The Biden Administration has spent hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars on a rather niche study analyzing why minority children in the United States have taken a liking to Japanese comic books, commonly known as “manga.”
As reported by the Washington Free Beacon, a grant of approximately $313,318 was awarded to New York’s Queens College by the Institute of Museum and Library Services, a federal agency that operates within the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities. The three-year study, launched by the grant this month, aims to “understand why [black, indigenous, and people of color] kids read manga,” for the purpose of helping librarians who are “unfamiliar” with manga close a “knowledge gap” when it comes to the material.
The grant was awarded under the Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian Program, which states that its purpose is to “develop a diverse library and archival workforce” and “reduce equity gaps and address issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion” in libraries. The goal of the study is to enable librarians to better identify popular manga titles so that they may be included on library shelves.
For the study, Queens College will partner with a left-wing group called Manga in Libraries, which has previously recommended works of manga that focus on racial minorities and the LGBTQ agenda.
Manga’s popularity worldwide, and particularly in the United States, has been on the rise in recent years, with some attributing this trend to manga’s tendency to ignore left-wing agendas, identity politics, and cultural issues. In 2020, a single manga series named Demon Slayer outsold the entirety of the American comic book industry, which has been mocked for becoming increasingly more left-wing and “woke.”