition and institutional racism can keep  these individuals in the bubble of allostatic load.

2.2. Social defeat and neuro-inflammation

Models of “repeated social defeat” (RSD) produce microglial activation and anxiety-like behaviours that persist long after the initial insult at the cellular level [6]. The model illustrates neuroimmune interaction that shows that monopolization by an aggressive conspecific is not stressful but a biologically encoded message of low rank and thus an insult to dignity. Translational studies echo this as well. Social defeat predicts psychotic experiences such as perceptual distortions, paranoid ideation, or delusional thinking via aberrant salience networks, a neurobiological model of psychosis that explains how irrelevant stimuli are perceived as signifcant [7]. Humiliation is thus not metaphorical but molecular. This is further significant for individuals already marginalized by race, culture, chronic mental health conditions, or immigration status. This further activates chronic neuroinflammatory pathways reinforcing psychiatric vulnerability.

2.3. Epigenetic weathering and telomere attrition

Discrimination leaves a genomic shadow. Decades ago, a longitudinal relationship was established that showed the African–Caribbean migrant population was vulnerable to chronic mental health conditions [8]. A recent review linked racial trauma to accelerated epigenetic ageing, implicating methylation patterns on stress response genes [9]. These findings extend dignity downward to the genome, illustrating UDHR Article 25 in a microcosm, showing that persistence in indignity shortens life.

3.1. Otherism—difference as dignity’s raw material

Contemporary psychiatric culture often preaches “tolerance”, but tolerance can be a loaded and asymmetrical gesture. Tolerance operates as a regulatory discourse granting conditional acceptance from a dominant group to a minoritized one—thereby reinforcing existing hierarchies [10]. In this sense, tolerance imagines unidirectional power flowing from the “normal” toward the “deviant”, implicitly pathologizing differences rather than valuing them. Respect, by contrast, demands mutual recognition and ethical reciprocity. Within this framework, ethnic minorities are often positioned as “objects of tolerance” rather than full subjects of respect—permitted to exist within the system but only under terms defined by the dominant culture. This aligns with the logic of otherism, a colonial inheritance that ranks human difference in terms of value and proximity to dominant norms [11]. Ethnic minorities—particularly racialized groups such as Black, South Asian, and South Americans in the US—are often assigned a lower rung in this hierarchy, treated as peripheral or “less-than”. This status is not merely symbolic. Being kept in this position of conditional inclusion or exclusion activates sustained stress responses, driving up cortisol levels and, over time, increasing vulnerability to depression, anxiety, and even psychosis [12]. These effects are compounded when political or media discourses validate such hierarchies, turning prejudice into policy or public sentiment into surveillance. Additionally, otherism, when validated by political or media discourse, can cause prejudice to escalate to harassment, assault, or hate crime. Otherism often starts with “they” and crystallizes into xenophobia, homophobia, transphobia, antisemitism, and islamophobia [11, 12]. Collectively, each incident reinforces fear, further eroding the dignity and mental health of targeted ethnic minorities.

3.2. Geopsychiatry—mapping distress onto displacement

At the end of 2024, a staggering 123 million people were forcibly displaced worldwide [13]. War, climate crisis, and forced migration now shape the mental health caseload, yet only 4% of UK psychiatric trainees report adequate instruction in geopolitical determinants [14]. Geopsychiatry demands curricula that track the multi-layered traumas of climate refugees, conflict survivors, or asylum seekers detoured into detention. This must be embedded within a broader shift in both undergraduate and postgraduate medical education. Training should go beyond the biomedical model to include humanities, public health, and medical anthropology, enabling a biopsychosocioanthropological approach that recognizes how biology, psychology, social structures, and cultural meaning interact in the development, perception, and treatment of illness. Hence, prevention must start early through education that cultivates mutual respect, cultural humility, and structural awareness, helping society recognize that dignity is not a clinical luxury but the foundation of health. The World Health Organization (WHO) warns that post-arrival stressors like family separation, insecure status, and hostile media can be as perilous as the original trauma [15]. Geopsychiatry information system (GIS) maps, asylum law, and climate displacement forecasts enable clinicians to document and help their ethnic minority patients navigate uncertain legal scenarios or situations.

3.3. Right-wing authoritarianism and stigma

Recent data show a clear pattern in a person’s score on right-wing authoritarianism (RWA). RWA is a trait cluster characterized by strict obedience to authority, hostility toward out-groups, and a preference for social conformity—the higher the score, the more likely they are to judge people with mental illnesses such as schizophrenia, major depression, or alcohol-use disorder more harshly [16]. Authoritarian mindsets treat any deviation from the “approved” norm as a threat to group stability. Psychiatric symptoms, by definition, challenge expected behaviour, so individuals high in RWA reflexively label such patients as dangerous, weak, or morally defective. This results in external stigma, as people with high RWA scores are more likely to support and uphold harsher public attitudes, greater social rejection, and institutional policies that prioritize control over care for individuals living with mental illness. The other resultant is internalized stigma that corrodes self-dignity, amplifying shame, delaying help-seeking, and worsening prognosis. Hence, additional anti-stigma efforts like posters, hashtags, and wellness slogans barely dent the problem if they sidestep its political undercurrents. Unless clinicians, professional bodies, and public health leaders call out these narratives, clinicians will keep treating symptoms in the consulting room, while status-driven stigma spreads unchecked in society.

While interpersonal and community dynamics shape the day-to-day experiences of dignity, structural forces operating at the level of law, economics, and governance exert a more ambient but equally powerful influence. For ethnic minorities, these macro-level conditions often create environments where dignity is either systematically undermined or selectively upheld. Economic austerity, punitive legislation, and policy neglect translate abstract values into tangible inequalities, causing disparities in access, quality, and outcomes of care. This next section on macro-dignity explores how dignity is shaped by systems that govern the societal distribution of resources, rights, and recognition.

4.1. Austerity as a dignity tax

Austerity policies worldwide have eroded mental and physical well-being, especially among marginalized groups. Movsisyan et al. [17] noted that the global post-2008 financial crisis highlights how fiscal consolidation deepened health inequities internationally. Additionally, it shows that austerity tends to worsen overall mental health disparities, particularly in contexts where public services are already fragile [17]. Empirical studies corroborate the following: in the UK, cuts to local council services—such as cultural, environmental, and planning support—were significantly associated with deteriorating mental health, especially in deprived areas [18]. More broadly, systematic reviews show that austerity-induced income stress, housing instability, and food insecurity profoundly undermine mental health across diverse income settings, with disproportionately severe effects for those already facing disadvantages [19, 20]. Taken together, the data confirm that austerity not only slashes budgets but multiplies stressors for vulnerable populations, disproportionately affecting ethnic minorities.

4.2. Legislative changes versus global backlash

From a clinical standpoint, the evolving legal context on both sides of the Channel will directly shape everyday decision-making. In England and Wales, the Mental Health Bill 2025 is expected to tighten criteria for compulsory admission, formalize advance choice documents (ACDs), and mandate culturally specific advocacy services [21]. If backed by proper funding and audited via dashboards that track detention rates and community treatment orders by ethnicity, these measures should reduce coercion, improve shared decision-making, and enhance therapeutic alliance, core components of dignified care. Meanwhile, the European Court of Justice’s Advocate-General has deemed Hungary’s ban on “LGBTQ content” incompatible with dignity and non-discrimination [22]. Similarly, across the Atlantic, in the United States, more than 750 state-level bills aiming to curb LGBTQ-inclusive curricula or restrict gender-affirming care were tabled during the 2025 legislative cycle, with 26 states already enforcing such bans, according to the American Civil Liberties Union [23]. In India, the Supreme Court’s October 2023 ruling declined to recognize same-sex marriage, leaving queer couples without marital rights [24]. These rulings, although outside clinical settings, matter to psychiatrists across the world and reinforce the principle that a patient’s identity must be respected in schools, media, and public life domains that heavily influence help-seeking, stigma, and treatment adherence. For clinicians, this inconsistency means patients may present with dignity injuries caused by the very systems that claim to defend them.

The intersection of minority status and psychiatric diagnosis combines a form of double jeopardy, which is a compounded vulnerability where individuals face discrimination on multiple levels simultaneously [25]. Ethnic minorities, particularly those living with various mental health conditions, not only navigate the stigma attached to psychiatric labels but also bear the baggage of racialized surveillance, systemic neglect, and cultural misappropriation. For example, ethnic minority patients in the UK are more likely to be sectioned under the Mental Health Act and less likely to receive talking therapies [26]. Similarly, Black men with psychosis are unusually subjected to coercive interventions, with their emotional expression often read through the gaze of danger rather than distress. Hence, cultural idioms of distress are often translated into pathology. This double jeopardy is not an accidental phenomenon but a result of systemic failure that account for how difference compounds existing risk.

In light of the multiple, intersecting stressors faced by ethnic,cultural, sexual, and migration minorities, the Dignity Constellation offers a reference model to identify where dignity is eroded and where targeted interventions may restore it (Table 1). Each layer aligns with a biopsychosocioanthropological framework and offers clinically and systemically relevant entry points for action.

Culturally responsive care already shows promise. Services for psychological therapies in England have piloted culturally adapted cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) programmes for South Asian communities, showing improved engagement and outcomes [27]. In Canada, some clinics have begun employing ethno-racial matching and trauma-informed interpreters to reduce diagnostic error [28]. These initiatives suggest that having ethnically concordant clinicians, interpreters, and community liaisons can improve timeliness, adherence, and cultural safety in mental healthcare. However, these remain exceptions rather than the norm, and access to such services remains uneven globally.

Within this landscape, the Dignity Constellation offers a practical framework. This prompts clinicians and policymakers to treat dignity deficits as seriously as symptoms. In routine practice, the model can be used for

• Formulation: The model can be used to integrate dignity-related factors into biopsychosocial formulations by identifying experiences of coercion, exclusion, or systemic neglect across any layer of the constellation.

• Assessment: The mode can be used to include dignity harms in patient histories, for example, asking whether patients have felt dismissed, humiliated, or treated unfairly by services or institutions.

• Clinical supervision and MDT meetings: The model can be used to examine how team routines and service structures may perpetuate or repair dignity injuries and adjust pathways accordingly.

• Policy advocacy: The model can be used to audit structural dignity deficits such as unequal access, coercive practices, or culturally unsafe care, as well as resources for corrective action.

Rather than locating pathology solely within the individual, the Dignity Constellation shifts the focus toward context-sensitive care by diagnosing not only symptoms but the dignity injuries that exacerbate or generate them. In this way, it becomes a method of clinical seeing, offering a structured lens for both diagnosis and redress.

Mental healthcare must invest in benevolent tolerance and replace it with a radical politics of respect. Dignity is not an idealistic concept but a biological, social, psychological, and legal imperative. As demonstrated in the article, insults to dignity leave scars in the bloodstream, the community, and the policy ledger. Psychiatry, to remain ethical and effective, must elevate dignity as a diagnostic principle and therapeutic goal.

.

Pair this piece with:

The Picture of Dorian Gray: The story of a closeted psyche 

The Bluest Eye: Driven to madness by Dick and Jane

Funding

This research received no external funding.

Author contributions

Conceptualization, D.B.; methodology, D.B.; investigation, D.B. and A.K.; writing—original draft preparation, D.B. and A.K.; writing—review and editing, D.B.; supervision, D.B. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

Conflict of interest

The authors declares that they have no competing interests.

Data availability statement

All data supporting the findings of this publication are available within this article.

© 2025 copyright by the authors. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license. (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). No changes were made to original article.

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28. Mental Health Commission of Canada. The case for diversity: Building the case to improve mental health services for immigrant, refugee, ethno-cultural and racialized populations. Ottawa (ON): MHCC; 2016.

Images

Book Banning is a Dignity Violation: Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

Abstract: Photo by Kyle Glenn on Unsplash

Introduction:  Photo by Joshua Earle on Unsplash

Micro-dignity:  Photo by Navy Medicine on Unsplash

Meso-dignity:  Photo by Ryoji Iwata on Unsplash

Macro-dignity:  Photo by Katie Moum on Unsplash

Double Jeopardy:  Photo by Viktor Talashuk on Unsplash

Dignity Constellation:  Photo by Greg Rakozy on Unsplash

Discussion:  Photo by Campaign Creators on Unsplash

Conclusions:  Photo by Rosemary Williams on Unsplash

I
t’s Banned Book Week! Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear that the extreme level of book banning we’ve been seeing over the last few years will be going away anytime soon. Here’s a report from PEN America about where things stand.

But don’t be dismayed. Use this information to rouse the proverbial troops, and fuel the fight for intellectual freedom.

In 2025, book censorship in the United States is rampant and common. Never before in the life of any living American have so many books been systematically removed from school libraries across the country. Never before have so many states passed laws or regulations to facilitate the banning of books, including bans on specific titles statewide. Never before have so many politicians sought to bully school leaders into censoring according to their ideological preferences, even threatening public funding to exact compliance. Never before has access to so many stories been stolen from so many children.

The book bans that have accumulated in the past four years are unprecedented and undeniable. This report looks back at the 2024-2025 school year – the fourth school year in the contemporary campaign to ban books – and illustrates the continued attacks on books, stories, identities, and histories.

This report offers a window into the complex and extensive climate of censorship between July 1, 2024 through June 30, 2025. Our reporting on book bans remains a bellwether of a larger campaign to restrict and control education and public narratives, wreaking havoc on our public schools and democracy.

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The State of Book Bans

Two things help us make sense of the world – information and stories. Both explain, describe, and give language to the world we encounter. It is not a surprise then that banning books is a way of erasing stories, identities, experiences, and peoples and reshaping understandings of the past. Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop warns: “When children cannot find themselves reflected in the books they read, or when the images they see are distorted, negative, or laughable, they learn a powerful lesson about how they are devalued in the society of which they are a part.”

Stories tell us who we are and who we can become.

This right – the right to discover – is being taken from students under the guise of their “protection.” Over the past four years, a misleading campaign to “protect children” alongside advocacy for “parental rights” has been weaponized to diminish students’ First Amendment rights in schools, sow distrust in librarians and educators, and diminish the ability of authors and illustrators to connect with their intended audiences. In this upside down world, any rights of young people as students are somehow subservient to the absolute rights of their parents.

In 2022, we cautioned that book bans and related threats to free expression and the First Amendment should not be ignored; that this assault on students’ freedom to read is a slippery slope; and that state censorship of this nature, once unleashed, would snowball. Today, that escalation is no longer hypothetical. For many students, families, educators, librarians, and school districts, book banning is a new normal.

