Book bans are a form of political action rather than censorship and are primarily aimed at women of color, say CU researchers

Black authors are disproportionately affected by book bans. And the bans appear to be aimed at mobilizing voters in shrinking conservative districts, according to two findings from a new study by CU Boulder.

According to the researchers, the study is one of the first comprehensive analyses of book bans in the United States, analyzing the 2,532 books removed in the 2021-22 school year. This year, more books were banned in U.S. school districts than in any previous year. The vast majority of bans followed larger debates about how history should be taught and whether LGBTQ+ perspectives should be included in curricula.

In 2023, the American Library Association documented hundreds of attempts to remove more than 4,000 books from schools and libraries across the country. Attempts increased 65 percent in 2023 compared to 2022.

The results were published in the journal PNAS Nexus.

Start with racial inequalities in book bans

The CU-Boulder study found that more than half of all banned books were children’s books about historical figures and those featuring diverse characters, including LGBTQ+ and people of color.

Nonfiction books about social movements and historical figures were the most commonly banned category. Young adult romance novels with queer themes made up only 10 percent of banned books. Another 10 percent were fantasy and science fiction books.

Authors of color were 4.5 times more likely to have their book banned from publication than white authors. This was especially true for women of color, who are more likely to write children’s books with diverse characters.

“These policies banning children’s books were a symbolic move to silence women authors of color and the diverse characters they wrote about,” said researcher Katie Spoon, a doctoral student in the computer science department.

The researchers also analyzed the political composition of the districts where the bans took place

The study found that Republican districts that have become less conservative over the past two decades are more likely to ban books than those that are solidly Republican. The change in Republican vote share was one of the strongest and most significant predictors of book bans.

Based on these findings, the researchers suspect that the bans may be less about censoring information and more about being a political tactic to mobilize votes where the Republican majority is shrinking.

“We argue that our results provide evidence that book bans are primarily a response to increasingly contentious local political contexts,” the researchers wrote. “We see censorship as a strategy potentially used to mobilize conservative voters, rather than as an authoritarian top-down approach to suppressing information in the perceived interest of the state.”

The book bans also did not seem to increase interest in the books. The researchers found that many of the books were not popular and their bans did not lead to more book sales or internet searches.

In contrast, in the United States, popular books have been the target of censorship in the past, such as “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee or “1984” by George Orwell.