Bakari Sellers’ memoir, which is often compared to Vice President JD Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy, has been banned from the U.S. Naval Academy library.
The politician and political commentator’s New York Times bestseller, My Vanishing Country, was among the books pulled last month after the Defense Secretary’s office ordered the removal of titles promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion, the Post and Courier reports. The book, which chronicles Sellers’ childhood in rural Denmark, South Carolina, was ranked No. 7 on the U.S. Naval Academy’s list of 381 banned books.
Ironically, Bakari Sellers’ memoir is often described as a Southern equivalent to JD Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy, which highlights white, working-class Appalachia. But while Sellers’ book was banned, Vance’s book remains on the Naval Academy’s shelves.
“The fact that just from a pure cultural understanding that you can tell the story of where you’re from—and as long as it’s Appalachia, it’s acceptable,” Sellers said in response to the removal. “As long as it’s White Appalachia, it’s acceptable. But if it’s Black in the South, it’s banned.”
The removal follows a May 9 Pentagon memo instructing military leaders to review and pull library books related to diversity, anti-racism, or gender issues by May 21. A temporary Academic Libraries Committee will oversee the review process, using a list of about 20 search terms to flag titles for removal.
The flagged terms include “affirmative action,” “anti-racism,” “critical race theory,” “discrimination,” “diversity,” “gender dysphoria,” “gender identity and transition,” “transgender,” “transsexual,” and “white privilege.” While none of these appeared in the listed topics for Sellers’ memoir, the former South Carolina lawmaker’s book was categorized as a biography with tags like “rural African Americans,” “South Carolina,” “social conditions,” and “racism.”
“My book is not How to be Anti-Racist,” Sellers said, referring to Ibram X. Kendi’s autobiography that landed in the No. 1 spot of the academy’s banned books list.
“My book is a book talking about growing up in the Black, working-class South,” Sellers added. “These are stories that are all around us. These are stories so that people can understand what it means to have a community that thrived off the Savannah River site, or went to schools in the ‘Corridor of Shame,’ and that there are people who have overcome different challenges but still made it.”
Other titles on the banned list include Maya Angelou’s classic memoir I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Issac J. Bailey’s Why Didn’t We Riot? A Black Man in Trumpland, and Michael Eric Dyson’s Long Time Coming: Reckoning with Race in America.
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