This change didn’t happen overnight, and it wasn’t a fluke of history. National and local groups touting extreme conservative views have played on parents’ fears and anxieties to exert ideological control over public education across the United States using consistent and coordinated tactics. These groups’ efforts have catalyzed censorial trends and a full-blown attack on public schools and democracy. This “Ed Scare,” as PEN America has termed it, has produced changes at the local, state – and increasingly, federal – levels at a frighteningly rapid pace, resulting in new policies that not only diminish students’ right to read and learn, but also take away protections for educators and librarians. Together, these trends are having a profound impact on the literary community and the country at large.

As a result of these groups and their political allies, book censorship in schools has reached a new apex, now becoming a routine and expected part of school operations, particularly in states like Florida, Texas, and Tennessee. And it is being anticipated on the horizon for educators and families in states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Minnesota. While we explore the specific trends that have led us to this escalated climate of censorship in this report, it is important to remember the big picture. These attacks on students’ rights and educational institutions are the symptoms of a much larger disease: the dismantling of public education and a backsliding democracy.

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What is a School Book Ban?

PEN America defines a school book ban as any action taken against a book based on its content and as a result of parent or community challenges, administrative decisions, or in response to direct or threatened action by governmental officials, that leads to a book being either completely removed from availability to students, or where access to a book is restricted or diminished.

Accessibility forms the core of PEN America’s definition of a school book ban and emphasizes the multiple ways book bans infringe on the rights of students, professional educators, and authors. It is important to recognize that books available in schools, whether in a school or classroom library or as part of a curriculum, were selected by librarians and educators as part of the educational offerings to students. Book bans occur when those choices are overridden by school boards, administrators, teachers, or even politicians on the basis of a particular book’s content.

For the 2024-25 school year, we recorded three types of school book bans: “banned,” which includes books that have been completely prohibited; “banned pending investigation,” which includes books that are pending a review to determine what restrictions, if any, to implement on them; and “banned by restriction,” which includes grade-level or school-level restrictions or books that require parental permissions.

For more details, please visit PEN America’s Methodology and Frequently Asked Questions on book bans. You can also visit our prior reports on book bans released in April 2022, September 2022, April 2023, December 2023, September 2024, and November 2024.

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Key Trends from
the 2024-2025 School Year

In the fourth year of book bans, several key trends stood out this year:

Federal efforts to restrict education use rhetoric from state and local efforts to ban books. In 2025, a new vector of book banning pressure has appeared – the federal government. Since returning to office, the Trump Administration has mimicked rhetoric about “parents’ rights”, which, in Florida and other states, has largely been used to advance book bans and censorship of schools, against the wishes of many parents, students, families, and educators. Under the guise of “returning education to parents,” President Trump has released a series of Executive Orders (EOs) mainly: “Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling,” “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism,” and “Ending Radical And Wasteful Government DEI Programs And Preferencing.”

Although none of these EOs take a direct aim at books, they were used as justification for the July 2025 removal of almost 600 books from Department of Defense Education Activity (DoDEA) schools on military bases. In restricting discussion of transgender people and diversity, equity, and inclusion and barring schools from “promoting un-American ideas,” books like ABC of Equality by Chana Ewing or several volumes from the series Heartstopper by Alice Oseman were removed from access. Students and their families responded by suing.

In addition to the efforts from the White House, the U.S. Department of Education declared book bans “a hoax,” parroting language from state leaders like Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis. The Department removed a federal position within the Office of Civil Rights set up to investigate allegations of discriminatory book bans and issued a “Dear Colleague” letter to “cease using race preferences and stereotypes” or risk federal funding. Although federal judges prohibit the enforcement of the letter, several state leaders already acknowledged compliance with the directive.

And while the the Department of Education chills speech and expression across public schools, the “Improving Education Outcomes by Empowering Parents, States, and Communities” EO simultaneously facilitates the closure of the Department of Education. In doing so, the EO aims to transfer educational authority back to the states and local governments. Without any federal oversight, states will have carte blanche to impose ideological control over public education.

The rhetoric of the Trump Administration and the directives of the Departments of Education and Defense add yet another pressure on states and school districts to censor.

Persistent attacks conflate LGBTQ+ identities as “sexually explicit” and erase LGBTQ+ representation from schools. Since book challenges and removals exploded in 2021, books depicting same-sex and trans identities have been conflated as inherently “sexual.” In sexualizing LGBTQ+ people, swaths of literature have been removed under the premise of removing “inappropriate” or “obscene” books.

Efforts to ban children’s picture books especially illuminate the perniciousness of this attack. We have tracked and reported on how book banners claim that picture books like And Tango Makes Three, Everywhere Babies, The Family Book, Uncle Bobby’s Wedding, or The Purim Superhero are “sexually explicit,” merely for including LGBTQ+ identities. Nationally, there is evidence that extreme conservative groups have continued to circulate reports to schools with these claims, putting pressure – and providing cover – for district leaders to ban books on that basis.

The inclusion of LGBTQ+ books in classroom and school libraries was at the center of a United States Supreme Court case, Mahmoud v. Taylor, which was decided this summer. This case asked whether or not Montgomery County Public Schools in Maryland must allow parental notifications and opt-out if lessons related to gender and sexuality might violate a family’s religious beliefs. During oral arguments, Justice Neil Gorsuch reflected derogatory and misinformed views, often repeated by book banners – when discussing the children’s alphabet book, Pride Puppy, he referred to the presence of a leather jacket as evidence of “bondage” and drag queens as “sex workers.”

The ruling in Mahmoud v. Taylor, to mandate “opt outs” for children whose parents object to LGBTQ+-relevant picture books, forecasts heightened censorship of LGBTQ+ content across school districts nationwide. Rather than offering histories, stories, and books that reflect all students and families, LGBTQ+ stories will be omitted from classrooms. LGBTQ+ students and their families will effectively be denied the freedom to read about themselves and those around them.

One trend has remained constant throughout these four years: Many of these book bans are not due to decisions made in reconsideration policies and processes. Nor are they the direct result of legislation. As noted in PEN America’s first Banned in the USA report, just 4% of books banned in 2021-2022 followed the recommended processes for reconsideration and challenges of books in school districts. For the 2024-2025 school year, vast numbers of the books removed from shelves – pending investigation and permanently banned – came as a result of fear of legislation by school boards, administrators, and educators. Within our Title Level Index, described below, PEN America identified 2,520 book ban cases where the bans were influenced by pressure imposed from the presence or threat of state laws. Out of those, however, only 3% of the bans were triggered by a law requiring the removal of a book – the rest, 97%, came from bans caused by the fear that districts had of being out of compliance, regardless of whether the law was enjoined, hadn’t been passed yet, or didn’t call for the direct removal of books. This functions as a form of “obeying in advance” to anticipated restrictions from the state or administrative authorities, rooted in fear or simply a desire to avoid topics that might be deemed controversial.

State-mandated bans are challenging to quantify but we can estimate the impact on students, and that impact is significant. In 2024, Utah and South Carolina introduced mechanisms to create state-mandated “no read” lists. Tennessee also enacted such a mechanism in 2024; however, it has not been used. Although we cannot verify if every district had copies of the book titles now prohibited in school libraries, we can estimate the scale of restrictions on the freedom to read.

In Utah, to trigger a statewide ban, each of the 18 titles on the state’s “no read” list had to have been previously labeled as “objectionable content” and banned in at least three school districts, or two school districts and five charter schools. There are 41 public school districts in Utah and over 100 public charter schools. Each of Utah’s 18 titles were banned at least three times before being added to the “no read” list (totaling 54 bans), and if each of these 18 titles was available in each of these 41 districts, and subsequently banned, then that would amount to an astonishing 738 bans overall.

In South Carolina, the State Board of Education can decide to ban a book statewide following an appeal by those dissatisfied with a district’s decision to retain a challenged title, or the board can choose to review a title on their own initiative. Once books are listed on the state’s “no read” list, those books become prohibited in all school districts. South Carolina has 81 school districts. That means that the 22 unique titles were banned at least 22 times; but if they were present in every district, and then subsequently banned, that would number 1,782 bans across South Carolina. Taken together, the “no read” lists in South Carolina and Utah may have triggered over 2,500 cases of book bans.

Where there are everyday book bans, there is also everyday resistance. For the first time in our tracking, we catalogued the robust network of advocates fighting back publicly against censorship in defense of the freedom to read. Of the 87 districts impacted by book bans this year, 70 contained evidence of a public response against censorship, whether from individuals, organized groups, or whole communities. Often, it is parents, individual authors, students, educators, librarians, and community members who have been instrumental in creating the most local and direct pressure to return books to shelves. Their resistance is supported by district-specific groups, such as Diversity Awareness Youth Literacy Organization, Marietta in the Middle, and Freedom to Read Coalition of Columbia County. We also tracked state-level groups putting out fires in almost every district in their states, including Florida Freedom to Read Project, Texas Freedom to Read Project, Let Utah Read, Annie’s Foundation, ACLU state affiliates, Families Against Book Bans, and Fight for the First state and local affiliates. Other times, national organizations were publicly outspoken about district-level bans supporting these state and local efforts, such as National Coalition Against Censorship, Authors Against Book Bans, the ACLU, EveryLibrary, American Booksellers for Free Expression, the Author’s Guild, Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, and Military Families for Free Expression. Truly, no one fighting book censorship in schools is doing so alone, and many individuals, coalitions, and organizations are actively pushing back.

A page for the letter “L” in alphabet board book Pride Puppy, one of the titles at the center of Supreme Court case Mahmoud v. Taylor.

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Books Bans by the Numbers

During the 2024-2025 school year, PEN America recorded 6,870 instances of book bans across 23 states and 87 public school districts.

When taken all together, since July 2021, our Index records 22,810 cases of book bans across 45 states and 451 public school districts.

The numbers are only part of the story. As we report on the fourth year of the book banning crisis, it is important to note the limitations of our data collection and reporting:

• First, the numbers documented here represent cases of school book bans reported directly to PEN America and/or covered in the media. As indicated in our methodology, the data presented in this report is not comprehensive, as there are likely additional school book bans that have not been reported. Further, it is important to note that books are also banned within public libraries and prisons, but those do not appear within this index.
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• Second, school districts commonly copy one another, and pull the same book titles from their shelves. Lists of book titles are circulated online by individuals, groups, and even school districts, calling for them to be culled. As a result, commonly banned books from past years simply aren’t available in many school libraries anymore.
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• Third, each school year PEN America’s Index captures a snapshot of books that were removed within that particular year – where a triggering action led to a ban on a particular book title. Although many titles remain banned year after year, PEN America’s Index does not count these cases. Therefore, books removed during previous school years that are still prohibited are not counted within this school year’s Index. Our data instead chronicles the books removed from shelves within the last school year.
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• Lastly, strategic pressure from groups, school districts, and state legislation accelerate book bans, causing spikes where hundreds of books get banned all at once and shelves are emptied. These bans are difficult to count comprehensively, as often the total number of titles affected by these sweeping bans are not reported.
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New This Year:
Title, District, and State Mandated
Ban Indexes

In addition, this year, Banned in the USA also includes three Indexes of School Book Bans – the Title-Level Index, as released for the past four years, the District-Level Index, and the State-Mandated Bans Index.t

1. Title-Level Index: This index lists all titles banned within school districts, as collected by PEN America, and is most similar to data presented in previous years.
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2. District-Level Index: This index presents data on book bans by district, including the total number of books banned, sources of pressure to ban books, and pushback against book bans at the district level where it can be identified. While similar to the Title-Level Index, this Index includes some districts for which information on specific titles banned was not publicly available, but where the total number of banned books and/ or an official acknowledgement that books were removed was documented.
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3. State-Mandated Bans Index: This Index captures an unprecedented phenomenon in the book banning crisis – the removal of specific books from all public schools statewide due to state policies in Utah and South Carolina. As described above, these policies, enacted in 2024, introduced mechanisms to create state-mandated “no read” lists. Tennessee is the third state that enacted such a mechanism in 2024; however, it has not yet been reported as used. For this category of state-level book bans, PEN America cannot verify if every district had a copy of the books that are now prohibited in school libraries, and therefore we do not include these bans within our title- and district-level indexes.

Together, these three Indexes demonstrate the variety of ways in which books are today being banned in school districts – in some cases because of state legislative mandates far beyond local districts’ control. These Indexes also illustrate the shocking enormity of the book banning crisis’ effect on unique book titles, authors and illustrators, students, parents, schools and school districts.
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Most Banned Titles

No title is safe as long as book banning efforts continue. This 2024-2025 school year, book bans affected 3,752 unique titles in 87 school districts nationwide. Some types of books are targeted for removal because of their content; but the climate of censorship that has spread in schools has impacted a wide array of titles written for all sorts of audiences. Access to literature prepares our youth to confront the real world, offering a window into experiences otherwise unknown to them. However, diverse ideas and stories featuring protagonists from historically marginalized identities are often the first topics targeted by censors.

As lists of titles to remove continue to be circulated online, greater restrictions are implemented at the local and state levels, censorship rises, and students’ rights are violated.
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Where the Book Bans are Happening

During the 2024-2025 school year, our Index of School Book Bans documented bans in 87 public school districts and 23 states.

Florida led the nation with 2,304 instances of book bans for the 2024-2025 school year, owing to the passage of multiple vague laws, direct pressure from local groups and elected officials, and threats to educators’ professional licenses if they fail to comply. In holding the state accountable for censorship in their public schools, Florida Freedom to Read Project maintains an extensive system for tracking and reporting book bans, offering a blueprint for pushing back against censorship. As stated above, where there is everyday banning, there is everyday resistance.

2024-2025 Instances of School Book Bans by State

Overall, in the course of the last four school years, book bans occurred in 45 states and 451 public school districts.

No school library will be left untouched if local and state policies and pressures continue to foster a climate of censorship. In fact, the magnified number of book ban instances in these states is largely due to pressure campaigns by censorship-minded groups and individuals in local districts coupled with emerging state legislation. The chilled environment enables attacks on freedom of speech and our democracy to persist.
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Authors and Illustrators Impacted

The damage caused by book bans doesn’t stop at the infringement of students’ free speech rights and restrictions to the freedom to read. In their wake, book bans also leave a detrimental mark on thousands of creative people in the literary world. Throughout the 2024-2025 school year, book bans affected the works of almost 2,600 artists, including 2,308 authors, 243 illustrators and 38 translators.

As with books, a subset of authors are more susceptible to book bans than others. The majority of the authors whose books are overwhelmingly targeted often explore themes with race and racism, gender identity and sexuality, or depict sexual violence in their work. During the 2024-2025 school year, the works of the ten most commonly banned authors account for 13% of all book ban instances.

