Yeah I feel like people can't understand the difference between negative stereotypes from the past, "outdated" metaphors (which could be the same thing), jokes,

Yeah I feel like people can't understand the difference between negative stereotypes from the past, "outdated" metaphors (which could be the same thing), jokes, irony, etc, and just apply a silly regex to call something "racist". Christie is an important author in the whodunit genre, you'd expect she'd be taught in some classes, and the book in question is actually a very good specimen of the genre - people are trapped on an island, they keep dying, nobody knows who the killer is until basically the last page. I'm sure there are similar stories, but if it is being used, cutting it from curriculum because "racism" is absurd. This single instance aside, are we moving towards a future where students only read approved books that are free of anachronisms, controversy, offence, and we just pretend that's how books are? Then when somebody actually reads a real book they are not going to understand the context, and (maybe an underlying desired outcome) will default to crying "racist!!" because they don't realize language and metaphors used to be different