A school board member who runs a “wokeness checker” snitch site has pressed a Virginia school district to purge six books from its shelves, alleging that the books—including a seminal Toni Morrison novel—are rife with “pornographic” content.
In an email sent to Virginia Beach City Public Schools Superintendent Aaron Spence earlier this week, at-large school board member Victoria Manning said that another board member, Laura Hughes, joined her in demanding four books be removed from circulation or use in the district’s curriculum “due to their pornographic nature.”
“It has been brought to my attention by some parents that there are some disturbing books in our district that are available to students,” Manning wrote on Oct. 5. “I would like to ask that you pull these books from shelves and also block any electronic access by students to getting these books IMMEDIATELY.”
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Manning demanded that staff involved in approving the books be disciplined. Spence replied that four of the books that were not a part of district curriculum had been removed, pending a review.
The list of “disturbing” titles included Lawn Boy by Jonathan Evison, Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe, A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest Gaines and The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison.
According to Spence, Manning had also separately requested the review of two other books, Beyond Magenta and Good Trouble: Lessons from the Civil Rights Playbook.
The review, first reported by The Virginian-Pilot, comes weeks after another Virginia district, Fairfax County Public Schools, pulled two books attacked by Manning from high school libraries after complaints at a school board meeting about sexually explicit and “homoerotic” content.
The emails were made available through a public records request and later obtained by The Daily Beast.
Manning said in her Oct. 5 email, that she had “skimmed” through Lawn Boy, and alleged that the graphic novel Gender Queer depicted people performing oral sex and discussing masturbation “and many other things that I don’t feel comfortable mentioning.”
Both Lawn Boy and Gender Queer were recognized by the American Library Association as texts with “special appeal to young adults, ages 12 through 18.”
After reeling off other complaints about the books, she took aim at A Lesson Before Dying, which addresses racism and racial identity in 1940s Louisiana, and was approved for use in 11th grade curriculum. It needed to be booted because it included a scene of a “couple getting undressed,” and moving on from there, she wrote.
Although Manning admitted she had not read The Bluest Eye or confirmed its contents “firsthand,” she said she was convinced by the accounts of others that the text was unfit for 12th graders.
“I have not been able to get a copy of this book in my hands but I should be able to get a copy by tomorrow to confirm what is in it,” Manning wrote at the time.
After quoting one line she had heard that made references to sexual desire, Manning said: “I’ve been told there is much more and although I have not confirmed this firsthand but I believe this should be removed from our curriculum and shelves immediately pending review.”
Morrison’s text is a frequent target of book banning, and routinely appears on the ALA’s list of the most challenged books because it was “considered sexually explicit and depicts child sex abuse.”
Spence told The Daily Beast on Friday that the outrage over the books was unwarranted.
Concerns from parents are supposed to be turned over to the superintendent to resolve, Spence said, but he noted that he had not seen complaints from parents about the texts and he was not aware of a challenge to the books at a district-level since he became superintendent in 2014.
“I’ve only heard through these board members,” he said, adding that the books were neither widely available nor frequently checked out.
“We had one copy of Lawn Boy and it has never been checked out,” he said. He had also looked into copies of Gender Queer and located a copy of the book in three high school libraries. There are 11 high schools in the district, according to the district’s website.
“It had only been checked out one time in one of the schools,” he said. “So this isn’t a rampant issue.”
In a series of emails to the board, Spence said that four of the books challenged by the women had been brought to the school board’s attention and were removed from student circulation last month for review, as part of its policy when a book is challenged.
He said that the book Gender Queer had “been permanently removed from our shelves,” while staff were directed to use the district’s formal review process to decide the fate of the other books, a process which involves a committee reading the book and convening to discuss concerns over its obscenities, age appropriateness, and academic freedom.
Books that landed in the district’s libraries and that were included in curriculum were “vetted carefully” by library media specialists who also consulted recommendations from national professional organizations and were expected to follow guidelines outlined in the school district’s policies on selection of media and teaching materials, Spence said.
He cautioned that “wholesale decisions based on the positions of some stakeholders do not necessarily represent the thinking of all or serve the best interests of our students as a whole.”
Manning fired back in an email on Oct. 7, that after finally acquiring a copy of The Bluest Eye, she was disgusted within the first few pages. She said she was disturbed by the review process for the books, alleging that making the material available to children “could be against the law.”
“What one person finds offensive, others may not,” Spence wrote back. “That’s why we have this process.”
On a personal website linked from her school board campaign Facebook page, Manning writes that she had been “made aware” by conservative media outlets, including The Daily Wire, to be “on the lookout for sexually explicit materials in our schools.”
The website includes a page, entitled “Wokeness Checker,” where Manning declares that “Wokeness and Critical Race Theory (CRT) practices are becoming embedded in our nation's schools, including here in Virginia Beach.”
The page provides a link for visitors to submit documents related to CRT in Virginia Beach schools.
Declining to comment about Manning specifically, Spence told The Daily Beast that he has witnessed a clear, politically motivated effort to “conflate” even unrelated topics with critical race theory.
“It would be great if those conversations were a little more civil and evidence-based,” he said.
Manning also represents herself as a kind of whistleblower on classroom discussions about race, posting videos on Rumble, including one where she said was “disgusted and appalled” after reading The Racial Healing Handbook, which she claimed had been read by a group of teachers in Virginia Beach last year as part of a monthly book study.
In March, she made an appearance on “Fox and Friends,” accusing teachers of disguising critical race theory in classrooms under notions of equity and “culturally responsive practices.”
“Our students and our teachers are being taught that our country is innately racist, and students and teachers are being pitted against one another based on their skin color,” she said at the time.
Hughes and Manning did not immediately respond to The Daily Beast’s request for comment on Friday but Manning shared a lengthy statement on Facebook slamming The Virginian-Pilot’s story which she said “makes it seem like I’m a book burner.”
“The VA Pilot published a one-sided article about me regarding the pornographic and sexually explicit books with pedophilia that I exposed,” she wrote. “I just don’t want our children exposed to this sick pornography.”
The National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) included A Lesson Before Dying and The Bluest Eye on its list of the Top Ten Banned Books that Changed the Face of Black History.
In a letter to a school board in Alabama that was weighing a similar decision to ban the book last year, the NCAC defended the text. “Precluding students from reading literature with sexual references and language that some find objectionable would deprive them of exposure to vast amounts of important material,” NCAC executive editor Joan Bertin and American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression president Chris Finan wrote. They cited as examples, the Bible and works by Shakespeare, in addition to texts written by celebrated American authors John Steinbeck, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and others.
In 2009, Gaines’ book was also awarded the ALA’s distinction of “Outstanding Books for the College Bound and Lifelong Learners.”
