Ray Bradbury’s classic book, “Fahrenheit 451,” shows a dystopian fascist future where people take pills and watch state-run TV to stay compliant in a world where books are outlawed and burned when found. The only hope for the future of humanity is the hidden world of people who become the books they memorize. It’s time for me to fully memorize “The Sneetches.”

On Jan. 9, the assistant director of communications for the Olentangy school district near Columbus, Ohio abruptly stopped a reading of “The Sneetches” in a third-grade classroom when a student named Noah astutely commented that it seemed similar to how white people disrespected Black people in the past. This was made public largely because it was part of an NPR broadcast for “Planet Money,” and the lesson from “The Sneetches” was designed to be an economic one.

The Dr. Seuss story is about Sneetches with stars on their bellies who oppress the Sneetches without stars. An exploiter shows up to benefit from their division. He has a machine that adds and takes off stars. Once the Sneetches have spent all of their money getting stars on and off in the endless cycle to either be superior or belong, they realize they are all worthy of dignity and community. I have a limited print from Michelson’s Gallery that shows the Sneetches on the beaches befriending each other. I appreciate it every day.

Most of us know that book banning is on the rise in schools and libraries. Typically, the banned books have themes addressing racism, American imperialism, LGBTQ issues, feminism, atheism or anything that does not support the untroubled version of a wonderful Christian, white, male-dominated democracy known as the United States.

The Ohio school district denies banning “The Sneetches” but how do they justify shutting down a third-grader who offered an interpretation that should have been lauded but was shut down instead? How confusing it must be for a child who demonstrated an awareness of inequality only to be cut off by an adult authority figure.

“The Sneetches” can be interpreted in many ways but it is not overtly about racism or any specific form of subjugation. The broad message is that each Sneetch is deserving of kindness. Interrupting and stopping a young child in school is an extension and escalation of the obsessive need for white people of bad conscience to control the narrative and education of our country’s children. It is fascism.

I had just completed reading Celeste Ng’s “Our Missing Hearts” when The Sneetches incident took place. It is set in a very near future dystopian society where the only books available to people are those that support fascist U.S. rule. Anyone who appears to have Asian roots is suspected of being the enemy, and children are removed from the homes of parents who may not wholeheartedly support the regime.

The patterns described in the book are as historical as they are dystopian. Think Japanese-American internment camps and the abuse of Indigenous children stolen from their parents’ homes to be assimilated into a white-dominated culture. Librarians are part of an underground movement in Ng’s story. They are heroes much like the characters who memorize books in “Fahrenheit 451.”

Today’s librarians are under siege for not removing books from the shelves. The Republican led House in North Dakota has filed HB1205. If the bill passes, librarians who do not remove “sexually explicit” books from public libraries will be arrested. They could serve up to 30 days in prison and pay a fine of $1,500 as a Class B misdemeanor. I wish this sounded as far-fetched to me as “The Handmaid’s Tale” did in 1985. Then I believed that extreme patriarchy was capable of acute misogyny, but I also felt the luxury of hope that Andrea Ayvazian wrote about in her recent column. I thought it was unlikely that women’s rights would worsen. I was wrong.

Signs of descent into the kind of fascism where a large segment of society is persuaded they remain in a democracy are everywhere. Reported acts of antisemitic violence through the United States in 2021 was 2,717 — an all-time high since 1979 when the ADL began tracking it — and an increase of 34% from the previous year. Blaming and dehumanizing Jews is the oldest trick in the book to avoid a real conversation about the source of oppression. Mass shootings are normative in a country where guns have more rights than people. And so on and so forth.

The Sneetches on the beaches figured it out. Complicity and apathy are unacceptable, and simple kindness and empathy indicate a healthy and loving society.

J.M. Sorrell is a feminist at her core. The Sneetches taught her important lessons that affirmed her sense of right and wrong. She hopes that Noah memorizes it, too.]]>