School libraries have books by communism’s founder, Karl Marx, but not the Nobel Prize winning economist Milton Friedman, who wrote “Capitalism and Freedom,” notes education expert Joanne Jacobs. Milton Friedman, who supported free markets, had a big impact on the United States — he convinced the Nixon Administration to end the military draft, and convinced legislators to deregulate industries and cut taxes and spending — but he is almost non-existent in school libraries. (During World War II, Friedman came up with the idea of income-tax withholding, which the U.S. government then adopted in 1943. The government continued to use income-tax withholding in peacetime, which Friedman regretted).
Schools stock books by Ibram Kendi, who advocates racial discrimination against whites, but not John McWhorter, a black author who is critical of Kendi’s ideology.
Jacobs writes:
For all the talk about school libraries under pressure to “ban books,” the real issue is lack of balance, argues James Fishback in The Free Press. School library shelves tilt left, he writes.
He surveyed the library catalogs of 35 of the largest public school districts in eight red states and six blue states. It’s easy to find books advocating “anti-racist” ideas and transgender ideology, much harder to find conservative or libertarian ideas.
How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi, which argues that the “only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination,” is stocked in 42 percent of the U.S. school districts I surveyed. . . . only a single school district — Northside Independent School District (ISD) in San Antonio, Texas — offers students Woke Racism by John McWhorter, a book that challenges the borderline religious “anti-racist” ideas advanced by Kendi.
While 54 percent of districts offer The 1619 Project, in which Nikole Hannah-Jones centers U.S. history on slavery, none carry a critique of the project by economic historian Phillip W. Magness.
In 77 percent of districts, students can find Kacen Callender’s Felix Ever After, which claims that girls who hate “being forced into dresses and being given dolls” are transgender, writes Fishback. “Not a single school out of the nearly 5,000 I searched offers books critical of trans theory,” such as Trans by Helen Joyce or Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters by Abigail Shrier. Both are bestsellers….
Students should be able to check out controversial books, writes Fishback. But if libraries carry Marx’s Communist Manifesto (75 percent), they also should offer Milton Friedman’s Capitalism and Freedom (8 percent).
Librarians want parents and school boards to trust their judgment about what belongs on the shelves and what’s appropriate for children of various ages. But some are overtly political, writes Fishback. Emily Drabinski, president of the American Library Association and a self-proclaimed Marxist, said public education, including libraries, should be “a site of socialist organizing.”… Barack Obama’s Dreams from My Father can be found in 75 percent of districts and Michelle Obama’s Becoming in 65 percent, while only 37 percent carry George W. Bush’s Decision Points. Both Kamala Harris and Mike Pence have served as vice president: 57 percent carry her book, 6 percent carry his.
There are left-wing school librarians who idolize the radical black author Ibram Kendi, perhaps because of his anti-capitalist, anti-white ideology.
“To love capitalism is to end up loving racism. To love racism is to end up loving capitalism…Capitalism is essentially racist; racism is essentially capitalist,” says Kendi’s best-selling book, How to Be An Antiracist. That book is a “comprehensive introduction to critical race theory,” gushes the leading progressive media organ Slate.
The “key concept” in Ibram Kendi’s book How to Be an Antiracist was that discrimination against whites is the only way to achieve equality: “The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination,” wrote Kendi in that book. Kendi has been described by progressive publications as a leading “critical race theorist.”
