More than half of books banned last year featured LGBTQ characters or people of color, report finds

NBC News | Comcast ^ | February 27, 2025 | By Jo Yurcaba (D-NBC)

[Oldeconomybuyer]

More than half of books banned during the last school year featured or were about people of color or members of the LGBTQ community, according to a report released Thursday.

PEN America, a nonprofit group that advocates for free expression in literature, released data in the fall that found more than 10,000 instances of schools or their districts removing books from school, classrooms or curriculums last year, affecting 4,218 titles. The analysis released Thursday found that those bans disproportionately affect books about certain identities, including people of color, and also more often apply to certain genres, such as history.

The analysis found that 36% of the more than 4,000 banned titles featured characters or people of color and 25% included LGBTQ characters or people. Of the titles featuring LGBTQ people, 28% featured a transgender and/or genderqueer character. One in 10 of the banned titles featured characters or people with a physical and/or learning or developmental disability, the analysis found.

“This targeted censorship amounts to a harmful assault on historically marginalized and underrepresented populations — a dangerous effort to erase their stories, achievements, and history from schools,” Sabrina Baêta, senior manager for PEN America.

Educational institutions that receive federal funding have become ground zero for the conservative-led effort in recent years to limit students’ access to information about race and racism as well as the LGBTQ community. Proponents of the restrictions argue that such information can make students uncomfortable and that students shouldn’t have access to sexually explicit material.

Critics of the bans argue that restricting access to information harms all students’ abilities to learn, can promote further discrimination and doesn’t allow students of color and LGBTQ students to see their lives reflected in books.

[cgbg]

Leftist censors crying about censorship....

[ABStrauss]

What color are the people?

Is this an insinuation that ‘colored’ people are fags and lezzies?

[newzjunkey]

“Featured” and “banned” are doing a lot of heavy lifting in this alarmism

[Kazan]

In others, sexual content inappropriate for children was banned.

That's good news.

[AppyPappy]

Under the Biden administration

[BenLurkin]

Are they seriously suggesting that parents object to books just because there are about non-whites?

[alexander_busek]

More than half of books banned last year featured LGBTQ characters or people of color engaging in obscene or depraved acts

Just keepin' it real!

Regards,

[FoxInSocks]

No books are banned. People can publish whatever they want. Taxpayer-funded schools can choose not to purchase and shelve such books. Big deal. If you want to read a particular title, go to the store and buy it.

[Telepathic Intruder]

Do people of color always want to be associated with LGBTQ groups? Because the LGBTQ groups always seem to think they do.

[just me]

Just banned in the schools.
People can still buy their nasty gross books if they want to.

[ansel12]

The media keeps spreading the impression that books in America are being banned, since when did books selected or rejected for school kids at any given time become an issue of all books allowed no matter what, or “banned”.

[TalBlack]

A behavior and race are not comparable. This is how they sneak deviance in as an immutable trait.

[newzjunkey]

“ limit students’ access to information about race and racism as well as the LGBTQ community”

There is LGB and there’s TQ+. No matter what you feel about LGB, we all need to focus on rejection of the reality blurring TQ+. There is NO LGBTQ “community” by definition.

Any choice of books in schools is a curated selection that limits access to information. The internet exists, audiobooks exist, apps exist. “Information about race and racism” is an interesting turn of phrase which could mean anything.

[alexander_busek]

More than half of books banned last year featured LGBTQ characters or people of color, report finds

Report ignores that plenty of fine books featuring "people of color" were banned during the Obama / Biden years, too.

Classics like "Huckleberry Finn" or "To Kill a Mockingbird."

Regards,

[BigFreakinToad]

all out of care and tariffs are too high to import more.

[SaveFerris]

(LGBTQ characters or people. Of the titles featuring LGBTQ people, 28% featured a transgender and/or genderqueer character)

HOW could so many idiots believe in Democrat
Manchurian Candidate Barack Hussein Obama?

HAS to be the spirit of antichrist

DEMOCRAT JOE BIDEN and DEMOCRAT BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA
ARE UNREPENTANT GODLESS REPROBATES PREACHING SATAN'S LIES
FROM THE 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥 FIERY PITS OF ETERNAL HELL 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

DEMOCRATS prove every single day of the week that they
are at War with Reality, Biology and Almighty God

All according to SATAN'S plan.

Rainbow White House happened on June 26, 2015



Do NO harm, Christians, but reject this Godless Reprobate Agenda.
(For the thread)

[10mm]

"More than half of books banned last year featured LGBTQ characters or people of color, report finds"

So, basically, black tranny porn.

[armourenthusiast]

Don’t forget stupid, criminal and lazy!

[Opinionated Blowhard]

No books were “banned.” And there still are books with gay characters in school libraries. Pornographic LGBTQ+ books were taken out of public school libraries. That is all that happened.