NEW HANOVER COUNTY — Protestors outside the Board of Education Center rallied Tuesday against book-banning, but it didn’t change the school board’s mind when it came to taking up a book removed from curricula a year-and-a-half ago.
READ MORE: NHC school board breaks policy, delays update on banned book ‘Stamped’
The New Hanover County Board of Education voted 5-2 against providing an update to the public on the status of “Stamped: Racism, Antiracism and You” at Tuesday’s meeting.
“Stamped” is a middle-school-level adaptation of Ibram X. Kendi’s adult nonfiction title that discusses America’s history with racist ideas and historical figures fighting them. It was temporarily banned from curricula, specifically an A.P. English class using it for rhetorical analysis, in September 2023. Those who voted for the ban — Pete Wildeboer, Pat Bradford, Josie Barnhart and Melissa Mason — all voted both times against bringing it up again.
Tuesday’s vote was almost in line with the vote to add the book to the agenda at last week’s agenda review meeting, though this time around board member David Perry voted against the addition.
“I voted at the agenda review meeting to put it on the agenda because the current policy states it should be,” Perry said Tuesday. “However, I believe, I’m in agreement with the chair: The curriculum committee is the best place for this to start.”
By not adding it to Tuesday’s meeting agenda, Chair Melissa Mason technically broke NHCS policy. Policy 2330 mandates items supported by two board members must be added to the agenda within two meetings; both Tim Merrick and Judy Justice asked for a status update on March 5.
Instead, Mason notified the public last week the book would be taken up by the curriculum committee in June.
In the time since the ban, the district was supposed to identify a book with an “alternative” perspective to potentially be taught alongside “Stamped.”
Board member Pat Bradford attempted to provide an explanation on the hold-up.
“In July of last year we had a superintendent change and we had the resignation of our chief academic officer — this just fell through the cracks at that point,” Bradford said on Tuesday.
The task of finding an alternative will now fall to the curriculum committee, though at Tuesday’s protest before the meeting, Merrick questioned what the other book assignment would be.
“What is the alternative view of antiracism?” he asked, as protestors from the crowd answered “racism.” “Does that mean we should be teaching our children racism too?”
Democrat Judy Justice also spoke at the rally, organized by New Hanover County Educational Justice. Upward of 80 people attended, brandishing signs reading “Dictators ban books” and “Ban racism not books.”
“I taught history for many years — it is a fact that if you don’t learn the past, you are doomed to repeat it,” Justice said.
The rally also featured a speech from Simeon Cole, a student in the AP English class where “Stamped” was banned and local policy director of the American Youth Association. Cole said the inclusion of “Stamped” made him want to take the class, yet it was removed before he started the course. He also criticized the school board for treating the book “like trash” and being out of touch with what students care about.
“It makes no sense to me how they can say they foster education,” Cole said, “but they don’t support the views that aren’t theirs.”
Some of the rally attendees spoke during the school board meeting’s public comment as well.
Rachel Dole described the elimination of “Stamped” from the curriculum as a decision to thwart attempts to dismantle walls in the community.
“Your choices to keep peacemaking from happening, show your fear, not your power,” Dole said. “You do not have to fear the ‘other’ — the ones called ‘other’ are your neighbors, your doctors, your teachers, your bus drivers, your police.”
Katie Gates, the parent who challenged the book and advocated for its removal in the 2023 hearing on the matter, also spoke to the board Tuesday.
“When we hear a lie enough it becomes accepted as truth and that’s what happened with the narrative around ‘Stamped,’” Gates said. “It was never about banning a book or invalidating a Black man’s perspective. That’s what the media claimed and what some chose to believe, but it’s not truth.”
Gates explained she thought the book was inappropriate reading for an AP English and Rhetorical class. She claimed it contained inaccurate citations, personal bias, and conflation of facts with opinion — all observations a student would be tasked with evaluating in AP English and Rhetorical Analysis.
The College Board 2024 course guide explains the course’s objective this way: “Students will analyze what makes others’ arguments convincing or confusing, engaging or dull, persuasive or powerless.” In other words, the classroom discussion is geared around how the content was conveyed rather than beliefs on the content itself.
Though Gates still believed the book lacks credibility, she welcomed the curriculum committee’s review.
At the agenda review last week, Merrick clarified he was not against the book making its way through the curriculum committee to determine the alternative assignment and advocated for Tuesday’s discussion to act as a status update.
Emails obtained by Port City Daily show Justice made the request to discuss “Stamped” on March 5; Merrick backed it up. Per policy the item would have needed to be on the May 2 meeting agenda.
“Nothing in our policies confers the power to the board chair to unilaterally make that decision,” Merrick said, referring to Mason moving “Stamped” to committee. Merrick was censured last month by his colleagues in a 5-2 vote, after the chair accused him of breaking multiple policies.
He also pointed out the AP English curriculum has alternative viewpoints to “Stamped” already.
“There were many that were slanted left and slanted right,” Merrick said, though couldn’t remember the titles when asked by Port City Daily Wednesday.
The College Board’s sample syllabus includes George W. Bush’s speech after 9/11, FDR’s fireside chat “On Economic Progress,” biographies of Joseph McCarthy and Malcom X, business ethics op-eds from The Wall Street Journal, Naomi Shihab Nye’s poem “For Mohammed Zeid of Gaza, Age 15,” and “Vindication of the Rights of Women” by Mary Wollstonecraft.
Still, the board’s Republican cohort was immovable from the committee route.
Reach journalist Brenna Flanagan at brenna@localdailymedia.com.
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