A Georgia school district has removed Toni Morrison’s "The Bluest Eye" from its public school libraries, citing graphic depictions of child rape and incest in the award-winning novel.
The book joins over 30 other titles removed by Cobb County, Georgia’s second-largest school district, since 2023 as part of an effort to remove sexually explicit material from K-12 media centers.
District leaders say the move is intended to protect students and give parents more control over what their kids are exposed to, while free-speech advocates argue the removal amounts to censorship and limits students’ access to literature.
"We're no more banning the book than we are banning rated-R movies. It's just that we are removing those with sexually explicit content and allowing our parents to make those decisions for their families," Cobb County Superintendent Chris Ragsdale told Fox News Digital.
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Ragsdale said district colleagues brought the book to his attention because of concerns about excerpts dealing with sexual topics. At a board meeting, Ragsdale read aloud one explicit passage that depicts the rape of an 11-year-old girl by her father.
"Both as a father and as a superintendent, I think about a parent having to explain to their sixth-grade daughter after she encounters explicit descriptions of child incest and rape in a book provided at school, without parents' knowledge," Ragsdale said in the book removal announcement posted online.
"As the superintendent responsible for the instruction of 100,000 students, I do not have the luxury of making that decision for other parents and their children," he added.
The district announced the book would join dozens of others removed from school shelves, including the popular "A Court of Thorns and Roses" series, "The Perks of Being a Wallflower," "Me, Earl, and the Dying Girl," and "Thirteen Reasons Why." The latter was eventually adapted into a Netflix series about a high school girl who dies by suicide.
District officials said other works by Toni Morrison remain available in Cobb County schools. The district says its removals target books containing sexually explicit passages.
Ragsdale acknowledged the author’s award-winning status, but argued that awards do not mean a book belongs in every K-12 school library. He said books containing sexually explicit material are subject to a separate administrative review process, rather than Georgia’s standard process for parent challenges.
The superintendent rejected the characterization of the district’s actions as book banning or censorship.
"And there's not a single classroom in our school district that will show a rated R movie during class to students," Ragsdale said. "Same thing for these books that contain sexually explicit material. That needs to be a parental decision made in the parents and the child's house."
"One size does not fit all. So we can't just make a cross-the-board decision for parents and expect that every parent is going to agree with that decision," Ragsdale later added. "We want the parents to be able to be empowered to make the decisions that, as parents, they should be able to make."
Parental advocacy group Moms for Liberty echoed Ragsdale’s argument, telling Fox News Digital that schools are not required to stock every book and can decide what their students have access to in the school library.
"Schools are not required to stock every published work. They already restrict internet access, movies, and other materials for age-appropriateness," said Tina Descovich, Moms for Liberty CEO and co-founder.
"The book ‘The Bluest Eye’ went through the Cobb County School District’s review process and the process worked. The community determined that graphic descriptions of the rape and incest of a young girl in a book on shelves accessible to 11-year-old students in school, often without a parent’s knowledge or consent, is not acceptable," Descovich added.
"At the end of the day, this is about protecting students and ensuring parents are not blindsided by their child’s assigned reading list," she said.
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Kasey Meehan, Freedom to Read Director at PEN America, criticized the decision and said Morrison’s works are often targeted using excerpts that are taken out of the context of the books as a whole.
"While that particular part of a book can be really difficult to read and to sit with and grapple with, what we continue to point to is that books are not harmful, censorship is," Meehan told Fox News Digital.
"So what we hear time and time again is that books like ‘The Bluest Eye’ and other books that talk about sex, talk about consensual sex, as well as talk about violence and sexual experiences, they help young people gain really profound and necessary literacy around what consent is, what harm is and how to be in relationships that are mutually loving," she later added.
Meehan also challenged the district’s argument regarding parental choice, saying district-wide decisions restrict access to books for every student, regardless of age or interest.
"Increasingly, we've seen the way in which state laws or politicians or even broadly, district administrators are making decisions that affect the access of books for every student in the district, regardless of age, regardless of interest," Meehan said.
"I think we often point to that making these broad, sweeping decisions that restrict access to titles, restrict the freedom to read for every student in that district," she said. "[It] undercuts the professional expertise of educators and librarians who see, of course, the literary merit and value in having that book accessible for young readers."
Meehan also warned that what may begin with the removal of a single book could expand to other titles.
"While it may seem like it's one book, censorship is a slippery slope, and it never actually ends with just one book or one title," Meehan said. "Oftentimes, districts that ban one book then continue to remove all kinds of literature from school."
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