Several of these authors have penned multiple titles and been branded with a “Scarlet Letter” – a phenomenon dubbed by PEN America where a ban on one title from a specific author is followed by efforts to ban their entire collection. Book bans leave authors at increased financial risk due to a reduction in school visits or events, and the potential subsequent impact on their future book sales. Some authors have reported the emotional impacts of these book bans on their creativity, citing concerns about potential blowback to future works, which cause them to feel the need to self-censor. In this way, the book banning campaign has had an impact that ranges far beyond the specific titles and school districts, ultimately leaving many readers without access to current stories, and jeopardizing the stories yet to be imagined by these creators.
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Takeaways

This year’s report is underlaid by urgency as campaigns, directives, and laws impelling censorship stretch across districts and states, and – more recently – are adopted by the Trump Administration and other federal agencies. In examining the fourth year of the book banning crisis, we note the following takeaways:

1. The campaign to censor books is increasingly routine as individuals and boards capitulate to rapidly expanding pressures to remove books. In 2021, the book banning crisis was mostly centered around school boards as special-interest groups and individuals lobbied school board members to remove books based on the content and identities represented in certain titles. Over the last several years, censorship pressures have expanded and escalated, taking on different forms. State legislatures passed laws restricting educational materials and library books. State superintendents or departments of education issued directives to schools, causing confusion, and called out school leaders and librarians to remove educational materials. Elected leaders issued lists of books containing “explicit” material, demanding schools remove them. Groups made accusations of “porn in schools” to police and sheriffs departments, creating another form of pressure locally to ban certain titles. School districts have started issuing preemptive bans through “do not buy” lists, barring titles from ever entering their libraries. Administrators find it safer to remove a book in the face of pressure than fight for its belonging on library shelves, and educators and librarians admit to omitting books that may be objectionable.From a birds’ eye view, school districts today are surrounded by multiple and persistent local, state, and now federal pressures to ban books, with diminishing reasons not to. The result is a kind of everyday banning – the normalization and routinization of censorship as an expected part of public education in many parts of the country. Opposing this will no longer take just counter-efforts to any one of these threats; it will require a similarly committed effort, rooted in recognition of the fundamental right to read.
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2. Book bans harm public school systems and restrict education. Book bans are the result of coordinated campaigns by individuals and groups, some of whom harbor homophobic, white supremacist, and Christian nationalist views. The onslaught of these campaigns upon public schools is an attack on the very purpose of public education – to educate all students, to generate empathy and understanding for an informed citizenry, and to serve as a great equalizer for students from all backgrounds.Persistent book ban campaigns undermine the time available for educators to dedicate to quality instruction and often can subject them to harassment and vitriol. It means educators and librarians must spend greater hours cataloging books and dedicate more administrative time overseeing processes that comply with vague legislation. It also means that districts are accruing significant legal costs to navigate lawsuits that seek to protect the civil rights of students and enforce constitutional protections and are facing burdensome demands on educators to increase transparency and provide parents with alternative options.Book bans are reported to decrease students’ engagement in reading, discourage students’ critical thinking, and interfere with a teacher’s ability to teach. Book bans and other efforts to limit and restrict education also strain systems that are already overwhelmed, as schools face teacher shortages, funding cuts, chronic absenteeism, and ongoing learning loss exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. The escalation of the attacks on books has detrimental impacts on the state of public education writ large.Our public school system is foundational for free expression and for the rich exchange of information and ideas. School libraries are essential in supporting voluntary inquiry and have been defended as necessary places free from content restrictions and ideological control. And much like public libraries and other public institutions, the goal of public education is to serve everyone – equally and fairly. In sowing chaos across public education, the book banners and ideologues have laid bare their fear – namely, the fear of a more just, informed, and equitable populace.
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3. Book bans are a bellwether as censorship spreads within and beyond library shelves. During the 2024-2025 school year, in addition to targeting books for removal, censors have mobilized against a suite of other educational materials and events.Book fairs, book donations, and even scholarships aimed at supporting public education have been challenged. One of the most ironic examples is Lynchburg City Schools’ recall of “Free Speech Handbook: A Practical Framework For Understanding Our Free Speech Protections,” in August. After copies of the book were donated to elementary school students by the Virginia Education Foundation, school leaders requested families return them for containing alleged “adult satire.”Textbooks and curricula are also being challenged for many of the same topics that have been targeted for banning. In Colorado, despite a teachers’ committee’s recommendation in Mesa County Valley District to include “The Colorado Story” as part of their history curriculum, the school board vetoed the decision, citing concerns about mentions of the Black Lives Matter movement as well as negative portrayals of historical figures such as Christopher Columbus. In Florida, a biology textbook was formally challenged by multiple residents due to concerns over sections on climate change, evolution, COVID-19, and masking.These efforts to reject educational materials are illustrative of what ideological censors want to actually destroy: educational climates that allow access to critical historical narratives, the frontiers of contemporary science, and a diverse set of ideas that encourage students to learn to think critically. As PEN America has cautioned previously, the result of these efforts to police public education will inevitably narrow open inquiry and what young people learn about the world, creating a “recipe for lowest-common-denominator curricula” which puts “the avoidance of controversy ahead of the imperative of a broad and challenging education.”
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Conclusion

“Everyday Banning” is a particularly apt phrase in the fourth year of the school book ban crisis. The climate of bans is no longer new, but something that families, educators, and all of us have become conditioned to expect as part of the U.S. education system. Book challenges and bracing for parental criticism has become as routine as preparing a syllabus or checking books in and out of the library. While most acute in a state like Florida, state laws, local policy shifts, federal policy changes, and continued attacks from conservative groups have placed extreme pressure on school district leaders to err on the side of censorship. In many parts of the country, librarians, educators, and administrators now expect lists of challenges to “objectionable” titles as an inevitability. These titles, falsely deemed “harmful” or “inappropriate,” far too often target marginalized groups and groups historically under-represented in public school library collections. Eroding students’ right to receive information about their world, their histories and identities, and their own bodies, will inevitably allow a culture of censorship to fester, impoverishing students’ educational opportunities.

It is well known that censorship can be a slippery slope and that banning “just one book” will never appease coordinated efforts to remove certain topics, ideas, and identities from public schools. As Laura Numeroff and Felicia Bond warned us in their book, If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, those making demands will always want more. Today’s ideological censors feed not on the number of books banned, but on the ideas and people contained within these books’ pages. Banning books with trans protagonists like Call Me Max by Kyle Lukoff will never be enough, because there will always be trans stories and students. Likewise, banning Dear Martin by Nic Stone will never satisfy book banners because there will be more stories about the experiences of Black people in the U.S. and of the impact of racism on the lives of young people. It’s not about the censorship of any one book – it’s about total control of the story.

“My job is to bear witness to the reality of their lives.” Jason Reynolds, award winning author of books for children and young adults said this when talking on the Daily Show in 2024. He continued speaking directly to students, “Your life, as it exists today, is a life that matters enough to be written about.” That is the extraordinary job of the literature being banned today. Stories that reflect the lives, voices and imaginations of young people are being taken from them at the very moment when they are learning to assert their right to access information, their right to speech, and their right to explore the world.

But there is reason to hope as local and state organizing and awareness-raising put pressure on campaigns to ban books and uplift the need to protect and defend the freedom to read.

We owe it to them, our communities, and ourselves to fight censorship wherever and whenever we see it. This can be done by messaging your state and Congressional representatives in support for the right to read, urging elected leaders to pass legislation that protects books, schools, libraries, and librarians, speaking out on October 11 for Let Freedom Read Day – and then continuing to speak out, or reaching out to a broad coalition of authors, students, and advocacy organizations to see how you can help us fight the good fight.

“Never before” only turns into “no more” if we make the constant, consistent choice to fight for our democracy and the bedrock institutions within it – public schools, public libraries, and more – that uphold free expression principles, including the freedom to read and exchange books, stories, ideas, histories, and information.
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Acknowledgements

This report was written by the Freedom to Read Program experts Sabrina Baêta, senior program manager; Tasslyn Magnusson, PhD, senior advisor; Madison Markham, program coordinator; and Yuliana Tamayo Latorre, program assistant. The report was reviewed and edited by Kasey Meehan, Freedom to Read program director, and Jonathan Friedman, Sy Syms managing director, U.S. Free Expression Programs.

This report is informed by our Indexes of School Book Bans which is not possible without support from several PEN America colleagues and external consultants. Critical support for data collection and analysis was provided by consultant Sanobar Chagani and PEN America’s Daniel Cruz. Support for legislative analysis was provided by Laura Benitez, state policy manager.

Geraldine Baum, chief communications officer, oversaw production of the report and Suzanne Trimel and Lisa Tolin supported its release. We thank the entire Communications team at PEN America for their support of this work.

PEN America is grateful for support from the Endeavor Foundation, Henry Luce Foundation, and the Long Ridge Foundation, which made this report possible. We also thank key partners in this work, including the Florida Freedom to Read Project, the Texas Freedom to Read Project, Annie’s Foundation, and Let Utah Read; as well as the contributions of the Censorship News Reports from Kelly Jensen at Book Riot.

Finally, we extend our gratitude to the many authors, teachers, librarians, parents, students, and citizens who are fighting book bans, speaking out in their communities, and raising attention to these issues. We are proud to stand with you in defending the freedom to read.
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Pair this with Fight Book Bans: Tools for fighting book bans
and resisting censorship.

Share this post, to keep other champions of intellectual freedom
up to date in the fight against censorship and book bans!

And, be sure to visit PEN America for more ideas on
how to get involved during Banned Books Week…
or any other week.
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#fight book bans      #Banned Books Week     #banned books      #on censorship       #book banning

A
ll you educators out there, have a gander at our discussion guides! To make your life easier, we put them in one convenient spot.

..

All American Boys by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

Internment by Samira Ahmed

Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut

Stop Bullying: A Discussion Guide for using books as a tool to address bullying

The Autobiography of Malcolm X as told to Alex Haley

The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger

The Color Purple by Alice Walker

The Crucible by Arthur Miller

The Giver by Lois Lowry

The Lottery by Shirley Jackson

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum

Image: Photo by Tom Hermans on Unsplash

This piece from guest essayist Sarah Bland speaks to the necessity of self-care for teachers navigating this era of extreme book banning.

Here at This Book is Banned, we talk a lot about how book banning effects students. What they miss out on when books about diverse characters, and histories of marginalized communities are removed from classrooms and libraries. The holes in curriculums created by the removal of books that talk about difficult moments in American history.

We’ve also talked about the threats of fines or jail time levied at educators who make banned books available to students. To say nothing of Project 2025’s threat to register them as sex offenders. And let’s not forget the doxxing, shunning, and threats of physical violence more than one educator has experienced over the last several years.

And now, guest essayist Sarah Bland, an educator, writer, and wellness advocate, talks about self-care for teachers navigating this era of extreme book banning.

T
he power of books about diversity (like the ones being banned from classrooms and libraries these days), is that they present narratives that are different from the dominant cultural narratives. More specifically, books are often banned because they tell stories of what it is like to live in bodies or have bodily experiences that are outside of the narrow boxes that dominant culture deems acceptable. Essentially, the practice of banning books is a way not just to control ideas, but to control, to manage, how and what we share about bodies.

Peeling back this layer, it is easy to see the subtext: that bodies are dangerous. And this way of thinking, or consciousness, doesn’t just happen on the shelves of libraries or classrooms—it happens within us. The same cultural narratives that silence certain books also teach us how to silence parts of ourselves.

Whether from personality, neurological wiring, trauma, or cultural conditioning, I adopted a similar form of this story early in life: that the mind is more important than the body. For years, the narrative of mind-over-body felt not only dominant but singular, the only possible way of thinking about intelligence and my work in the world. And because of that, I learned to channel almost all of my energy into my head. I could read for hours, write endlessly, and lose myself in creating. I loved this about myself, and it was probably a big reason I was drawn to the teaching profession (specifically, teaching high school English!).

But there was a cost. While my mind moved, I ignored my body. I trained myself to push through exhaustion, skip meals, and silence physical needs so I could “get one more thing done.” Productivity was my priority, not presence. When I was stressed—which was often—I distracted my mind with books, shows, or a couple of drinks, while my body carried the weight of unprocessed tension. My shoulders ached, my teeth clenched, my gut tightened, but I didn’t listen. I thought my job was to control my body, not to hear it.

This pattern worked—well enough. I was anxious, busy, reactive, and always a little on edge, but it kept me surviving as a teacher in a demanding system. Until it didn’t.

The breaking point came during a banned book controversy in my own classroom. Unlike the usual stress of grading or managing tasks, this was a perfect storm: my inner critic listing all of the things I could have done differently, shame and self-doubt creeping in, anger at parents who challenged texts on policing and immigrant stories, frustration with the district’s performative support, and the sheer exhaustion of new motherhood layered on top. The stress felt unrelenting.

Just as banned books disrupt cultural stories of what it means to live in particular intersectional identities, this controversy disrupted my personal story of the mind-body split. I could no longer ignore that my body was saturated with stress even when my mind tried to reason through it. Sleepless nights, hyper-planning, impatience, reactivity—these weren’t just “mental” problems. They were signs of a body stuck in the stress cycle, caught in fight, flight, and freeze without relief.

I didn’t heal this overnight. In fact, it took years of tumbling between survival states before I began to recognize the depth of my mind-body disconnect. It was in an hour-long guided meditation that I could finally listen to what my body was telling me. For the first time, I was still enough to hear what my body had been saying all along. That moment was the beginning of a new narrative—one of integration rather than hierarchy.

This narrative isn’t unique to me. It’s deeply rooted in Indigenous traditions, somatic healing, Ayurveda, and Shamanic practices, and echoed in contemporary works like Bessel van der Kolk’s The Body Keeps the Score, Hillary McBride’s The Wisdom of Your Body, and Tricia Hersey’s Rest is Resistance. Each of these reminds us that healing and wholeness come when mind and body work together.

For me, learning the science of the stress cycle was a crucial step. A.Z. Reznick’s framework—resting state, tension and strain, response, and relief—helped me see why I stayed stuck in reactivity. Emily and Amelia Nagoski’s research showed me how to move through it: exercise that raises the heart rate, tightening and releasing muscles, a 20-second hug, deep rest. These practices gave my body pathways back to safety and relief.

But awareness alone wasn’t enough. Real change came when I layered this with what Pooja Lakshmin calls “real self-care”:

• Setting and enforcing boundaries
• Practicing self-compassion
• Aligning with my values
• Asserting my power

This kind of self-care wasn’t about buying products to mask symptoms—it was about creating conditions that supported real healing. And as I practiced, something surprising happened: caring for my own mind and body didn’t diminish my ability to care for students. It expanded it. I felt more patient, more generous, more attuned. By trusting my own body and emotions, I became more available to listen and adapt in the classroom.

Similarly, the stories in banned books often do the same: these stories don’t diminish our abilities to connect with each other, they expand our abilities to connect.

