A cop’s decision to sport a body camera and search a Massachusetts middle school for a book has raised serious concerns among civil liberties experts, a new report shows.

The Berkshire Eagle reported Wednesday on mounting fears after the Great Barrington plainclothes police officer who entered an eighth grade classroom at W.E.B. Du Bois Regional Middle School.

“Police going into schools and searching for books is the sort of thing you hear about in communist China and Russia," Ruth A. Bourquin, senior and managing attorney for the ACLU of Massachusetts, told the local news outlet. "What are we doing?”

For their part, police say they were obligated to investigate a complaint about the book “Gender Queer” by Maia Kobabe, a memoir about gender identity that contains sexually explicit illustrations and language, the report notes.

  • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    W.E.B. Du Bois Regional Middle School.

    What do we want to bet a school with a name like that has a significant majority of black students? And what do we want to bet that’s why the cop went there?

    • clive@sh.itjust.works
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      11 months ago

      I live in the area and while I dont have the exact numbers, Great Barrington and the surrounding towns are very predominantly white. The school is named because WEB Du Bois was born in Great Barrington

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        W. E. B. Du Bois was one of the most prominent writers about the African-American experience and civil rights until his death in the early 1960s. So not French.

        • Mango@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          I have like 3 coworkers who are black and primarily speak French. Isn’t Louisiana all about black French people? There’s some kind of French stuff going on there, I can taste it!

            • Mango@lemmy.world
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              11 months ago

              Does that mean the French food is also American or can we describe things with words still?

              • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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                11 months ago

                I have no idea what you’re talking about. Du Bois wasn’t French because he wasn’t a citizen of France. That is what makes someone French.