The state of Mississippi — the place white cops are nonetheless torturing Black males for dwelling with white girls, and Black our bodies are being buried in unmarked graves with out households being notified — has ordered its libraries to delete educational analysis on racism from their databases. Additionally ordered to be scrubbed from library databases in Mississippi — the state that offered the case the U.S. Supreme Court docket used to abolish girls’s reproductive rights — was analysis on gender research.
Why was all of this educational analysis being executed away with? Properly, apparently, the one justification a state commissioner might muster up was a imprecise state legislation prohibiting “obscene supplies.”
A March 31 inside memo obtained by Mississippi At present reveals that the Mississippi Library Fee ordered the deletion of two analysis collections on “race relations” and “gender research” from publicly funded faculties, libraries, group schools, universities and state businesses as a result of, in some way, the analysis may violate state legislation. (You understand your state is backward and bigoted when it’s unlawful to supply analysis on backwardness and bigotry.)
“On this difficult time with many alternative viewpoints regarding library supplies and materials content material your willingness to work with these points is appreciated,” Mississippi Library Fee Govt Director Hulen Bivins wrote within the memo. “The deletion of those two databases shall be everlasting till such time as when the Legislature adjustments their place relating to the content material of supplies made obtainable in Mississippi libraries.”
Bivens didn’t as soon as point out a particular legislation that the Mississippi legislature-funded database referred to as MAGNOLIA may violate by together with the findings of race and gender analysis, however he did cite a 2023 legislation that regulates digital sources obtainable to minors in public libraries, specializing in “obscene supplies.” Bivens’ memo didn’t specify why information on race relations and gender research can be panned as “obscene,” however contemplating this is identical state the place a Republican auditor categorised “Ladies’s Research” and “African American/Black Research” as “rubbish fields,” it’s not tough to think about the non-reasoning right here. Bivens reportedly informed reporters there have been different state legal guidelines that warranted the deletion, however he conveniently was unable to recall what any of these legal guidelines had been.
From Mississippi At present:
Bivins stated the Library Fee obtained a tip in late February or early March that the 2 databases may violate state legislation. By the top of March, the fabric had been deleted.
“In all instances we adjust to state legislation,” Bivins stated. “We’re not performing quick. We’re performing as we discern.”
The 2 analysis collections state officers ordered for deletion included materials from skilled journals, convention papers, books, scholar dissertations, periodicals and newspaper articles.
The Gender Research Database included educational content material from 377 peer reviewed journals. Topics embody, “Gender inequality, Masculinity, Submit-feminism (and) Gender identification.” The opposite deleted database, titled “Race Relations Abstracts” targeted on a variety of topics, together with “Ethnic research, Discrimination, Immigration research (and) Ideology.”
OK, it’s time to deal with the GOP elephant within the room: Mississippi is simply doing MAGA sh*t.
This is identical power President Donald Trump displayed in his newest bid to rewrite American historical past by focusing on the Nationwide Museum of African American Historical past and Tradition (NMAAHC) and the Ladies’s Historical past Museum in his MAGA-fied overhaul of the Smithsonian Establishment. It’s the identical power that had the Nationwide Park Service eradicating references to Harriett Tubman from its web site entry on the Underground Railroad, which the brand new edit erroneously described as a corporation of “Black/White cooperation” that “bridged the divides of race,” in an obvious effort to fall in step with Trump’s directives. (After extreme public backlash, the NPS restored the knowledge on Tubman, however nonetheless.)
So, when it comes proper all the way down to it, Mississippi is solely using the momentum of the president, who has made it his chief agenda to guide the nation in mendacity about what variety, fairness and inclusion entail as a way to justify banning it into oblivion.
In reality, talking of DEI, Bivens’ memo was despatched out on the identical day Mississippi lawmakers filed their remaining model of Home Invoice 1193, which bans DEI applications in addition to a listing of “divisive ideas” from public faculties throughout the state.
If America was ever so nice, why is the MAGA world working so relentlessly at hiding key components of its historical past and outlawing any effort to check that historical past?
Maybe these so-called patriots are paradoxically ashamed of their nation. And possibly they need to be.
SEE ALSO:
Mississippi Sen. Bradford Blackmon Introduces ‘Contraception Begins At Erection Act’
Minnesota Division Of Training Says No To Trump Administration’s Anti-DEI Mandate