And finally, I learned that none of this work can be done alone. Teaching in this era of extreme book banning requires community—people who reflect compassion back to us, who help us hear our inner voice, who hold us when the fear and stress feel too heavy. Without support, it’s too easy to default back into survival mode.

So what does this all mean for teachers? It means that caring for ourselves is not optional—it is essential to the work of teaching and advocating for diverse stories. To hold space for marginalized narratives, we must also hold space for our own. Completing the stress cycle, practicing real self-care, and cultivating support systems aren’t luxuries; they are the conditions that make teaching banned books sustainable.

Reading and teaching banned books show us what it means to challenge dominant narratives and imagine fuller, richer ways of being human. Our bodies teach us the same. When we listen, we don’t need the status quo to provide false safety. We can imagine new, juicier possibilities of life—for ourselves, for our students, for our communities.

This is the power of banned books, and the power of embodied teaching. They both invite us to step out of a consciousness of hierarchy and control (both internally and externally) and to live in the wholeness of our humanity—and in doing so, to help co-create a world that liberates us all.

Essayist bio:

Sarah Bland is an educator, writer, and wellness advocate with over a decade of teaching experience in diverse classroom settings. She holds two degrees in English, one with an emphasis on Teaching Writing from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville and is a certified mindfulness meditation instructor. She has dedicated her career to helping students and fellow educators cultivate creativity, reflection, and personal growth.

Sarah is the owner and creator of Enter Peace Print and Wellness Collective. And, she integrates mindfulness and holistic wellness practices into her writing workshops, helping participants slow down, tune into their inner voice, and approach writing with focus and intention. Her approach supports both the creative process and personal growth, creating a space where writers feel encouraged, centered, and inspired.

Through her workshops, Sarah guides writers to connect with their unique voices, build consistent writing habits, and gain the confidence to share their work with clarity and purpose—all while cultivating calm, awareness, and presence at every step of the journey.

Images:

Self-Care for Teachers navigating this era of extreme Book Banning:  Photo by Tasha Jolley on Unsplash

This pattern worked well enough…   Until it didn’t: Photo by Mubariz Mehdizadeh on Unsplash

Integration rather than hierarchy:   Photo by Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash

Teaching in this era requires community:  Photo by Blaz Photo on Unsplash

#Banned Books       #On Censorship      #Celebrations      #Right to Read Day

Endnotes:

[1] Eugenios, Jillian. “The next chapter in record U.S. book bans? ‘Soft censorship.’” NBC News. September 27, 2024. https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-news/soft-book-bans-censorship-lgbtq-race-rcna172855

T
he Bluest Eye, written by Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison, was inspired by a conversation with a childhood friend just as the two young Black girls were entering elementary school. With sorrow in her voice, Morrison’s friend wished to have blue eyes rather than the brown ones she was born with.[1]

Morrison came to realize that “implicit in her [friend’s] desire was racial self-loathing.”[2] And, as she explicitly states in the book’s forward, the focus of The Bluest Eye is:

How something as grotesque as the demonization of an entire race could take root inside the most delicate member of society: a child; the most vulnerable member: a female.[3]

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The Bluest Eye is a veritable case study in why books about diverse characters (like those that continue to be targeted for banning) are so important. And, why making sure they remain available is vital to a healthy society.

During her speech at the Nobel Banquet, Morrison spoke of future laureates. And how their “voices bespeak civilizations gone and yet to be; the precipice from which their imaginations gaze will rivet us; they do not blink nor turn away.”[4]

Morrison doesn’t blink or turn away either in her examination of the potentially disabling effects that result from racial self-loathing, from “accepting rejection as legitimate, as self-evident.”[5]

In exploring the social and domestic aggression that could destroy a child psychologically, Morrison formulated a series of rejections – some routine, some exceptional, and some downright monstrous.[6]

And, it’s these scenarios, and the language Morrison uses to communicate how damaging internalized racism can be that are cited as reasons for the book’s frequent bannings.[7]

In an effort to dramatize the devastation that even casual racial contempt can cause, Morrison chose a unique and extreme situation rather than a representative one.

Despite the singular nature of Pecola’s life, however, Morrison considered aspects of her “woundability” to be lodged in all young girls.[8]

As Morrison also notes, centering the novel on such a vulnerable and fragile character as Pecola required a delicate balance. Otherwise, readers would be led into “the comfort of pitying her, rather than into an interrogation of themselves” regarding the racial climate and demonization that ultimately crushes her.[9]

The first words uttered by Morrison’s narrator Claudia MacTeer in her telling of Pecola’s story are, “quiet as it’s kept, there were no marigolds in the fall of 1941.” This opening statement is significant because marigolds are associated with optimism, joy, and good luck. They often appear in literature as symbols of “growth, resilience, and the ability to thrive in adversity.”[10]

At first, Claudia and her sister Freida thought their seeds were the only ones that didn’t sprout. Planting them was their attempt at a form of “magic,” in the hope of manifesting a positive outcome for the circumstances Pecola found herself in as a result of the abusive and unnatural nature of her situation.[11]

Claudia blamed herself for the seeds’ failure to grow. Like Frieda said, she must have planted them too deep. But such was not the case – nobody’s seeds germinated. As Claudia also notes, it never occurred to them “that the earth itself might have been unyielding.”[12] 

It speaks volumes that The Bluest Eye’s main character is named for the daughter in the film Imitation of Life, a film that addresses the cultural bias of whiteness as the standard for beauty and acceptability.

Significantly, the origin of Pecola’s name is brought to the reader’s attention by Maureen Peal, a light-skinned classmate – one Claudia describes as “a high-yellow dream child.”[14]

Maureen embodies the colorism that occurs within the Black community, the result of a prevalent “whiter is better” cultural bias.

She enchanted the entire school. When teachers called on her, they smiled encouragingly. Black boys didn’t trip her in the halls; white boys didn’t stone her, white girls didn’t suck their teeth when she was assigned to be their work partners; black girls stepped aside when she wanted to use the sink in the girls’ toilet, and their eyes genuflected under sliding lids.[15]

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And Maureen was aware that she was at the privileged end of this artificial beauty spectrum. When Claudia confronts her with the phrase, “you think you so cute” during a clash revolving around stereotypes of blackness and acceptability, Maureen responds with:

I am cute!

And you ugly! Black and ugly black e mos. I am cute! [16]

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Claudia describes the effect such colorism has on a young psyche:

We were sinking under the wisdom, accuracy, and relevance of Maureen’s last words. If she was cute—and if anything could be believed, she was—then we were not. And what did that mean? We were lesser. Nicer, brighter, but still lesser.[17]

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Lesser…  like the dandelions that lined Garden Avenue on Pecola’s way to the grocery store. She recognized the beauty in their bright yellow heads, however, wondering why people call them weeds, and see them as something to be eradicated from a “nice” yard.

There’s science confirming the negative psychological effects on Black children when “society says it is better to be white,” as Dr. Kenneth B. Clark put it. It’s a form of minority stress, psycho-social stress caused by chronic exposure to the social stresses minority individuals face due to their stigmatized status. Minority stress differs from general stress – the kind all of us may experience – because it is born of stigma and prejudice.[18] Those like the emotions Claudia endures, embodied in her experience with Maureen.

In the 1930’s, social and developmental psychologists Dr. Clark and his wife Mamie Phipps Clark conducted a series of techniques designed to “investigate the development of racial identification and preference” in African-American children.[19] Among them, was the iconic “Doll Study,” which was cited in the Supreme Court’s decision to end school segregation.[20]

As the Clarks’ published study indicates, 253 African-American children between the ages of three and seven were:

presented with four dolls identical in every respect save skin color. Two of these dolls were brown with black hair and two were white with yellow hair. In the experimental situation these dolls were unclothed except for white diapers. The position of the head, hands, and legs on all the dolls was the same. [21]

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The children were asked to respond to a series of questions by choosing one of the dolls and giving it to the experimenter. Approximately two-thirds of the children indicated they liked the white doll “best,” or that they would prefer to play with the white doll. And that the white doll is a “nice doll.”[22]

The other side of the proverbial coin reveals an accompanying negative attitude toward the brown doll. Less than forty percent of the children thought the brown doll had a “nice color.” With a significant majority indicating that the brown doll “looks bad.”[23]

Claudia’s observation about her Christmas gift is clearly an allusion to the Clarks’ Doll Study, remarking that “adults, older girls, shops, magazines, newspapers, window signs—all the world had agreed that a blue-eyed, yellow-haired, pink-skinned doll was what every girl child treasured.”[24]

In addition to the doll technique, the children in the Clarks’s study were given a Coloring test. Each child was given a sheet of paper with the “outline drawings of a leaf, an apple, an orange, a mouse, a boy, and a girl.”[25]  They also received a box of crayons containing the usual assortment, which included “brown, black, white, and tan.”[26]

To establish that there was a stable concept of the relationship of color to object, the children were first asked to color the objects and the mouse. If the child passed this portion of the test, they were directed to color the figure of the child the same gender as were, the one that represented them. And, they should color the figure the same color they were.

The children were then asked to color the remaining figure the color that they like little boys (or girls) to be.

Like the Doll Study, this test revealed patterns indicating the racial preferences and identification of these children. In the main, responses fell into three categories: “reality responses, phantasy responses, and irrelevant or escape responses.”[27]

Reality responses are precisely what it sounds like. These children colored the outline figure of a child with a color very similar to their own. Phantasy responses were those where the child colored their representation in a color significantly different from their own skin color.

Then there’s the irrelevant or escape responses. These occurred when a child (who had colored the leaf, apple, orange, and mouse in realistic colors) colored their own representation or preference “in a bizarre fashion” – purple, green, or red, for example.[28]

And, unlike the children in the realistic and phantasy categories who colored themselves with painstaking care, those with escape responses engaged in “marked random scribbling” when asked to color themselves.[29]

Pecola’s “madness” at the end of the book, her belief that she had attained blue eyes is  obviously an escape response of the utmost degree.[30]

Though Pecola’s situation was intentionally extreme, as Morrison states in the book’s forward, she didn’t want to “dehumanize the characters who trashed Pecola and contributed to her collapse.”[31] Bearing this in mind, The Bluest Eye is clearly more than a story of how internalized racism affected a single child. It’s a study of the damaging effects internalized racism has on entire communities.

We’ve already met Maureen— who is light-skinned, and as such, benefits from the “whiteness is better” system.

Then there are people like Geraldine, “thin brown girls who have looked long at hollyhocks in the backyards… and like hollyhocks they are narrow, tall, and still.”[32]

It’s significant to note that hollyhocks represent ambition, fertility, and abundance.[33] And, unlike the marigolds, they are blooming.

The defining characteristic of such girls is their careful efforts to, as Morrison puts it:

Get rid of the funkiness. The dreadful funkiness of passion, the funkiness of nature, the funkiness of the wide range of human emotions. Wherever it erupts, this Funk, they wipe it away; where it crusts, they dissolve it; wherever it drips, flowers, or clings, they find it and fight it until it dies. They fight this battle all the way to the grave. The laugh that is a little too loud; the enunciation a little too round; the gesture a little too generous. They hold their behind in for fear of a sway too free; when they wear lipstick, they never cover the entire mouth for fear of lips too thick, and they worry, worry, worry about the edges of their [straightened] hair.[34]

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This response to internalized racism is what Dr. Ibram X Kendi refers to as Assimilation –Black individuals (in this case) who strive to keep their blackness in check and conform to white society’s notion of beauty and acceptability.

This “dueling consciousness” may seem to nourish Black pride by demonstrating that Black people are capable of achieving this standard. But, it also cultivates a shame with its implication that there is something behaviorally wrong with Black people… at lease those other Black people.[35]

Such denial of one’s body and culture, attempting to modify nature and one’s heritage, results in Geraldine’s vicious son Junior. He has grown up absorbing his mother’s white upper-middle-class values.[36]

This includes the distinction we continue to hear regarding the difference between “colored people” and “n—-rs.”[37] Morrison undoubtedly chose both words carefully and  intentionally, to make a point about the negative effects of racism.

Geraldine made it clear to Junior in no uncertain terms that he “belonged to the former group.” And by implication, his superiority to and therefore right to bully, the latter group – those she deemed “dirty and loud.”[38]

Morrison describes the Breedloves’ poverty as “traditional and stultifying,” though not unique.[39] Their inability to break out of their situation, however, was ultimately a result of their unshakable belief that they were “relentlessly and aggressively ugly.”[40] In other words, they had completely internalized the anti-Black bias prevalent in society, and accepted the rejection as legitimate, resulting in a powerful sense of self-loathing.

It was as though some mysterious all-knowing master had given each one a cloak of ugliness to wear, and they had each accepted it without question. The master had said, “You are ugly people.” They had looked about themselves and saw nothing to contradict the statement; saw, in fact, support for it leaning at them from every billboard, every movie, every glance. “Yes,” they had said. “You are right.” And they took the ugliness in their hands, threw it as a mantle over them, and went about the world with it. Dealing with it each according to his way.[41]

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Mrs. Breedlove’s internalized ugliness and self-loathing played a fundamental role in her sense of martyrdom. She held her husband Cholly as a model of failure and sin – endured him “like a crown of thorns, and her children like a cross.”[42]

Like a lot of victims of self-loathing, Cholly was violent, and dangerous. His ugliness manifested in behavior, violence directed toward petty things and weak people. As well as a self-indulgence and depravity that “surprised himself – but only himself.”[43]

Pauline was one of the few things abhorrent to Cholly that he could actually touch, and therefore hurt. So, he poured out all his inarticulate rage and thwarted desires on her. By hating Pauline, he could leave himself intact.[44]

Pauline and Cholly started out as a young, loving couple. And, Cholly seemed to relish her company.  They were full of energy when they agreed to marry and go “‘way up north, where Cholly said steel mills were begging for workers.”[45]

As Pauline explains, after they landed in Lorain, Ohio:

Me and Cholly was getting along good then. We come up north; supposed to be more jobs and all. We moved into two rooms up over a furniture store, and I set about housekeeping. Cholly was working at the steel plant, and everything was looking good. I don’t know what all happened. Everything changed. [46]

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But, Pauline’s happiness started to fade as she began to feel lonely and trapped in their two-room apartment. Not only had she lost contact with her roots, she wasn’t used to having so many white people around. And, she goes on to say:

Colored folks few and far between. Northern colored folk was different too. Dicty-like.  No better than whites for meanness. They could make you feel just as no-count, ’cept I didn’t expect it from them. That was the lonesomest time of my life. I ’member looking out them front windows just waiting for Cholly to come home at three o’clock.[47]

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Cholly began to resent her complete dependence on him. They began quarreling about money, and Cholly started to drink:

Cholly commenced to getting meaner and meaner and wanted to fight me all of the time. I give him as good as I got.[48]

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During this period, the only time Pauline was happy was when she was at the movies. But one day as she took a bite of candy from the concession stand, she pulled out a front tooth. That was the straw that broke the camel’s back, as the expression goes, and Pauline Breedlove “settled down to just being ugly” – metaphorically as well as literally.[49] And, the meanness got worse.

