A 10th grade English class in North Carolina is no longer allowed to read an acclaimed book about a teen’s experience of racial profiling since the district’s superintendent decided the story was unsuitable assigned reading after one parent complained that it contained profanity.
Haywood County Superintendent Dr. Bill Nolte did not immediately respond to The Daily Beast’s request for comment on Monday but told Smoky Mountain News last week that he had decided to pull the fiction book—called Dear Martin—after learning that Tim Reeves, the parent of a 10th grader at Tuscola High School, was bothered by its use of profanity and sexual innuendo.
“The intended educational message or purpose of the book was being diminished by the way it was written, by the amount of profanity and innuendo,” Nolte told the outlet.
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Nolte separately conceded to the newsletter Popular Information that he had neither read the book nor obtained a copy of it before denying students the opportunity to study it in class.
During a school board meeting on Jan. 10, Reeves said that his son was presented with the book by his English teacher and, after reading six of the book’s 210 pages, came home and relayed to his family that “there was some explicit language.”
Reeves said that after prodding his son, he learned the book contained the “f-word,” the “s-word,” and “GD.”
“I was just appalled by the type of language that was within a book that was being given to my son as a text,” Reeves told the board. “I began to investigate this book and see that there’s a lot of language, there’s a lot of sexual innuendos, a lot of things that are concerning to me as a parent that’s being presented to my child as a text.”
Reeves said that the teacher in question hadn’t responded to his complaints about the text, which he said hadn’t been listed on his son’s syllabus for the class. He questioned “what the age of consent is–for language in material that’s being presented to children.”
“They’re still adolescents,” he said. “My children hear lots of things every day. But as a textbook that should not be in there, I really feel strongly about that.”
Nolte told Popular Information that although he hadn’t had the opportunity to “read all of it,” he pulled Dear Martin after chatting about it with people who had read “different sections of it.”
Nolte added that he had also found bits of the book published online and concluded that it was inappropriate for the teenage class due to “the amount of profanity and other descriptions or images in it.”
“I made the best judgment I could make,” he said. “I feel pretty comfortable with it.”
Nic Stone’s Dear Martin was deemed appropriate for kids as young as ninth grade by the School Library Journal. The book was also honored by the American Library Association, becoming a finalist for an award that celebrates “impressive new voices in young adult literature” in 2018.
The New York Times bestseller, which was also named one of TIME magazine’s top 100 young adult books, chronicles high school senior Justyce McAllister, an honor student and debate team captain, who ends up in handcuffs after a police officer profiles him. As he struggles to confront issues of race, he begins writing letters to Dr. Martin Luther King in his journal asking, “What would Martin do?” as he seeks to model his life after the civil rights giant.
Years before pulling the book on racial injustice, Nolte was temporarily relieved of his daily duties in the district after generating outrage on Facebook for a series of posts that critics suggested were racist, WLOS reported.
The backlash followed a post that appeared on Nolte’s Facebook page that included a black and white image of children presumably in a cotton field carrying sacks, with the text: “Poor children of every color picked cotton.” Under the image are the words: “Open a book and gain some knowledge.”
Although he eventually apologized, Nolte had initially defended the image, according to the Mountaineer, saying that it was a response to a report about an ABC executive who was put on administrative leave after suggesting during contract negotiations with Good Morning America anchor Robin Roberts that the network wasn’t asking Roberts to pick cotton.
“Cotton, if you know anything about it, it’s not about race,” Nolte said at the time, according to the Mountaineer. “A lot of people I knew did it, including family members, so I thought I was supporting Robin Roberts.”
Nolte later took the post down according to the outlet, saying: “I want to sincerely apologize to anyone who was offended by my repost of poor white children picking cotton that said picking cotton was not about race.”
According to the school district’s listed policies, parents can submit written objections to the principal about instructional materials, and the principal “may establish a committee to review the objection” or make the decision themselves.
“If the principal or the committee determines that any material violates constitutional or other legal rights of the parent or student, the principal or the committee shall either remove the material from instructional use or accommodate the particular student and parent,” the policy states. “Books and other instructional materials may be removed from the school media collection only for legitimate educational reasons and subject to the limitations of the First Amendment.”
According to the policy, a committee or principal’s decision can be appealed to the superintendent and the superintendent’s decision can be appealed to the school board.
School Board Chairman Chuck Francis told The Daily Beast on Monday that he hasn’t had the chance to read the book yet, when asked about whether he intended to make an appeal.
“To make a comment on it might not be appropriate,” Francis said, while insisting that grievances about the book had stemmed from “not the contents so much as the profanity.”
Francis said that while he hadn’t personally been contacted by any other parents about the text, he overheard other board members discussing how other parents had been concerned about it and there was “a lot of emotion going on” about its profanity.
“If we expect our kids not to use that kind of language in the classroom to the teachers, in front of the teachers, I don’t know whether we would need to be reading that as well,” he said.
“I don’t know the book,” Francis said, adding that he was aware of at least two members of the board who had looked at the book and agreed with the assessment that there was a lot of profanity in it, but was aware of others who disagreed.
An alternative for a concerned parent would be to let them select another book for the assignment, Francis said. But that option wasn’t enough for Reeves who, according to Popular Information, had objected to the book in conversations with the high school principal.
Tuscola High School Principal Heather Blackmon couldn’t immediately be reached for comment on Monday, but according to Popular Information, after the principal offered the alternative, Reeves pressed for the book to be pulled for all of the other students in the class as well.
According to Francis, there hasn’t been much debate from board members about the superintendent’s decision, and when asked whether he thought the board might appeal Nolte’s decision, he said that he “doesn’t see that happening.” Francis cautioned, however, that an assessment about the book’s future at the school could be “premature” in light of the attention it seemed to be getting and he wouldn’t prohibit conversations on the issue.
When asked if he planned to read it, Francis responded, “If you know Chuck Francis, Chuck doesn’t read books.”
“I do plan on perusing through it and looking at it—that would be disingenuous to say I was going to read it,” he said, adding that while he reads articles, “I don’t do books.”
Francis said that his familiarity with the book had largely come from discussions on Facebook, from former teachers, substitutes, and parents.
“I never once heard anything about any kind of racial reasons,” he said.
Just as Francis insisted that the book had not been removed for touching on topics of race, other school districts have pulled the book from their curriculum on the heels of critical race theory battles.
Earlier this month, Monett School District Superintendent Mark Drake said Dear Martin had been swapped for To Kill A Mockingbird in a ninth-grade classroom because teachers issuing a letter to parents for permission to allow their kids to read the book “didn’t go through administrative approval,” according to the Springfield News-Leader.
Francis told The Daily Beast that parents’ opinions are important and that profanity was a valid concern in a conservative county like Haywood.
“One parent may be all that it would take, and I would hope that other parents would get involved as well if a book bothers them as well,” Francis said. “You’ve got to be fair to everybody.”
