COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) – The president of Ohio’s state school board says her characterization of Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye” as “pornographic” was a personal opinion not a board position.
Debe Terhar reiterated Thursday she sees the novel’s graphic passages as unsuitable for school-aged children. But Terhar said she remains “completely supportive of Ohio’s new learning standards,” which list the 1970 novel among recommended texts.
The American Civil Liberties Union-Ohio challenged her statements on Morrison, a Nobel Prize winner and one of Ohio’s most acclaimed authors.
The group called the young black girl who’s raped and impregnated by her father in the book “a haunting symbol of internalized racism.”
It’s the second flap for Terhar this year. She faced near ouster and was forced to issue a public apology in February after she criticized President Obama’s gun control plans with Adolph Hitler.