Cholly Breedlove:

Unlike Pauline, Cholly had never experienced, or learned to develop, meaningful and healthy relationships. At four days old, his mother abandoned him in a junk heap. And when Cholly was old enough to seek out his father, the rejection came instantly and in no uncertain terms.[50]

His life was shaped by genuine suffering. The result of a myriad of defeats, emasculations, and humiliations like the one exemplified by the white men who forced him to perform sexually for their amusement – during his first teenage sexual experience, no less.[51]

Cholly embodies the sense of anger and reckless abandon that emerges when someone is unable to love or experience dignity. He does whatever makes him feel alive, including sexually abusing his own daughter. This state of mind never ends well, and leaves nothing but devastation in its wake. Though unfortunate, it’s no surprise that Cholly died alone in a workhouse.[52]

He didn’t know how to respond to Pauline’s loneliness. And her complete dependence on him pushed him over the proverbial edge, ever-further into the “model of sin” that facilitated her identity as martyr. This untenable dichotomy resulted in the brutal, physical fights that became the center of their relationship, a pattern of abuse that spilled over onto their children.

Pauline and Cholly Breedlove were among the roughly 8 million African Americans who migrated from the rural South to the urban North and West between the years of approximately 1910 and 1980 in what has come to be known as The Great Migration.

Those who migrated, as Pauline and Cholly had hoped, experienced notable economic benefits. Even after accounting for the higher cost of living in the north, migrators typically increased their earnings by 56% moving Northward. [53]

According to a recent study, however, migrators’ health outcomes typically followed a very different trajectory. Especially concerning mental health disorders, including anxiety, mood, and substance abuse disorders. A recent study indicates that approximately 35% of those who migrated to the North had a lifetime mental health disorder.[54]

Not surprisingly, one explanation for worsened mental health outcomes is a mismatch between the expectations of those who migrated and the reality of living in the North. [55]

The deterioration of the Breedlove’s relationship certainly reflects this scenario.

Pauline is not only uncomfortable being around so many white people, “northern colored folk” were different from the Black people she grew up in the South. They made her feel “no-count” as much as white people did. But, what made it even worse was that she didn’t expect such treatment from other Black people.

Though Pauline and Cholly experienced racism in the South, as indicated above, in the North they faced it pervasively. Not only from the white people she was seeing in overwhelming numbers, but from Black people like Geraldine as well.

Relocating across great distances ruptures the social support systems that were the moderating forces in their lives (although it’s safe to say that Cholly never had much of a support system).

Such a breach also contributes to deteriorating mental health.[56] Pauline was never the gregarious sort. And, due to a deformity in her foot – the result of a rusty nail “that punched clear through” it when she was two years old – she had been insulated in a “cocoon of her family’s spinning.”[57]

When she was old enough, Pauline took over the care of her family’s house. Not only was she good at housekeeping, she enjoyed it. The cleaning and daily chores provided a rhythm to her life and gave it purpose, simultaneously calming and energizing her.[58]

But in the North, when their two-room apartment wasn’t enough to feel like she was making a home, and she began feeling out of place and “no count,” Pauline no longer had the support system she did before.

Pauline describes this period as the “lonesomest” time of her life, without even a cat to talk to. All too often, she found herself sitting in front of the windows just waiting for Cholly to come home from work.[59] And, her dependence on Cholly became too much for him.

We aren’t told how Cholly died in the workhouse. But, studies have also revealed that there was a 62% increase in the rate of cirrhosis among men who relocated to the North during The Great Migration.[60] Bearing this statistic in mind, it’s very likely that cirrhosis was the cause of Cholly’s death.  It’s certainly consistent with his abuse of alcohol – which began as he felt the pressure of Pauline’s dependence, and continued to spiral out of control.

As noted above, The Bluest Eye isn’t simply the story of how internalized racism affected a single child. But, it’s also more than a study of the damaging effects internalized racism has on entire communities.

It’s important to realize that Morrison’s work also documents Claudia’s effective resistance to the racism surrounding her. As well as the development of her understanding of the forces that have destroyed Pecola .[61]

Pecola’s story, and the previously examined scenarios embodied by Pauline, Cholly, and Geraldine are merely the first stage in a framework of progression, of consciousness development. One that echoes the model envisaged by Frantz Fanon that dominated communities undergo in their relationship to the dominant culture.[62]

In the initial stage, as addressed above, the dominated community (in this case Black people) experiences a period of imitating the dominant (in this case white) culture and internalizing its views on social roles and societal standards.[63]

The second phase in this progression occurs when the minority community comes to value the unique characteristics of their identity. And, they protest the societal standards and views that have been imposed upon them by the dominant culture.[64]

Claudia’s reaction to receiving a blue-eyed Baby Doll as a gift for Christmas was a desire “to dismember it.”[65] Her visceral response is clearly a protest against the “whiteness is better” bias that has been imposed upon the Black community.

I could not love it. But I could examine it to see what it was that all the world said was lovable. Break off the tiny fingers, bend the flat feet, loosen the hair, twist the head around, and the thing made one sound—a sound they said was the sweet and plaintive cry “Mama,” but which sounded to me like the bleat of a dying lamb, or, more precisely, our icebox door opening on rusty hinges in July. Remove the cold and stupid eyeball, it would bleat still, “Ahhhhhh,” take off the head, shake out the sawdust, crack the back against the brass bed rail, it would bleat still. The gauze back would split, and I could see the disk with six holes, the secret of the sound. A mere metal roundness.[66]
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What Claudia actually wanted for Christmas wasn’t a tangible item at all. She wished for an experience, one steeped in her heritage and its traditions, a desire consistent with this stage of progression:

‘I want to sit on the low stool in Big Mama’s kitchen with my lap full of lilacs [a symbol of renewal] and listen to Big Papa play his violin for me alone.’ The lowness of the stool made for my body, the security and warmth of Big Mama’s kitchen, the smell of the lilacs, the sound of the music, and, since it would be good to have all of my senses engaged, the taste of a peach, perhaps, afterward.[67]

The final stage in this evolution is one of freedom from internalized racism. It’s grounded in self-discovery, and accompanied by a critical analysis of the dominated community’s own culture.[68]

And the closing pages of The Bluest Eye are precisely that, the now-adult Claudia’s critical analysis of the forces that destroyed Pecola – including the role that the Black community played in that destruction.

Claudia begins this self-reflection by acknowledging that she and Frieda had failed Pecola. And, by recognizing the fact that what they, and the larger Black community generally, had done was to make Pecola their scape goat:

All of our waste which we dumped on her and which she absorbed. And all of our beauty, which was hers first and which she gave to us. All of us—all who knew her—felt so wholesome after we cleaned ourselves on her. We were so beautiful when we stood astride her ugliness. Her simplicity decorated us, her guilt sanctified us, her pain made us glow with health, her awkwardness made us think we had a sense of humor. Her inarticulateness made us believe we were eloquent. Her poverty kept us generous. Even her waking dreams we used—to silence our own nightmares. And she let us, and thereby deserved our contempt. We honed our egos on her, padded our characters with her frailty, and yawned in the fantasy of our strength.[69]
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She came to understand that scapegoating isn’t the answer. It didn’t change the fact that internalized racism was still at work within the psyches of the Black community:

And fantasy it was, for we were not strong, only aggressive; we were not free, merely licensed; we were not compassionate, we were polite; not good, but well behaved. We courted death in order to call ourselves brave, and hid like thieves from life. We substituted good grammar for intellect; we switched habits to simulate maturity; we rearranged lies and called it truth.[70]
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Claudia points out that the proverbial soil had indeed been unyielding, and finally understands that the typical response has been to “acquiesce and say the victim had no right to live.” And, that this is the wrong response.

Her most significant revelation, however, is that Pecola had possessed a beauty of her own all along. But, it was “assassinated” by internalized racism, Pecola’s own as well as that of the larger Black community.[71]

The proverbial light bulb began to flicker. And she seemed to ask herself, as Morrison had done during the 1960s’ reclamation of racial beauty, “why shouldn’t this beauty be taken for granted within the Black community, despite being reviled by others?”[72]

Claudia came to understand that this self-affirming racial beauty is what should be internalized rather than the racism that continues to oppress the Black community. And that is the most productive form of protest and resistance.

As Morrison asserted, this novel sets out to hit the raw nerve of racial contempt. Expose it. Then soothe it, with language that denotes agency.

And, her work does precisely that. As mentioned above, Morrison doesn’t blink or turn away in her examination of the potentially disabling effects that result from racial self-loathing.

The fact that a young girl like Pecola is the victim of this self-loathing, who bears deep psychological scars from the severe nature of her victimization, hits a very raw nerve indeed.

The back-stories Morrison provides for those most responsible for Pecola’s destruction exposes and addresses just how insidious racial contempt and self-loathing is. Not to mention how destructive it is to the larger Black community.

Claudia’s critical analysis of the forces that destroyed Pecola ultimately acts as a balm to soothe the raw nerve of racial contempt and self-loathing. Because in doing so, she discovers a sense of agency.

She realizes that the best form of protest and resistance to a “whiteness is better” culture is to internalize a sense of racial beauty, rather than the self-loathing that has been drilled into the Black community’s heads by a dominating white culture.

Just as Pecola recognizes the beauty in dandelions despite some people seeing them as weeds to be eradicated from “nice” yards.

Beauty, however, as Morrison points out is not simply something to behold; it is something one can do. The Bluest Eye is her effort toward that end, to dispel assumptions of immutable inferiority. But, beauty as an action is something we can all do.

It begins by understanding that the world is a heterogeneous place. Seeing the humanity and beauty in people of all heritages, ethnicities and traditions. And, realizing how destructive it is for the whole of society when one culture establishes itself as the standard for beauty and acceptability.

That’s why The Bluest Eye is such an important and consequential book. Reading it makes us aware of the insidious nature of racial self-loathing. Morrison’s work helps us understand the devastating consequences of homogenous, racially exclusivist representation in our culture. And, it calls upon all of us to self-reflect.

In doing so, Morrison makes it exceedingly clear why books about diverse characters, like the ones that continue to be targeted for banning, are so important. And, why making sure they remain available is vital to a healthy society.

That’s my take on The Bluest Eye, what’s yours?
Check out this Discussion Guide to get you started!
.

Pair this with: 
The Picture of Dorian Gray: The Story of a Closeted Psyche.

Endnotes:

[1] Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Random House, 1970. Pg XI

[2] Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Random House, 1970. Pg XI

[3] Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Random House, 1970. Pg XI.

[4] Toni Morrison. Nobel Prize Banquet Speech. December 10, 1993.
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1993/morrison/speech/

[5] Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Random House, 1970. Pg X

[6] Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Random House, 1970. Pg XII

[7]  “Banned: The Bluest Eye.” American Experience. PBS.org
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/banned-bluest-eye/

[8] Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Random House, 1970. Pg XII

[9] Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Random House, 1970. Pg XII

[10] Gaumond, Andrew. “Marigold Flower Meaning, Symbolism, and Folklore.”  Petal Republic. September 11, 2024.
https://www.petalrepublic.com/marigold-flower-meaning/

[11] Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Random House, 1970. Pg 5

[12] Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Random House, 1970. Pg 6.

[13] Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Random House, 1970. Pg 3-4.

[14] Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Random House, 1970. Pg 62.

[15] Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Random House, 1970. Pg 62.

[16] Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Random House, 1970. Pg 73.

[17] Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Random House, 1970. Pg 74.

[18] “Black is Beautiful: The Doll Study and Racial Preferences and Perceptions.” The Legacy of Dr. Kenneth B. Clark. CUNY Academic Commons. https://kennethclark.commons.gc.cuny.edu/the-doll-study/

“Minority stress.” APA Dictionary of Psychology. American Psychology Association.

[19] Kenneth B. Clark and Mamie P. Clark. “Emotional Factors in Racial Identification and Preference in Negro Children.” The Journal of Negro Education. Volume 19, Number 3 (Summer, 1950), Pg 341.

“Kenneth and Mamie Clark Doll.” Brown v Board of Education. National Historical Park Kansas.
https://www.nps.gov/brvb/learn/historyculture/clarkdoll.htm

[20] “Kenneth Bancroft Clark.” Library of Congress.
https://guides.loc.gov/african-american-innovation/kenneth-bancroft-clark

“Black is Beautiful: The Doll Study and Racial Preferences and Perceptions.” The Legacy of Dr. Kenneth B. Clark. City University of New York Academic Commons. https://kennethclark.commons.gc.cuny.edu/the-doll-study/

[21] Kenneth B. Clark and Mamie P. Clark. “Racial Identification and Preference in Negro Children.” Readings in Social Psychology. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston. Edited by E. L. Hartley.

[22] Kenneth B. Clark and Mamie P. Clark. “Racial Identification and Preference in Negro Children.” Readings in Social Psychology. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston. Edited by E. L. Hartley. Pg 169.

[23] Kenneth B. Clark and Mamie P. Clark. “Racial Identification and Preference in Negro Children.” Readings in Social Psychology. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston. Edited by E. L. Hartley. Pg 175.

[24] Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Random House, 1970. Pg 19-20

[25] Kenneth B. Clark and Mamie P. Clark. “Emotional Factors in Racial Identification and Preference in Negro Children.” The Journal of Negro Education Volume 19, Number 3. Pg 342.

[26] Kenneth B. Clark and Mamie P. Clark. “Emotional Factors in Racial Identification and Preference in Negro Children.” The Journal of Negro Education Volume 19, Number 3. Pg 342.

[27] Kenneth B. Clark and Mamie P. Clark. “Emotional Factors in Racial Identification and Preference in Negro Children.” The Journal of Negro Education Volume 19, Number 3. Pg 342.

[28] Kenneth B. Clark and Mamie P. Clark. “Emotional Factors in Racial Identification and Preference in Negro Children.” The Journal of Negro Education Volume 19, Number 3. Pg 342.

[29] Kenneth B. Clark and Mamie P. Clark. “Emotional Factors in Racial Identification and Preference in Negro Children.” The Journal of Negro Education Volume 19, Number 3. Pg 343.

[30] Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Random House, 1970. Pg 206.

[31] Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Random House, 1970. Pg XI.

[32] Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Random House, 1970. Pg 82.

[33] Gaumond, Andrew. “The Story of Hollyhock Flowers: Symbolism and Folklore.” Petal Republic.
https://www.petalrepublic.com/hollyhock-flower-meaning/

[34] Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Random House, 1970. Pg 83.

