most rapid and dislocating changes. Thus, not only does censorship
contradict the national tradition of free speech, but it also inhibits the
process of understanding a changing society.

Contemporary America is such a changing society. It faces stagger-
ing change in nearly all aspects of its social life: an unpredictable econ-
omy in disarray, cities mired in violence and homelessness, embedded
racial tensions erupting in neighborhood violence, and a political sys-
tem that has lost the confidence of much of the public. Traditional val-
ues are also in a maelstrom, as exemplified by New York City's decision
to distribute free condoms at its public schools. At the same time,
many Americans are insecure about the cultural identity of the nation,
in which the English language is being spoken by fewer immigrants
and in which multiculturalists argue that traditional national holidays
like Columbus Day and Thanksgiving are symbols of the country's op-
pressive past. In this era of insecurity, change, and confusion, censor-
ship has proliferated. The music of black rap groups, the paintings of
alternative lifestyle artists, and the Eurocentric history taught by
white college professors have all come under attack by censorship advo-
cates.

As multiculturalism replaces the older, more traditional social model
of Americanized homogeneity, speech and censorship will increasingly
form the ethnic and cultural battleground of this change. The contro-
versies over bilingualism and Afrocentrism reflect this cultural battle-
ground. Yet it is a national blessing that these cultural conflicts in the
United States occur primarily in the realm of speech rather than, as has
been the recent case in Eastern Europe, in violent battles in the streets.
In America, speech has been that unique element that both defines a
people's effort to live together in some kind of commonality, as well as
the individual's attempt to retain some separate identity from the soci-
ety at large. However, the ability of speech to perform these roles has
lately been undermined by a rising tide of censorship.

During the last decade, censorship has become an increasingly preva-
lent force in American life. Its occurrences may not be as dramatic as
some of the censorship controversies in the 1960s, when all of society
seemed to be thrown into turmoil; nonetheless, censorship during the
1980s and 1990s has come from more diverse sources and has touched
more kinds of speech than the censorship of the 1960s ever did. In fact,
an award-winning documentary about recent censorship incidents in
the United States has itself become embroiled in a censorship dispute
and has been withheld from distribution. ¹

This book sets out to understand American censorship. By examin-
ing the various instances and examples of contemporary censorship, it
explores the social forces motivating censorship campaigns. Although
censorship has long occurred in American life, and although it has been

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