Book Banning, Censorship, and Ethnic Studies in Urban Schools: An Introduction to the Special Issue

Abstract

In those States in which ethnic, religious or linguistic minorities or persons ofindigenous origin exist, a child belonging to such a minority or who isindigenous shall not be denied the right, in community with other members ofhis or her group, to enjoy his or her own culture, to profess and practise his orher own religion, or to use his or her own language.Article 30, UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, 1989Article 30 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) protectsminority and indigenous children’s (anyone under the age of 18) right to practicetheir community’s culture, religion, and use of their own language within theirrespective larger nation State. Unfortunately, the US, along with South Sudan andSomalia, are the only countries in the world that have not ratified this internationaltreaty and several other international treaties that protect the rights of minority andindigenous peoples, especially minority and indigenous children. Lamentably, theUS is not, and has not been a model historically in the protection of minority andindigenous peoples’ human rights (Acun˜a 2000; Spring 2004; Vargas 2005).A history of genocide, both physical and cultural, often obscured by USexceptionalism, is part of our nation’s expansion and growth story, both here in ourown soil and abroad (Pease 2000). Indeed the US ‘‘melting pot’’ myth has beenbased on a history of racism, ethnocide, and cultural genocide in which assimilationis the method and schooling the institution (Dunbar and Skutnabb-Kangas 2008),which has been used to legally sustain the white supremacist foundations of the