[35] Kendi, Ibram X. How to be an Antiracist. New York: One World, 2003. Pg 37.

[36] Nardi,, Paola A. “’They Lived There because They Were Poor and Black’: Spatial Injustice in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye.” Journal of African American Studies. Published online November 4, 2022. Pg 409.

[37] Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Random House, 1970. Pg 87.

[38] Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Random House, 1970. Pg 87.

[39] Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Random House, 1970. Pg 38.

[40] Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Random House, 1970. Pg 39.

[41] Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Random House, 1970. Pg 39.

[42] Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Random House, 1970. Pg 127.

[43] Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Random House, 1970. Pg 38, 42.

[44] Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Random House, 1970. Pg 42.

[45] Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Random House, 1970. Pg 116.

[46] Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Random House, 1970. Pg 117.

[47] Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Random House, 1970. Pg 117.

[48] Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Random House, 1970. Pg 117.

[49] Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Random House, 1970. Pg 123.

[50] Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Random House, 1970. Pg 157.

[51]  Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Random House, 1970. Pg 42.

[52] Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Random House, 1970. Pg 205.

[53] Ecilia Vu, et al. “The mental health toll of the Great Migration: a comparison of mental health outcomes among descendants of African American migrators.” Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology. Volume 59 (2024), Pg 1497.

[54] Ecilia Vu, et al. “The mental health toll of the Great Migration: a comparison of mental health outcomes among descendants of African American migrators.” Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology. Volume 59 (2024), Pg 1500.

[55] Ecilia Vu, et al. “The mental health toll of the Great Migration: a comparison of mental health outcomes among descendants of African American migrators.” Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology. Volume 59 (2024), Pg 1502

[56] Ecilia Vu, et al. “The mental health toll of the Great Migration: a comparison of mental health outcomes among descendants of African American migrators.” Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology. Volume 59 (2024), Pg 1502.

Dan A. Black, et al. “The Impact of the Great Migration on Mortality of African Americans: Evidence from the Deep South.” American Economic Review.

[57] Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Random House, 1970. Pg 111

[58] Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Random House, 1970. Pg 112

[59] Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Random House, 1970. Pg 117

[60] “Dan A. Black, et al. “The Impact of the Great Migration on Mortality of African Americans: Evidence from the Deep South.” American Economic Review.

[61] “White Oppression and Black Resistance in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye.” International Journal of English and Cultural Studies
Vol. 2, No. 1; May 2019. Pg 23.

[62] White Oppression and Black Resistance in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye.” International Journal of English and Cultural Studies
Vol. 2, No. 1; May 2019. Pg 21.

Fanon, Frantz. The Wretched of the Earth. Translated from the French by Richard Philcox. New York: Grove Press, 1967.
https://dn790007.ca.archive.org/0/items/the-wretched-of-the-earth/The%20Wretched%20Of%20The%20Earth.pdf

[63] Showalter, Elaine. “The Female Tradition.” A Literature of Their Own: British Women Novelists from Bronte to Lessing. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1977. Pg 13

[64] Showalter, Elaine. “The Female Tradition.” A Literature of Their Own: British Women Novelists from Bronte to Lessing. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1977. Pg 13

[65] Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Random House, 1970. Pg 20.

[66] Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Random House, 1970. Pg 21.

[67] Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Random House, 1970. Pg 22.

“Lilac Flower – meaning, Symbolism, and colors.” Flower Meanings.
https://flowermeanings.org/lilac/

[68] Showalter, Elaine. “The Female Tradition.” A Literature of Their Own: British Women Novelists from Bronte to Lessing. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1977. Pg 13

[69] Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Random House, 1970. Pg 205.

[70] Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Random House, 1970. Pg 205.

[71] Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Random House, 1970. Pg 206.

[72] Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Random House, 1970. Pg XI.

Images:

The Bluest Eye cover.

Pecola’s woundability is lodged in all young girls: Photo by Melanie Wasser on Unsplash

There were no marigolds in the fall of 1941: Photo by Nadiia Shuran on Unsplash

Why is the earth unyielding: The Ultimate Dick and Jane Storybook collection. Chicago: Scott, Foresman, 1940-1956. Pg 318-319.

The significance of Pecola ‘s name: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0025301/mediaviewer/rm1077772290/

The Doll Study:  Parks, Gordon. Dr. Clark observing child with black and white dolls. (Courtesy of the Library Congress)
https://kennethclark.commons.gc.cuny.edu/the-doll-study/

The Coloring Test: Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

So as not to dehumanize the characters who contributed to Pecola’s collapse: “Late 1930s dresses.” 1930s Black Fashion, African American Clothing Photos. Vintage Dancer. https://vintagedancer.com/1930s/1930s-black-fashion-african-american-clothing-photos/

The biggest culprits are Pecola’s family: Photo by Savannah B. on Unsplash

But it wasn’t always that way: “How the Great Migration Changed American History.” Vermont Humanities.

Statistics on mental health issues and the great migration: “The Great Migration.” The African American Midwest. https://africanamericanmidwest.com/history-migrations/the-great-migration/

Claudia, the embodiment of protest: Photo by Aimee Vogelsang on Unsplash

Self-Reflection and Critical Analysis: Photo by Randy Jacob on Unsplash

In Conclusion: Photo by Mieke Campbell on Unsplash

W
e spend a lot of time here at This Book is Banned talking about reading deeply. And that begins with reading works in their entirety – rather than what has become the common educational practice of reading abridged versions or a handful of selections from a given work.[1]

Reading texts completely is especially important when it comes to sources pertaining to historical events that have shaped our country. Having knowledge about the historic moment that produced a given work or document is equally critical. And, The Declaration of Independence is a more-relevant-than-ever example of why it’s downright consequential to do so.

When we’re familiar with the entire Declaration in the historical context it emerged from, we realize that it’s more than simply a documentation of past events. We see that it also contains guidelines for what we should be on the alert for if we want to continue living in a democratic society.

We all learned about The Declaration of Independence in school. And, what’s the first thing that comes to mind about this consequential document? “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness,” right?

What else were we taught? That it was written to notify King George of the colonies’ intention to sever political ties with England.

Why were we fed up with being under England’s thumb? — “taxation without representation.”

And who was The Declaration’s intended audience? King George, of course.

While these take-aways are technically accurate, this abbreviated understanding of The Declaration limits its future significance to that of an aspirational document suggesting what our country should strive to be.

That’s clearly important. But reading the entire Declaration of Independence (especially in the context of the historical moment that produced it) gives us a more complete understanding of what this document was meant to be, what it was intended to accomplish. And this understanding is immensely relevant to our current political moment.

A fundamental misconception defining the typical understanding of The Declaration of Independence is that it was intended for King George’s eyes alone. But that wasn’t exactly the case.

After being at war with Britain for more than a year, the Continental Congress voted to declare independence on July 2, 1776. And, The Declaration of Independence (dated two days later to allow for the ratification of its text) serves as the formal explanation for that vote – to the colonists the Congress represented, as well as King George.

The founding fathers immediately disseminated about 200 copies of The Declaration (known as the Dunlop Broadsides after the printer who set The Declaration in type and printed them).

As a result, The Declaration of Independence was published in newspapers, delivered via horseback and ship, read aloud to troops in the Continental Army, and spread by word of mouth. And, one copy was sent to King George, reaching him several months later. [2]

Though The Declaration of Independence opens with the aspirational language we know so well, it’s largely a list of grievances. This catalog of 27 injustices was designed to mount a cast iron indictment of King George, proving he was a tyrant.

It was circulated around the colonies, in an effort to motivate colonists to stand up to this tyrant and rally around the idea of establishing a new nation. And during the time it took for King George’s copy to make its way across the Atlantic, The Declaration did just that.

A revolutionary war and two hundred & forty-nine years later, a surprising number of these grievances apply to Donald Trump. Take a look at how he compares to Mad King George.

But before we even get to the specific grievances listed within The Declaration of Independence…   it’s clear that Trump’s actions fly in the face of the fundamental principle upon which this document, and therefore America itself, is founded.

As noted above, it’s the first thing, that comes to mind when we think about The Declaration, the “unalienable Rights” of “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”[3]

The importance of familiarizing ourselves with the historical and culture context that works emerge from is something we talk about often. It’s particularly important here, and it has to do with what is meant by “Happiness.”

In the eighteenth century when The Declaration was written, this term conveyed the concept of human flourishing rather than the shallow “you do you” idea of happiness we have today.  More importantly, it was understood not only as a private right, but as a public duty to ensure that all members of society are able to thrive.[4]

One of Donald Trump’s first actions upon his return to the White House was to dismantle diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs. Diversity, equity and inclusion is a conceptual framework that promotes full participation and fair treatment of all people. This includes populations that have historically been underrepresented, or have been the subject of discrimination due to their background, identity, disability, etc.[5]

Such programs are clearly a practical fulfillment of the “pursuit of Happiness” that the signers of The Declaration set forth as one of our unalienable Rights. But Trump decried DEI programs as “woke,” and wielded the power of the Oval Office to squash them.

And he didn’t stop at programs within the federal government. Trump also threatened to withhold billions of dollars in grants and federal funding from universities across the nation unless they come to heel.[6]

Taking matters even further, references to women, people of color and members of the LGBTQ+ community have been scrubbed from government agency websites.

Doing so erases acknowledgement of the contributions these groups have made to our country. But more importantly, it disregards the fact that they are citizens with as much right to the flourishing The Declaration considers just that… a Right, as anyone else in the United States of America.[7]

The Declaration of Independence contains 27 grievances against King George III. We’ll go grievance by grievance in this indictment of “Mad” King George and call out how many of these injustices also apply to Donald Trump. Grab a cool drink, find a comfortable chair and settle in, it’s going to be a long ride.

.
1) He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

Assent is to express acceptance, as of a proposal – or in this case, a law. Trump consistently exhibits disregard for existing laws.

For example, DOGE’s (Department of Government Efficiency) plundering of citizen’s personal information by private-sector employees violates a number of laws governing privacy and data.[9]

Trump threatened the Governor of Maine, stating he would withhold federal funds from her state if it did not ban transgender girls from participating in women’s sports. As Governor Janet Mills pointed out, this would mean violating existing state law.[10]

.
2) He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He wasn’t event in office yet, when during the 2024 campaign Trump strong-armed Republican members of congress into rejecting a bi-partisan immigration bill, while he used immigration as a campaign issue. The thwarted deal would have addressed structural change necessary to our decades-old immigration system.[11]

.
3) He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

Trump threatened to deny disaster relief to California unless it abandoned its legislative independence and changed its water policies to suit him. 

He also threatened to cut off federal funding to New York City if Democrat Zohran Mamdani were to win the city’s mayoral race and enact policies or laws Trump opposes.[12]

.
4) He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

Part of DOGE’s plan to slash spending and shrink the government’s workforce is to “boost attrition by depressing morale.” They’re accomplishing that by relocating agencies and making civil servants’ commutes so long, and the buildings “so crappy that people will leave.”[13]

.
5) He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

Though Trump hasn’t made active moves to dissolve any local governments, his threat to New York City about cutting off federal funding if Zohran Mamdani wins and enacts policies or laws he doesn’t like comes pretty darn close.

Not to mention Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem’s statement that the purpose of sending Marines and National Guard troops to Los Angeles was to “liberate this city” from its duly elected mayor and governor.[14]

.
6) He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

This grievance builds upon the previous one. Sometimes royal governors would suspend the legislature in an effort to force them into compliance, since no internal governing could be carried out while the legislature was suspended.[15]

So far, so good on this one. Trump hasn’t tried to cancel elections – yet.

.
7) He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

Donald Trump has definitely obstructed the laws for naturalization. Immigrants across the country have been arrested by masked ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agents while attending routine immigration check-ins.[16]

Immigrants who have already received a letter of approval for green cards have been detained at their interviews and taken to detention centers.[17] These were all people who were lawfully in the immigration system. And ICE arrested them at their citizenship appointments. These arrests are a direct obstruction of this nation’s established immigration system and naturalization process.

And then there’s his executive order upending the birthright citizenship explicitly enshrined in The Constitution.

.
8) He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.

Special counsel Robert Mueller produced a 187-page volume delineating Trump’s efforts to obstruct justice during the Russia investigation.[18]

When Attorney General Sessions carried out his legal duty to recuse himself from the Russia investigation, Trump demanded his resignation for failure to contain the investigation before ultimately dismissing it. To say nothing of dictating a false account for a key witness in the investigation.[19]

Trump’s “Hidden Documents Case” is another example. It’s the case about him unlawfully retaining documents after leaving the White House following his first term. Not only did Trump have 30 of the 64 boxes hidden from his own lawyer. With full knowledge, he allowed his lawyers to submit a false certification to the FBI and grand jury stating that “any and all responsive documents” had been found and returned to federal officials, when they hadn’t been.[20]

There are more instances of Trump obstructing the laws he is sworn to uphold, but this is enough to fulfill the parallel to “tyrant” King George.

The second part of this grievance is continued in the next one. So, we’ll address it there as well.

.
9) He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Hannah Dugan followed the letter of the law, and refused to let ICE agents arrest a defendant appearing in her courtroom. Now, Trump has fired 17 immigration judges from ten different states.

Not only that, Judge Dugan has herself been arrested.[21]

And, it’s clear that those who serve Trump’s will are more likely be nominated to the federal bench. Case in point… Emil Bove’s nomination to the lifetime seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.

Granted, any president is more likely to nominate someone to the federal bench whose views align with their won. It’s the personal relationship between Trump and Bove that makes this nomination something different. Bove was Trump’s defense attorney, most significantly for the election obstruction case. You know, the one about the January 6^th assault on the U.S. Capitol.

And, though this grievance has to do with judges, consider the fact that under Trump’s hiring process, new questions have been added to federal job vacancy announcements at GS5 or higher, queries that constitute a loyalty test. [22]

Candidates for top U.S. national security and law enforcement positions are specifically being asked, for example, whether the 2020 election was stolen. Applicants whose answer was not a resounding “yes” were passed over for the position.[23]

Just as a reminder…  oaths for all of these government positions are to “defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic,” not have loyalty to a President or his policies.

.
10) He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.

Trump’s implementation of DOGE clearly fits this description. And, their plundering of citizens’ personal information by private-sector employees is nothing short of eating out our substance.

Then there’s the fact that the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency has been turbo-charged if you will, in other words, militarized. Agents are now masked and wear tactical gear as they roll up in unmarked SUVs, literally snatching people off the streets and disappearing them.[24]

.
11) He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

Trump sent Marines and National Guard troops into Los Angeles – when there was no insurrection or war – without the consent of the legislature, and over the objection of the Governor.[25]

.
12) He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

Trump hasn’t removed the military from civilian and congressional oversight… yet. But he’s spoken openly about invoking The Insurrection Act since his campaign.

