The Dangers of Censorship

In my sophomore year of high school, I took my first video editing class. It was held in the computer lab at the very back of the library. At this point, I had never ventured further than the nonfiction section where I would take my mid-morning naps during study hall on the floor between the stacks if the space was unoccupied. So on that first day of class, I boldly entered this new territory and the first thing that catches my eye, aside from the surprising amount of Mac computers that were tucked away in this room unbeknownst to most of the student body, was a big yellow poster tacked on the wall by the projection screen. In big black letters, the poster read: “CENSORSHIP KILLS CREATIVITY.”

           

            Since my first introduction to the idea of censorship existing outside of the realm of turning an explicit song clean for radio airwaves, I have grown to see its truly harmful effects to not just creative works but also our perception of the world. From a creative standpoint, censorship does in fact kill creativity because it can undermine the artist intent or distort the image of reality that the work is originally trying to reflect. I find that the latter more often than not applies to books.

            I’ve noticed a recurring theme that people try to censor is the topic of slavery or racial prejudices. There have been instances where people have wanted to censor Mark Twain’s Huck Finn, Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, and now even history books. In fact, I came across an image online of a child’s history textbook where African slaves were described as “migrant workers” who came here for working opportunities. In my opinion, this type of censorship is unacceptable.

            I think when we censor works such as these and try to sugarcoat topics such as racism, slavery, etc. we are only cheating ourselves and future generations. These pieces reflect an important part of our American history whose effects still affect us as a nation to this day, and to water it down by wanting to take out the word “nigger” in Huck Finn, banning To Kill a Mockingbird, or twisting the truth of slavery, undermines the struggle and the progress we as Americans have made and specifically that of African Americans.

            Historically, we as Americans have done horrendous things and it may be hard to take sometimes or to understand but we have to know our history, our roots, in order to not make the same mistakes and to simply be better. How are we to move forward, if we don’t know where we’ve been? I believe when censorship is used in this particular way, it has the ability to erase our history for future generations. In that instance, we will not be able to move forward.  And by that definition, censorship not only kills creativity but it can also kill our history.