Veteran Star Trek actor and Reading Rainbow emcee LeVar Burton appeared on ABC's The View this week and condemned the recent spate of book bans that have been championed by Republican activists and politicians throughout the United States.
Last month, for example, the Virginia GOP sued to force Barnes & Noble to cease selling two pieces of literature that it deemed to be inappropriate for minors.
That was after CNN noted in April that "more than a dozen Republican-controlled states have passed laws or approved executive branch policies that restrict how public school teachers can talk about race, gender, and sexual orientation." A similar effort was mounted in Florida in May when the state's Department of Education banned textbooks that mentioned the topics of climate change, vaccines, and race.
Host Joy Behar touched on that point.
"There has been an ongoing push to ban important children's books, especially about race, sexuality, and basically American history. Give us your reaction to that," she said to Burton.
And so he did.
"I'll be absolutely candid and honest. It’s embarrassing that we are banning books in this country, in this culture, in this day and age," Burton said. "We have this aversion in this country to knowing about our past and anything that is unpleasant we don't want to deal with."
Burton was referring to arguments by conservatives that topics such as critical race theory, which is typically taught at the college level, instill self-hatred amongst white students. While there is no evidence to support these claims, they are nonetheless propagated and repeated by right-wing voices.
"This is not going away. Nothing goes away, especially if you ignore it," Burton continued, citing the dark periods in American history.
"So read the books they're banning," he encouraged the audience. "That's where the good stuff is. If they don't want you to read it, there's a reason why."