This 1792 law was written at a time when there was little if any local law enforcement. It would give him power to use the military for domestic policing –with him at the helm, rather than law enforcement being answerable to oversight boards established by the localities they serve.[26]

.
13) He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving
his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation.

On February 15, 2025 Trump posted on Truth Social that “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.” This post makes it pretty clear that he’s putting his authority above that or the Constitution. And White House staff joined with him by sharing the statement from its official X account. [27]

Trump has deported people to a mega-prison in El Salvador, then claimed they were under the jurisdiction of El Salvador when pressured to effectuate their return.

As noted above, many of these deportees were within the immigration system and arrested at routine court check-ins. (One of the deportees, however, was eventually returned after consistent public pressure to do so.)[28]

These folks are not only being sent to El Salvador. Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Brazil, South Sudan, Eswatini, Uzbekistan have all received deportation flights.[29]

That’s a lot of jurisdictions foreign to our own constitution.

.
14) For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us.

Here’s another one where we can say “so far, so good.”

.
15) For protecting them [aforementioned armed troops], by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States.

Thankfully, we aren’t at the point where trials for the murder of American citizens by armed troops have become necessary. But statements like the one Trump made during his first term put us frighteningly close.

During his first term, when protests over the death of George Floyd escalated, Trump posted a Tweet that closed with “when the looting starts, the shooting starts. Thank you!”[30]

Within hours of returning to the White House for his second term, Trump pardoned, commuted the prison sentences, or vowed to dismiss the cases of the more than 1,500 people charged with crimes in the U.S. Capitol riot that occurred on January 6, 2021.[31]

Approximately 140 members of law enforcement were assaulted on that day. This figure includes 80 from the U.S. Capitol Police, and 60 from the D.C. Metropolitan Police officers. There was one death – that of Brian Sicknick – who died the following day as a result of the chemical substance he was sprayed with during the assault.[32]

Granted, this is not an “apples to apples” example, as the saying goes. But, it’s definitely an analogous situation.

.
16) For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world.

Trump has proposed heavy-handed global tariffs, sending letters to over 27 world leaders informing them of the tariff rates he plans to impose on their countries’ goods. In many cases this would bring trade to a halt, including with some of our largest trading partners.[33]

.
17) For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent.

Tariffs are a tax. They’re a tax on imports. These taxes are paid by importers, in this case American companies who use or sell these imported goods. And here’s the thing… these companies almost universally pass their higher costs on to their customers. So yeah, tariffs are ultimately a tax on the American people.

Under the Constitution, it’s Congress who has “the power to regulate Commerce with foreign Nations” – that is, impose tariffs.[34] And if that were the case here, our consent would have been given via our duly-elected members of Congress.

But, that isn’t the case. Congress didn’t vote to for these tariffs. Trump issued them unilaterally. All while trying to gaslight us into believing that we won’t ultimately be paying these import taxes.

.
18) For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury.

Trump has been rushing people onto planes headed to third party prisons without due process. And there are a couple of previously noted problems with this turn of events. One of which is the fact that many of these individuals were detained when appearing for routine immigration appointments.[35]

So far, people in these circumstances have been immigrants. But the constitution doesn’t limit due process to citizens. The sixth amendment states “In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial…  ”[36]

However, as a result of this disregard for due process, American citizens are also being scooped up in ICE raids. You heard that right… American citizens.[37]

.
19) For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended off.

As noted in a related grievance, Trump has transported people to other countries without due process. And they don’t receive trials – not even for trumped–up, pretend offenses. Deportees sent to El Salvador’s notorious CECOT prison are but one example.[38]

Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Brazil, South Sudan, Eswatini, Uzbekistan have all received deportation flights.[39]

.
20) For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and

enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies.

This grievance was a reference to the Quebec Act of 1774, which extended Quebec’s border southward into territory claimed by American colonies. It also established an appointed council rather than an elected body to govern Quebec. This tactic freaked out colonists, because they saw it as a prelude to King George imposing the same form of government on the colonies.[40]

Trump has made a similar move regarding Canada. He has stated that he doesn’t recognize the US–Canada border, and has threatened to use “economic force” to annex and abolish the free system of laws in our neighboring country.[41]

.
21) For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments.

Trump severely watered down the Americans with Disabilities Act, to say nothing of his attempts to nullify the Affordable Care Act.[42] He’s decimated the Civil Rights Act that’s been in place since 1964, and undercut the Voting Rights Act.[43]

Trump also gutted the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act that have protected public health and the environment for decades.[44]

He has undermined the independence of the Justice Department, as well as attacked the courts.[45] And, Trump has threatened and bullied one political party to the point that the legislative branch has effectively been neutered.

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22) For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

Trump has not suspended Congress – at least not yet. He hasn’t needed to… see above.

.
23) He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

Trump has abdicated his responsibility to protect the American people by denying disaster relief in several states. These states include: Oregon (Severe Storms, Flooding), Tennessee (Severe Storms), Hawaii (Severe Storms and Flooding), Kentucky (Severe Winter Storm), Washington (Severe Storms, Flooding),
California (Wildfires).[46]

When it comes to “declaring us out of his Protection,” it’s especially important to note that Trump refused to give California aid following a wildfire until one of his told him how many people there voted for him.[47]

Regarding waging war, as mentioned above Trump’s Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem threatened to use federal troops to take over the city of Los Angeles. To say nothing of ICE agents terrorizing communities across the nation.

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24) He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

This may not be what Thomas Jefferson had in mind, but the modern version of this grievance would be Trump’s repeals of climate change laws and regulations. These reversals will lead to rising seas, erosion of our coasts, not to mention more wildfires. All of which will clearly threaten the lives of American people.[48]

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25) He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

So far so good on this one. However…  Trump has indicated that he “wouldn’t be opposed” to the idea of using private military forces for his mass-deportation crusade.[49]

.
26) He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

Trump is all clear on this one.

.
27) He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

Journalist David Corn has a point, the second part of this grievance sounds like something Trump might post on social media.[50]

But the first part…  that’s something Trump actually did – on January 6, 2021. And, them he pardoned the insurrectionists.

In one form or another, Donald Trump has committed 22 of the 27 grievances listed in the Declaration of Independence, injustices that defined King George as a tyrant.

What was it Benjamin Franklin said when Elizabeth Willing Powel inquired about the new government the Founding Fathers had created?

A republic, if you can keep it.[51]

.
Given the number of tyrant-defining injustices Trump has committed, we’re definitely at an “if you can keep it” moment. But if you don’t understand the Declaration’s entire purpose, you may not realize it.

And then there’s Trump’s threats to terminate the Constitution. As Fox News journalist Howard Kurtz noted:

Trump didn’t fudge or imply; he explicitly said, ‘termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.’

This is not a leak from a meeting or liberals saying the ex-president has no respect for the Constitution. These are Trump’s own words.[52]

.
Moments like these are why it’s important to understand texts in their entirety. And, why being “woke” in its original, unadulterated sense of the term (which is to say politically conscious and aware) is crucial.

Because if you’re not, it’s easy to be fooled by the divisive rhetoric that’s designed to keep us distracted and fighting each other rather than working together to keep our democracy strong, and tyrants at bay.

When it comes to America’s “if we can keep it” moments, more than a cursory understanding of world history is also essential. Because world history is more than who won which battles, and what new weapons were introduced in which wars.

For example, those who were aware that Mussolini’s pet slogan was “make Italy great again” understood that Trump’s “make America great again” is a direct lift.[53] And they could see the red flags a mile away. But most of us were taught history in the victories and weapons method mentioned above… so an awful lot of us missed those warning signs.

Being knowledgeable about Hitler’s use of language like “vermin” to describe a particular group of people would have given more of us pause when we heard Trump use it in the same fashion – even those concerned about our immigration system.[54] Because we would remember the horror and the atrocities that resulted from such language. And, from sentiments like immigrants “poisoning the blood of our country” – not all that long ago, either. [55]

But way too many of us have only been taught the zero sum, shoot ‘em up version of history, so that dangerous language failed to ring alarm bells.

And if more Americans knew that Hitler took control of Germany’s cultural institutions and turned them into propaganda centers, Trump’s take-over of the Kennedy Center and edict to purge the Smithsonian Institute of what he deems “improper ideology” would be met with more than silence. Not to mention the fact that references to Trump’s two impeachments were removed from an exhibit on impeachment at the Smithsonian – he’s literally erasing history.[56]

More importantly, a nuanced understanding of world history enables us to see through the slight-of-hand tactics being used to fool us, gin up hatred, and keep us pitted against each other. And ultimately, disrupt the community of common interest necessary for us to “keep” the democratic republic our Founding Fathers created.

As indicated by the number of tyrant-defining grievances Trump fulfills, as well as the language and branding-related red flags mentioned above, we’re clearly in an “if you can keep it” moment. But, what can we do about it?

The last thing we want to do is succumb to the devices intended to overload our nervous systems with chaos, and desensitize us to the point of inaction.[57] As Margaret Atwood put it in The Handmaid’s Tale, “don’t let the bastards grind you down.” [58] Because complacency has proven to be the greatest danger for the survival of government by the people.[59]

The most patriotic thing we can do right now, as Senator Tammy Duckworth recently pointed out, is to speak our minds, exercise our First Amendment rights, and call out the tyranny for what it is.[60]

Bruce Springsteen has been doing just that during his recent European tour, launching it with a statement that addresses our current political moment:

The mighty E Street Band is here tonight to call upon the righteous power of art, of music, of rock ‘n’ roll in dangerous times.

In my home, the America I love, the America I’ve written about, that has been a beacon of hope and liberty for 250 years, is currently in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent and treasonous administration.[61]

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We can’t all be Bruce Springsteen, but we can heed his reminder about what the Founding Fathers intended us to be. Which is…

The last check on power, after the checks and balances of government have failed, are the people, you and me. It’s in the union of people around a common set of values. Now that’s all that stands between democracy and authoritarianism.[62]

This photo of The Liberty Bell is a perfect metaphor for Springsteen’s reminder of what we can be, and how to proceed in this political moment. Because this image is comprised of 25,000 people standing together to form a fundamental symbol of American democracy.[63] And, so must we stand united — around the unalienable rights and values that allow all people within our borders to thrive and flourish.

The chair George Washington sat in while presiding over the 1787 Constitutional Convention has come to be known as The Rising Sun Armchair. The name refers to a sentiment expressed by Benjamin Franklin at the close of the constitutional convention, which was written into the federal record by James Madison:

I have said he, often and often in the course of the Session, and the vicissitudes of my hopes and fears as to its issue, looked at that behind the President without being able to tell whether it was rising or setting: But now at length I have the happiness to know that it is a rising and not a setting Sun.[64]

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Let’s do everything we can to ensure that our current “if we can keep it” moment doesn’t turn it into a setting Sun. The first of which is to remain hopeful. As James Baldwin pointed out:

There may not be as much humanity in the world as one would like to see. But there is some. There’s more than one would think.[65]

.
Then, we must stand together, stay engaged, and continue to strive toward living up to the aspirational language immortalized in The Declaration of Independence.

.
Pair this with:
Leaves of Grass: A celebration of American democracy,
and What does democracy look like?

#Fascist Buster                 #The American Experience

Endnotes:

[1] Horowitz, Rose. “The Elite College Students Who Can’t Read Books.” The Atlantic, October 1, 2024. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/11/the-elite-college-students-who-cant-read-books/679945/

[2] “The Declaration of Independence: How did it happen?” National Archive. https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration/how-did-it-happen

[3] The Declaration of Independence.

[4] Conklin, Carli N. “The Origins of the Pursuit of Happiness.” Washington University Jurisprudence Review. Volume 7, Issue 2, 2015.
Available at: https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/law_jurisprudence/vol7/iss2/6

[5] Schneid, Rebecca. “What is DEI and What Challenges Does It Face Amid Trump’s Executive Orders?” Time.com  https://time.com/7210039/what-is-dei-trump-executive-order-companies-diversity-efforts/

DEI: Dictionary.com  https://www.dictionary.com/browse/dei

[6] Hutchinson, Bill. “Trump’s war on ‘woke’: Both sides say the issue is further dividing the country.” ABCnews.com   https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trumps-war-woke-sides-issue-dividing-country/story?id=121125797

[7] Huo JIngnan, Quil Lawrence. “Here are all the ways people are disappearing from government websites.” NPR.org. March 19, 2025. https://www.npr.org/2025/03/19/nx-s1-5317567/federal-websites-lgbtq-diversity-erased

[8] Montanaro, Domenico. “What does the ‘woke’ really mean, and where does it come from?” NPR.org. July 19, 2023. https://www.npr.org/2023/07/19/1188543449/what-does-the-word-woke-really-mean-and-where-does-it-come-from

[9] David Corn and Tim Murphy. “Here are the Declaration of Independence’s Grievances Against King George III. Many Apply to Trump.” Mother Jones, July 3, 2025.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/07/declaration-of-independences-grievances-against-king-george-iii-many-apply-to-trump/

[10] Michelle L. Price and Patrick Whittle. “Trump threatens to withhold  federal funding from Maine after governor vows state will ‘follow the law’ on transgender athletes.” Fortune.com  February 21, 2025. https://fortune.com/2025/02/21/trump-threatens-to-withhold-federal-funding-from-maine-governor-law-transgender-athletes-state/

[11] Sahil Kapur and Frank Thorp V. “Republicans kill border bill in a sign of Trump’s strength and McConnell’s waning influence.” NBCnews.com  Feb 27, 2024. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/republicans-kill-border-bill-sign-trumps-strength-mcconnells-waning-in-rcna137477

[12] David Corn and Tim Murphy. “Here are the Declaration of Independence’s Grievances Against King George III. Many apply to Trump.” Mother Jones.com  https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/07/declaration-of-independences-grievances-against-king-george-iii-many-apply-to-trump/

[13] Ma, Jason. “DOGE looks to shrink the federal workforce by making buildings and commutes ‘so crappy’ that employes will quit, report says.”  Fortune.com February 9, 2025. https://fortune.com/2025/02/09/doge-elon-musk-federal-workforce-cuts-gsa-buildings-commutes-rto-mandate/

[14] Kristi Noem: We are staying in L.A. to ‘Liberate the city from  the socialist and the burdensome leadership’ of Mayor Bass and Gov. Newsom.” Grabienews  Jun 12, 2025. https://news.grabien.com/story/kristi-noem-we-are-staying-in-la-to-liberate-the-city-from-the-sociali

[15] Ranger Val and Ranger Bill. “The Declaration of Independence: What Were They Thinking?” National Park Service. June 30, 2021. https://www.nps.gov/fost/blogs/the-declaration-of-independence-what-were-they-thinking.htm

[16] Baio, Ariana. “ICE agents are arresting migrants showing up for their immigration hearings and readying them for deportation.” Independent  February 18, 2025.  https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/ice-arrest-immigration-hearings-court-b2700382.html

[17] Porter, Regan. “ICE detains mother at citizenship appointment in Kansas City, family says.” FOX4kc.com
https://fox4kc.com/news/ice-detains-mother-at-citizenship-appointment-in-kansas-city-family-says/

[18] Rahn, Will. “10 times Trump may have obstructed justice, according to Mueller.” CBSnews.com July 23, 2019.

