This is crazy racist:

[applegrove]

Last edited Sat May 16, 2026, 03:56 PM - Edit history (1)

— (@billkittle.bsky.social) 2026-05-16T00:22:35.673Z

I was born in 1982 and for an hour a day, instead of Social Studies, we would watch Roots from beginning to end. We had to write a paper on it order to even pass the 5th grade. Now they’re BANNING it. This shit is insane.

— The Volatile Mermaid (@ohnoshetwitnt.bsky.social) 2026-05-16T16:18:10.738Z

[sop]

1. Nathan Bedford Forrest's memoir will remain on school library shelves, though.

[applegrove]

2. Sounds like a real beauty.

[fujiyamasan]

27. In some of those counties they'll re erect the statues taken down

Or build new ones honoring the traitors.

Yikes. Never thought we’d go back to an era before I was even born. Insane.

[Whip-poor-will]

29. Let them

Pass a Federal laws any confederate statue must include a white flag of surrender.

[niyad]

3. what is? there is nothing there.

[applegrove]

5. Knox County in Tennessee is removing Alex Hailey's books like Roots from school libraries.

Haley lived in Knoxville.

[LoisB]

7. Oops. I was typing a response to niyad and didn't see that you had already done

so. Sorry.

[applegrove]

9. The more the merrier!!!

[niyad]

8. Ah, the image is there now. It did not show up for me earlier.

[LoisB]

6. It is a picture of Alex Haley and a picture of his book "Roots' with the notation that

"Knox County (TN) is removing Alex Haley's books from its school libraries". Haley lived in Knoxville and is being dishonored in his own hometown.

[usonian]

4. What will they think of next? Here.

Note: Kentucky ain't Tennessee, but I had the graphic already done for another post.
The Jim Crow "works" in this context.

[electric_blue68]

23. Yup.ghads

[BattleRow]

31. When is the Old Crow gonna EAT some well deserved crow?

[usonian]

35. When McDonalds serves it.

In Argentina.

[BattleRow]

36. I dunno. Wrong color bird.

Might be a bounty on those singing canaries,however.

[RainCaster]

10. I know where I will not go on vacation

None of those deep red racist gerrymandering states will ever get a dollar of my travel budget.

[Joinfortmill]

11. Despicable

[surfered]

12. Trying desperately to revise history. It won't work.

[highplainsdem]

13. The book was banned because chapter 84 describes a slave being raped by her owner.

From WATE Knoxville via Yahoo News:

Removal of Pulitzer Prize winner “Roots” from Knox County Schools causes backlash
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/removal-pulitzer-prize-winner-roots-231523780.html

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (WATE) — Knox County Schools has banned “Roots,” a Pulitzer Prize-winning historical novel by Alex Haley that recounts the multi-generational struggle of his family, starting from the mid-Atlantic slave trade.

Under Tennessee’s Age-Appropriate Materials Act, parents can file a report if they believe classroom materials are inappropriate. KCS banned “Roots” because of Chapter 84, which describes the rape of an enslaved woman by a plantation owner.

[thucythucy]

15. Somehow I doubt that rape is a concept totally unknown

to kids in that community, not the ones old and mature enough to get throigh the first 83 chapters of that book.

Sad, infuriating, disgusting.

Those parents are less about protecting kids than they are about nursing their own hurt fee fees about the history they'd like to erase.

[RVN VET71]

16. The same people who drool over the OT sex scenes are outraged, I tells ya, outraged that Haley would

describe a white man raping a black woman. I would hope that some enterprising, pissed off Liberal might consider bringing that up -- in a court of law. If you can ban Haley's book because of a rape scene demonstrating the ugliness of enslavement, than why not a ban on incest (Lot's girls) and masturbation (Onan)? Or the townspeople of Sodom demanding -- apparently -- that the angels visiting Lot be given to them that they might, ahem, "know" them -- or the fact that Lot offered up his daughters to the mob for gang rape?

I can't believe the low browed anti-christ's in Tennessee will get away with their ban on "Roots," without a counter suit to ban the equally filthy bible as well. And don't get me wrong, I appreciate both books, but Haley's speaks directly to the American experience, the Bible speaks to love and hate, cruelty and kindness, reasoned empathy and cold-blooded savagery universally.

[BattleRow]

32. Wonder how many Epstein victims were non white.

I don't recall ever any mention of ethnicities..perhaps Ive missed it?

[RVN VET71]

38. Epstein and Maxwell may have been interested only in virginal white skin

It is not impossible that their scumbag pervert clientele never asked for brown or black victims. It's also possible that both Jeffy and Ghizzy are genitally racist. Or, and I'm just spit balling here, maybe the brown and black victims were not brought in as "comfort kiddies" but as torture-murder victims.

[BattleRow]

39. Thanks for your input.

Very interesting observations
It seemed that many of the messages were referring to Eastern Europeans ...
And I read material that seemed to indicate Epstein was interested in bioengineering.
Definitely food for thought.

[gulliver]

33. School libraries are caught in the crossfire

Just make the book accessible only with parent permission. That should be easy to do with computers. Banning is far too draconian.

[jfz9580m]

14. I should buy "Roots"

There was another book I came across that looked interesting:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manchild_in_the_Promised_Land

I have not read much black literature.

I saw another book yesterday that could be interesting but the author has a post on Salon that mentioned Malcolm Gladwell and then when I got what it implied - wrt what I am seeing, I knew that though not directly related it is absolutely outrageous and what I am going to the police about locally.

[Unwind Your Mind]

18. Roots is excellent

I read it years ago, I think I’ll buy another copy too

[NewLarry]

17. Luke 4:24

And he said, “Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in his hometown."

[GenThePerservering]

19. That will make people want to read the book even more

somehow I don't think this will work as intended.

[electric_blue68]

24. Heh!' You migh be right!

[ChicagoTeamster]

20. They're already taking black peoples voting rights away

What’s next? A klan revival.

[electric_blue68]

25. Unfortunately the KKK has never totally gone away

[Dave Bowman]

21. Are these shitbags removing the bible too? Because there's plenty of incest and rape in that thing.

[eppur_se_muova]

22. Not to mention murder galore. nt

[electric_blue68]

26. Ugh. Donny and his racist Foghorn! And "permission slips"

[fujiyamasan]

28. Lee Atwater gave away the GOP's strategy a long time ago

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2007/09/atwaters-strategy/46416/

“ You start out in 1954 by saying, “N****r, n****r, n****r.” By 1968 you can’t say “n****r”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “N****r, n****r.”

[orangecrush]

30. ...

[Melon]

34. The committee that review books needs to take into account the totality of the work, and not individual passages.

Banning on sex or violence based on a few paragraphs versus the context of the work is wrong.

[TNNurse]

37. I live in TN, near Knoxville.

The racists and ignorance ( I realize that is redundant) are working hard to destroy what is good.

We will keep fighting. The sculpture of Haley is quite amazing.