Kizzy Albritton, PhD, is a Public Voices Fellow of The OpEd Project at the University of Texas at Austin and an Associate Professor of School Psychology in the Department of Educational Psychology.
Silencing Black and brown voices is not new, but it must not succeed in America today.
A county in Texas recently decided to have its library system remain open after proposing a shutdown to avoid an order from a federal judge requiring 17 previously banned books be returned to library shelves.
Lawmakers in Missouri are seeking to essentially defund public libraries in a proposal that would withhold state funding. And textbook publishers are looking to rewrite Black history in response to Florida’s Stop Woke act.
Over the last two years, there has been a growing list of book bans within publicly funded educational spaces and books written by Black and Brown authors have been targeted repeatedly.
While proponents of these book bans argue that the goal is to protect “innocent children” from sensitive topics, these acts are the latest form of educational oppression and an attempt to silence and exclude the voices and contributions of Black and Brown individuals.
According to PEN America, 1,648 books were banned between July 2021 and June 2022. Of those 1,648 books, 40% included protagonists or prominent secondary characters of color, 21% focused on issues of race and racism, 10% were related to rights and activism, and 4% included characters or stories highlighting religion of individuals from ethnically minority backgrounds.
Currently 32 states have banned books and Texas leads all states with approximately 800 banned titles across 22 school districts.
While most banned titles are books written for young adults, literature for younger children is being targeted also with picture books and chapter books representing approximately 30% of banned titles.
For example, “This is Your Time,” a children’s book by civil rights activist Ruby Bridges, has been banned in many classrooms across the country. The banning of books written by Bridges is significant as she was the first Black child to bravely integrate an all-white public school in Louisiana at just six years of age.
So not only do some want to rewrite Black history, they also want to ban books written by Black icons in American history. It is essential to remember that Black history is also American history.
Historically, silencing and exclusion of Black voices included the use of anti-literacy laws to prevent enslaved Black individuals from learning to read and write. The targeting of books written by, and about Black individuals is just a modern-day version of that law.
Banning books is harmful to all students but disproportionately impacts Black and Brown children in several ways, particularly given the continued fight for equitable public education.
Although Black and Brown students bring tremendous strengths to the classroom, they continue to experience academic disparities due to ongoing systemic and structural barriers.
Banning books by Black authors or ones that center on the voices of Black and Brown children is yet another barrier that Black students are forced to overcome. This only further perpetuates racism and anti-Blackness and tells Black students that individuals who share their lived experiences are not valued.
Books provide a unique opportunity to explore worldviews and perspectives that might diverge from their traditional ways of thinking. Banning books eliminates this opportunity and further silences voices that have been traditionally marginalized and underrepresented.
To be sure, many books written by Black and Brown authors do not appear on the growing list of banned books. However, the most recent dispute in Texas illustrates that the fight over book bans is far from over.
As educators it is critical not to remain silent as books are a core foundation of the learning process. Many school districts have adopted “community review committees” to determine whether a book should be banned.
Ironically, most committees do not include educators who hold expertise regarding books, such as librarians. It is also unclear to what extent Black and Brown voices are represented on these committees across the country.
Black individuals-- particularly Black parents-- and educators are members of the community too, and our membership should be reflected on these review committees. Black and Brown children need to be protected too.
A golden tray sits on the Resolute Desk as President Donald Trump speaks during an announcement on American nuclear innovation in the Oval Office at the White House on July 24, 2026, in Washington, D.C. Trump is signing multiple executive orders targeting the nuclear energy sector and easing rules for new reactors and nuclear fuel supply chains.
Trump’s hubris rivals the fallen heroes of ancient Greek mythology
In January, the New York Times asked President Donald Trump if there were any limits on his global powers.
“Yeah,” the president responded, “there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
That was eight months ago, but fortunately Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster adaptation of “The Odyssey” has made ancient Greek literature newly relevant. Before that window closes, I’d like to talk about hubris.
Today, the term mostly means excessive pride or arrogance. That’s part of what the Greeks meant by it too, but the meaning was a bit richer and more specific. Hubris was an insolent or outrageous act that offended the gods, often because the transgressor was claiming abilities or authorities that solely belonged to supreme beings.
Nolan renamed and slightly modified the concept of xenia for the film, calling it “Zeus’ law.” In the director’s telling, mortals should follow the rules laid out by the gods, specifically the requirement to treat strangers with respect lest they be gods in disguise.
In a sense, hubris is the opposite, or at least the rejection, of xenia. The hubris of the suitors, and at times Odysseus himself, invites punishment by the gods and their mortal instruments.
Which brings me back to Donald Trump. His claim that there are no constraints on his personal power to dictate events on the global stage was one of the greatest expressions of hubris ever uttered by a political leader.
Trump’s claim was obviously false when he made it.
He vowed that he could end the Russia-Ukraine war in 24 hours. He’s proved powerless to make that happen. If he had divine powers to work his will, why would he have balked at implementing his tariffs so often that Wall Street adopted the “TACO trade” term for his deals? “TACO” stands for “Trump always chickens out.”
And why would Trump have made so many embarrassing concessions to China — from rescinding tariffs on Chinese goods to allowing them to buy crucial and incredibly valuable computer chips?
But Trump saw his success at capturing Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro as proof of his ability to launch missiles to the same effect as Zeus’ lightning bolts. Trump believed he was the most powerful man who ever lived.
This is no exaggeration. In March, when the Iran invasion seemed successful, Trump gave a document penned by“Presidential Historian David King” to New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan purporting to prove that Trump was “the most powerful person to have EVER walked this planet.” King was, in fact, a businessman and occasional caddy for legendary golfer Gary Player.
King compared Trump favorably to many of history’s most powerful, and often heinous, figures: Alexander the Great, Attila the Hun, William the Conqueror, Napoleon Bonaparte, Joseph Stalin, Genghis Khan, Mao Tse Tung, Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin. Many of these men thought they were the most powerful person in the world, too. And many were defeated precisely because they believed it.
At least Napoleon and Hitler had a string of truly impressive victories before they learned the folly of hubris. The limits on Trump’s power have been exposed by far less august forces than the combined might of the allies in World War II or the fearsome Russian winter.
Iran is a comparatively middling power. But the regime’s ability to absorb punishment while imposing its will on the Strait of Hormuz has proved to be a greater constraint on Trump’s power than his morality or mind. We should note that, at least rhetorically, his morality has not proved much of a constraint. He has repeatedly promised to destroy Iranian “civilization” if the regime refuses to capitulate.
But they haven’t — and won’t anytime soon — because the regime’s tolerance for pain far outstrips Trump’s. The combined fear of skyrocketing oil prices, outrage of Gulf state potentates, diminishing weapon supplies and domestic unpopularity is doing the work that international law, congressional oversight and the collective opinion of foreign policy experts can’t or won’t do.
If I considered Trump more heroic than reason and facts could allow, I would say his Sisyphean predicament has the whiff of Greek tragedy to it. Trump is vexed by the fact that the Iranians won’t honor deals or ratify his countless premature claims of victory — giving new meaning to his vow that his presidency would make people tired of winning. It’s almost like they’re out-Trumping Trump.
Things might have gone better if he’d heeded that great Greek tragedian Sophocles: “For Zeus utterly abhors the boasts of a proud tongue.”
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Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.