[19] Berke, Barry H. “Presidential obstruction of justice: The case of Donald J. Trump. 2^nd edition.”  Brookings.edu  August 22, 2018.  https://www.brookings.edu/articles/presidential-obstruction-of-justice-the-case-of-donald-j-trump-2nd-edition/

[20] Hansen, Claire. “Classified Documents and Obstruction of Justice: Inside the 37 Felony Counts Against Trump.” U.S.News.com   June 9, 2023. https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2023-06-09/trump-indicted-on-37-felony-counts-over-retention-of-classified-documents-obstruction

[21] Sobieski, Mitchell A. “Ice’s Fake Warrant: Why Judge Hannah Dugan’s arrest is a political stunt for Trump’s autocratic agenda.” Milwaukee Independent. April 26, 2025. https://www.milwaukeeindependent.com/articles/ices-fake-warrant-judge-hannah-dugans-arrest-political-stunt-trumps-autocratic-agenda/

Santana, Rebecca. “Trump administration fires 17 immigration court judges across ten states, union says.” Apnews.com  July 15, 2025. https://apnews.com/article/immigration-court-judges-trump-ice-229830c0779857164a832793c2a8f3e4

[22] “Upcoming Questions on Federal Job Applications Decried as Trump Loyalty Test.” FedWeek. June 3, 2025. https://www.fedweek.com/fedweek/upcoming-questions-on-federal-job-applications-decried-as-trump-loyalty-test/

[23] Ellen Nakashima, Warren Strobel. “U.S. intelligence, law enforcement candidates face Trump loyalty test.” msn.com (picked up from The Washington Post) https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/us-intelligence-law-enforcement-candidates-face-trump-loyalty-test/ar-AA1yFJ9I

[24] Lewis, Matt K. “Behind the  mask: What are ICE agents hiding?” TheHill.com   June 25, 2025. https://thehill.com/opinion/immigration/5366944-behind-the-mask-what-are-ice-agents-hiding/

[25] David Corn and Tim Murphy. “Here are the Declaration of Independence’s Grievances Against King George III. Many apply to Trump.” Mother Jones.com  https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/07/declaration-of-independences-grievances-against-king-george-iii-many-apply-to-trump/

[26] Fields, Gary. “Trump hints at expanded role for the military within the US. A legacy law gives him few guardrails.” APnews.com  November 26, 2023.  https://apnews.com/article/trump-military-insurrection-act-2024-election-03858b6291e4721991b5a18c2dfb3c36

[27] Rascouet-Paz, Anna.   “Trump repeats alleged Napoleon quote: “he who saves his Country does not violate any Law.’” Snopes.com  February 17, 2025. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-quotes-napoleon/

Hutzler, Alexandra. “Trump stokes alarm about vie of presidential power with apparent Napoleon reference.” February 17, 2025.ABCnews.com  https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-stokes-alarm-view-presidential-power-apparent-napoleon/story?id=118898574

[28] David Corn and Tim Murphy. “Here are the Declaration of Independence’s Grievances Against King George III. Many apply to Trump.” Mother Jones.com  https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/07/declaration-of-independences-grievances-against-king-george-iii-many-apply-to-trump/

[29] Roy, Diana. “Here’s Where Trump’s Deportations Are Sending Migrants.” Council on Foreign Relations July 1, 2025. https://www.cfr.org/in-brief/heres-where-trumps-deportations-are-sending-migrants

Gooding, Dan. “Map Shows Third Countries Where Migrants Are Being Deported.” Newsweek.com  July 16, 2025. https://www.newsweek.com/trump-administration-third-country-removals-immigrants-map-2099910

[30] Wilson, Christopher. “Twitter flags Trump tweet on Minneapolis protests for ‘glorifying violence’.” Yahoo!news. May 29, 2020. https://www.yahoo.com/news/twitter-flags-trump-tweet-glorifiying-violence-minneapolis-looting-shooting-114334538.html

[31] Alanna Durkin Richer and Michael Kunzelman. “Trump grants sweeping pardon of Jan. 6 defendants, including rioters who violently attacked police.” APnews.com January 21, 2025.  https://apnews.com/article/capitol-jan-6-pardons-trump-justice-department-8ce8b2a8f8cb602d5eaf85ac7b969606

[32] Claire Hymes, Robert Legare, Eleanor Watson. “A year after January 6 Capitol riot, hundreds face charges but questions remain.” January 5, 2022. CBSnews.com   https://www.cbsnews.com/news/january-6-capitol-riot-year-later-hundreds-face-charges-questions-remain/

[33] Kurzleben, Danielle. “Here’s a list of Trump’s tariff letters so far and the rates they threaten.” NPR.org. July 15, 2025. https://www.npr.org/2025/07/12/nx-s1-5463818/trump-tariff-rate-letters

David Corn and Tim Murphy. “Here are the Declaration of Independence’s Grievances Against King George III. Many apply to Trump.” Mother Jones.com  https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/07/declaration-of-independences-grievances-against-king-george-iii-many-apply-to-trump/

[34] “The Constitution of the United States: A Transcription.” National Archives. https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution-transcript

[35] Iorfida, Chris.  “Where in the world is the U.S. trying to deport 3^rd-country migrants?” CBCnews. May 14, 2025. https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/us-deportations-country-agreements-1.7530868

Reichlin-Melnick, Aaron. “these Men Were Deported to El Salvador With No Due Process. Their Stories Show Why an Investigation Is Necessary.” American Immigration Council. April 3, 2025. https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/blog/men-deported-el-salvador-stories-investigation/

[36] “The United States Constitution.” National Constitution Center. https://constitutioncenter.org/the-constitution/full-text

[37] Danner, Chas. “All the U.S. Citizens Who’ve Been Caught Up in Trump’s Immigration Crackdown.” Intelligencer. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/tracking-us-citizens-children-detained-deported-ice-trump-updates.html

Rodriguez, Olga R. “Army veteran and US citizen arrested in California immigration raid warns it could happen to anyone.” APnews.com July 17, 2025. https://apnews.com/article/us-army-veteran-immigration-raid-53cb22251a01599a0c4d1a8d5650d050

Suzanne Gamboa and Nicole Acevedo. “Trump immigration raids snag U.S. citizens, including Native Americans, raising racial profiling fears.” NBCnews.com January 28, 2025. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/trump-immigration-raids-citizens-profiling-accusations-native-american-rcna189203

[38] David Corn and Tim Murphy. “Here are the Declaration of Independence’s Grievances Against King George III. Many Apply to Trump.” Mother Jones, July 3, 2025.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/07/declaration-of-independences-grievances-against-king-george-iii-many-apply-to-trump/

[39] Roy, Diana. “Here’s Where Trump’s Deportations Are Sending Migrants.” Council on Foreign Relations July 1, 2025. https://www.cfr.org/in-brief/heres-where-trumps-deportations-are-sending-migrants

Gooding, Dan. “Map Shows Third Countries Where Migrants Are Being Deported.” Newsweek.com  July 16, 2025. https://www.newsweek.com/trump-administration-third-country-removals-immigrants-map-2099910

[40] David Corn and Tim Murphy. “Here are the Declaration of Independence’s Grievances Against King George III. Many Apply to Trump.” Mother Jones, July 3, 2025.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/07/declaration-of-independences-grievances-against-king-george-iii-many-apply-to-trump/

[41] Sutherland, Callum. “Does Trump Still Plan to Annex Canada and Make It the 51^st State? Here’s What to Know.” Time.com June 29, 2025. https://time.com/7297490/trump-plan-to-annex-canada-51st-state-mark-carney/

Vialko, Daryna. “Trump wants to renegotiate US-Canada border agreement-NYT. MSN.com https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/trump-wants-to-renegotiate-us-canada-border-agreement-nyt/ar-AA1AtdeQ

[42] Hunter, Kenya. “The Trump administration withdrew 11 pieces of ADA guidance. How will it affect compliance?” APnews.com April 8, 2025. https://apnews.com/article/ada-guidance-disabilities-trump-ed2214921ac719b72b81d76c03e330c4

[43] Silverstein, Thomas. “Trump Just Issued an Executive Order Aimed at Decimating the Civil Rights Act of 1964.” Slate.com may 4, 2025. https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2025/05/trump-executive-order-civil-rights-act-lbj.html

Hasen, Richard L. “Two Supreme Court Justices Invited an All-Out Assault on the Voting Rights Act. Now It’s Here.” Slate.com May 14, 2025. https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2025/05/supreme-court-justices-neil-gorsuch-clarence-thomas-voting-rights.html

[44] Fitzgerald, Erin. “Trump Halts Clean Air Laws For Most of the Country.” Earthjustice.com. July 18, 2025. https://earthjustice.org/press/2025/trump-halts-clean-air-laws-for-most-of-the-country

“Trump rolls back decades of Clean Water Act protections.” BBC. December 11, 2018. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-46526776

[45] Jurecic, Quinta. “Trump’s Attacks on Justice Department Independence, Then and Now.” Lawfare. March 27, 2025. https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/trump-s-attacks-on-justice-department-independence–then-and-now

Zirin, James D. “Trump’s latest attack on the courts: suing the judges themselves.” The Hill.com July 1, 2025. https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/5377904-trumps-latest-attack-on-the-courts-suing-the-judges-themselves/

[46] Stancil, Kenny. “Map: Trump Has Often Delayed or Denied Disaster Aid.” Revolving Door Project. July2, 2025. https://therevolvingdoorproject.org/trump-disaster-policy-tracker-map/

[47] Scott Walman and Thomas Frank. “Trump refused to give California wildfire aid until told how many people there voted for him, ex-aide says.” Politico.com October 3, 2024. https://www.politico.com/news/2024/10/03/helene-trump-politics-natural-disaster-00182419

[48] David Corn and Tim Murphy. “Here are the Declaration of Independence’s Grievances Against King George III. Many Apply to Trump.” Mother Jones, July 3, 2025.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/07/declaration-of-independences-grievances-against-king-george-iii-many-apply-to-trump/

[49] Ward, Myah. “Trump appears open to using private forces to help deport millions of undocumented immigrants.” Politico.com February 27, 2025. https://www.politico.com/news/2025/02/27/trump-private-forces-immigration-00206560

[50] David Corn and Tim Murphy. “Here are the Declaration of Independence’s Grievances Against King George III. Many Apply to Trump.” Mother Jones, July 3, 2025.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/07/declaration-of-independences-grievances-against-king-george-iii-many-apply-to-trump/

[51] “September 17, 1787: A Republic, If You Can Keep It.” Independence National Historical Park. https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/constitutionalconvention-september17.htm

[52] Kurtz, Howard. “Why Trump’s ‘termination’ of Constitution, demanding reinstatement or do-over, has set off alarms.” Fox News. December 6, 2022. https://www.foxnews.com/shows/media-buzz/why-trumps-termination-constitution-demanding-reinstatement-over-has-set-off-alarms

[53] Sharpe, Matthew. “Make Italy great again: Mussolini’s rise and fall shows how democracy dies by a thousand cuts.” The Conversation. May 5, 2025. https://scroll.in/article/1081753/make-italy-great-again-mussolinis-rise-and-fall-shows-how-democracy-dies-by-a-thousand-cuts

[54] Georgantopoulos, mary Ann. “Trump Referred To Immigrants As Vermin, Saying They Will ‘Infest Our Country’” BuzzFeedNews.com  June 19, 2018.  https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/maryanngeorgantopoulos/trump-immigrants-vermin-infest

[55] Layne, Nathan. “Trump repeats ‘poisoning the blood’ anti-immigrant remark.” Reuters.com December 16, 2023. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-repeats-poisoning-blood-anti-immigrant-remark-2023-12-16/

[56]  Venator, Melissa. “Modern Art in Nazi Germany.” St. Louis Art Museum lecture. July 18, 2025.

Executive order. Whitehouse.gov   March 27, 2025.

The Washington Post. August 1, 2025.

[57] Last, Jonathan V. “Biology Explains Why People Normalize Trump: How authoritarians hack our nervous systems to desensitize us to their assaults on democracy.” TheBulwark.com October 9, 2024. https://www.thebulwark.com/p/biology-explains-why-people-normalize

[58] Atwood, Margaret. The Handmaid’s Tale.  New York: Vintage Books, 1998. Pg 225

[59]Qvortrup, Matt. Death by a thousand cuts: the slow demise of democracy. Berlin  : DeGruyter, 2019.

[60] Tammy Duckworth. “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. https://www.facebook.com/reel/2281477962281717

[61] Springsteen, Bruce. “Land of Hope and Dreams.” Brucespringsteen.net   May 14, 2025. https://brucespringsteen.net/news/2025/land-of-hope-and-dreams/

[62] Springsteen, Bruce. “Land of Hope and Dreams.” Brucespringsteen.net   May 14, 2025. https://brucespringsteen.net/news/2025/land-of-hope-and-dreams/

[63] Mole and Thomas photographer. The Human Liberty Bell; 25000 officers and men at Camp Dix, New Jersey; General Hugh L. Scott, commander. 1918. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA https://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pp.print

[64] “The Rising Sun Armchair (George Washington’s Chair).” UShistory.org https://www.ushistory.org/more/sun.htm

[65] James Baldwin quotes. Goodreads.com https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/11764275-there-may-not-be-as-much-humanity-in-the-world

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Images:

The Declaration of Independence.

What did we learn about The Declaration in school:  Photo by Belinda Fewings on Unsplash

A fundamental misconception: Trumbull, John. Declaration of Independence. 1819. (Public Domain).

The Declaration of Independence is more relevant than ever: nokings.org

On the subject of being “woke”:  Photo by Danny Burke on Unsplash

The Declaration’s list of grievances: Boston Public Library Tichnor Brothers collection (Public Domain).

So, what’s the score and what does that mean: National Constitution Center (Public Domain)

More than a “victories and weapons” understanding of world history is also essential: Photo by Kyle Glenn on Unsplash

The most patriotic thing we can do: Photo by benjamin lehman on Unsplash

Human Liberty Bell: Mole & Thomas, 915 Medinah Blvd., Chicago, Ill.  Library of Congress

George Washington’s Rising Sun Armchair: National Park Services.