July 15th 2023.
Jay-Z and Robert Kraft, the CEO of the New England Patriots, have recently launched a series of programs to combat the rising number of banned books. According to TMZ Hip Hop, their efforts are focused on providing literary teachings about the Holocaust, gender equality, LGBTQIA+ history, and slavery.
Kraft and Jay have donated nearly a million dollars to offer pro bono legal representation to teachers, librarians, and other academics that are victims of state bans on books. Most of these donations are made through Kraft’s existing social justice organizations, like the Shawn Carter Foundation and the Foundation to Combat Anti-Semitism.
Statistics from the American Library Association show that in the past year, more than one thousand demands have been made to ban or restrict books, largely centering around stories of marginalized ethnic, sexual, and religious communities.
In addition to the donations, Kraft and Jay have set up the beginnings of programs to provide funding to minority students in the form of grants and scholarships to support their artistic works. The hope is that their pieces can be turned into more accessible works like movies, books, and art, to further diversify the scene.
The duo have also signed off on a plan to reprint banned books and circulate them in nearby learning centers, with the Brooklyn Public Library in New York being the brick-and-mortar center for their programs. The “Books Unbanned” campaign, which is the first of many, provides books of all kinds to kids for free.
The website for the campaign reads “Brooklyn Public Library joins those fighting for the rights of teens nationwide to read what they like, discover themselves, and form their own opinions. Inspired by the American Library Association's Freedom to Read Statement, BPL's Books Unbanned initiative is a response to an increasingly coordinated and effective effort to remove books tackling a wide range of topics from library shelves.”
The website enables people to get involved, request books, donate to the cause, and report a library in need of additional resources. With the combined efforts of Kraft and Jay-Z, the prevalence of banned books can be brought down.
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