Scholastic Book Fairs Shirk Responsibility To Marginalized People
With certain states choosing to repress minority and dissenting voices within their schools and libraries, one of the biggest book companies kowtowed to their demands. Let’s talk about it.
Hello, friends,
Last week, I talked about the October 7th atrocity, Israel, Palestine, Hamas, and the need for peace. Sadly, that situation is - and likely will continue to be - extremely active.
This week, we’re focusing on a much simpler, more American affair which is near and dear to my heart as a writer and former educator: The Scholastic company and its nationally-renowned book fairs. We’re also going to be touching back on issues we’ve covered before on this publication related to the way that education is being weaponized against minority and dissenting voices.
We didn’t specifically talk much about book bans, per-se, but more the banning of entire swaths of educational topics such as African-American history. Rest assured (or, more appropriately, disturbed), there are plenty of book bans taking place in states such as Florida, Texas, and Ohio. Most of this is isolated to prohibiting childrens’ access to this material, but that overflows into adult libraries real quick.
Fascism is ever-encroaching, after all.
And Scholastic has caved in to give them exactly what they want - self-censorship before the state has to take any actions whatsoever.
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What Is A Scholastic Book Fair?
If you grew up in the United States, there’s a fair (pun!) chance that you’re familiar with the Scholastic Book Fair. If you are uninitiated, Scholastic is a major childrens’, young-adult, and otherwise-educational publisher. For example - and I am only linking this for journalistic integrity’s sake - they are the U.S. distributor of the Harry Potter series.
Scholastic is widely known for its book fairs. These are typically week-long festivities where Scholastic sends cases upon cases full of books, models, and other educational/educational-adjacent materials to elementary school libraries and lets students buy whatever they want.
Now, inherent to all of this is one problem right off the bat, a problem of equality-of-access: Only students with money really get to have a great time at this festival. I know some teachers will take steps to make sure their less-well-off students are able to buy something, but that only goes so far.
That said, when I worked in a library during one of them in 2021, there was a whole selection of books for about $2-$4 dollars each, and while those might not have been the most popular books (which sold out in microseconds and had signup sheets), they were indeed relatively affordable for most children.
That said, the book fair usually brings forth vivid memories in people who talk about them. It was a rare time where students of a young age were allowed direct control over which books they picked up (again, provided they had the money for it), and would get the newest releases of books that weren’t often-beat-up library copies.
Considering that I’m a writer, it’s pretty likely I enjoyed them.
That’s why I’m so crushed as to how Scholastic responded to the states that are censoring other voices.
Scholastic Book Fairs Submit To Censorship
Recently, a tweet (they will forever be known as tweets) by Scholastic crossed my attention. It led to a letter of a few paragraphs explaining their current situation vis-a-vis censorship. They maintained quite pridefully that they were not a party to the censorship taking place. “The biggest misconception is that Scholastic Book Fairs is putting all diverse titles into one optional case. This is not true, in any school, in any location we serve.”
So the obvious question is: What’s the rest of the letter say?
Among other things, after talking a bit about all the legal risks at play, they declare: “To continue offering these books, as well as even more high interest titles, we created an additional collection called Share Every Story, Celebrate Every Voice for our U.S. elementary school fairs.”
And will this new collection be at every book fair?
“We cannot make a decision for our school partners around what risks they are willing to take, based on the state and local laws that apply to their district, so these topics and this collection have been part of many planning calls that happen in advance of shipping a fair.”
Now, I grew up in part on Scholastic books, and I’ve read quite lot in my life, but it’s still always possible my reading comprehension is off, here, but: An “Additional collection” that is “part of many planning calls” and is not always sent every single time is, in fact, “one optional case.”
They are clearly not sharing every story, nor are they celebrating every voice.
This is the sort of corporate double-speak that we cannot let slide.
Pre-Emptive Compliance Is Collaboration
The bottom line here is that Scholastic is indeed censoring a lot of the voices it claims to uplift. It’s made it extremely easy to still put on a book fair with “Diverse” voices, just without those diverse voices present - locked away in a case that isn’t broken out when within the wrong states’ boundaries.
Here’s your regularly-scheduled reminder that I am not a lawyer, but I do know a small amount about the law.
Scholastic is complying with these demands without even forcing the Fascists behind the scheme to have to assert their authority. Remember: When authority is asserted, it can be directly challenged. That’s part of how our legal system works: In order to sue someone (except maybe under our current Supreme Court), you need standing - I.E. to be affected by the law in question.
If an author’s book was removed from a Scholastic case by a school or other employee, that author’s right to compete in the marketplace would be broached, and therefore they (and Scholastic, as their publisher, on their behalf) would have the right to sue.
If Scholastic, their publisher, removes it of their own accord? That’s voluntary compliance, and the author would have to sue their publisher over it. Except the authors’ contract probably indicates that Scholastic has the right to promote (which is what these fairs are) whatever voices it damn well pleases.
On the other hand, if a fair were denied at a school because of the content of its books, Scholastic itself - a billion-dollar company - could manage the litigation, instead. It could say that the censorship violated it and its authors’ first-amendment rights. It could at the very least force the governments in question to have to defend the issue in court.
It might also lead to the fair being canceled entirely, which - while surely bad for everyone involved - would certainly bring the attention to the parents who suddenly watched a life-long resource disappear for their children. It might just motivate them to vote differently in their next election.
However, by instead choosing to do the Fascists’ work for them, Scholastic fails to stand up for its young readers who desperately need the voices of other folks who are just like them, but a little different, and it does so in a way that’s almost impossible to create change away from. In short - it is collaborating with the oppressive force to make sure that - say - Black kids don’t learn about what it’s like to grow up Black in a different time or place.
I don’t know about you, but Scholastic needs to reverse course - although it might already be too late to save their reputation, maybe they can still do some good.
In Other News…
The wars in Israel-Palestine and Ukraine continue, unfortunately.
Gym Jordan, whose name I spell that way because of his failure to report sexual abuse when he was a wrestling coach at Ohio State, has lost two votes to become Speaker of the House. (As of time of publication, that count is up to three and he’s apparently struck out)
A pregnant woman in North Carolina has lost her parental rights after a forced-birther judge ruled that since she committed a crime while pregnant, and since life begins at conception…I can’t really finish this sentence, I’m sorry, it’s too infuriating, you get the jist.
Faced with regulatory concerns, Elon Musk is allegedly considering ending Twitter (still calling it Twitter) services in Europe.
To balance out bad news and end on a good note, the Biden Administration is taking steps to increase funding for solar energy. While that’s not a Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor, it’s still an awesome bit of news!
Thank you for reading The Progressive Cafe. If this article has helped you, please consider signing up for our mailing list. This article is by Jesse Pohlman, a sci-fi/fantasy author from Long Island, New York, whose website you can check out here.