Reflections on “Social tolerance and racist materials in public libraries” by Susan K. Burke8/25/2020 Susan Burke executed a series of interesting studies with 2006 data from the National Opinion Research Center’s General Social Survey (GSS). She was interested in what percentage of the population supports removal of various kinds of “offensive materials” from the public library, how that has changed over the years, and what demographic factors are involved. Burke begins by describing the kinds of literature that might be removed, including “negative” literature (which I can only presume means materials that are somehow pessimistic about the human race?); materials of “questionable accuracy,” such as the infamous Bell Curve (Hernstein & Murray, 1994) study that suggested Blacks are naturally less intelligent than whites (I suppose, for the sake of including liberal as well as conservative works, she also might have included Michael Bellesiles’s Arming America [2000], much of the supporting documentation for which supposedly burned up in a fire); and materials containing ethnic slurs. She then introduces a pair of quotes: “If there exists a right to express an opinion, then there also exists a right to know about that opinion.” (John Robotham and Gerald Shields, Freedom of Access to Library Material, 1982) “If a public library is doing its job, it has something in it that offends every single person.” (Phylis A. Salak, “Objections to Gay Publications Prompt Policy Reexaminations,” American Libraries, 1993) The assumptions behind these quotes have gone through some alterations since the 1980s and ‘90s. Back in the day, although liberally educated, financially comfortable white folks like me wanted to help minority communities in their struggles for equality, we seldom asked those communities what they needed or wanted. Rather, like Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle—a single white British male in a continent of dark-skinned “savages”—we swung in to “save” them on our own terms. As a result, we often wildly missed the mark. I want to focus on racist material, but by way of comparison, I am going to pay attention to Burke’s results regarding two other kinds of “offensive materials” first: a book by a gay author and a book by a communist author. Burke finds that the percentage of GSS respondents who wanted to remove the book by the gay author in 1973 approached half (44.5%) and then shrunk by nearly half in 2006 (24.1%). Well over half (66%) wanted to remove the communist book in 1954. That number fell by one-third in 1972 (44%) and by another quarter by 2006 (30.3%). Burke concludes that tolerance for homosexuals and communists has increased over the past several decades. The answers to the question on racist materials reveal a trend in the opposite direction, however. The GSS asked this question: There are always some people whose ideas are considered bad or dangerous by other people … consider a person who believes that Blacks are genetically inferior? If some people in your community suggested that a book he wrote which said Blacks are inferior should be taken out of your public library, would you favor removing this book, or not? A clear majority (64.7%) did not want to remove the racist book in 2006, mirroring the majority in favor of keeping the gay and communist materials. However, the portion of respondents calling for removal of the racist book fluctuated from 38.1% in 1976, to 41.6% in 1982, to 31.8% in 1994, to 34.5% in 2006. The spread is nearly ten percentage points, but overall, support for removal moves down only 3.6 points during the period in question, which Burke says is not meaningfully different. Education level and religious affiliation significantly influenced respondent reaction to the gay and communist materials. These, along with race and age, play significant parts in opinions on the racist materials. Parenthood, place size, political affiliation, and political conservatism all have negligible effects on the reaction. Occupation has an effect in that those who work in libraries and education are significantly less likely to support removal. (Only 6.5% of librarians, who, according to previous studies, are less conservative on these matters than the public at large, called for removal. Teachers at the K-12 level called for removal at a rate of 26.6%, compared to 35.3% among respondents in non-library, non-education occupations.) Intellectual freedom is given plenty of attention in degree programs and professional circles in both library science and education, so this is not surprising. Region also plays a role, with respondents in the South supporting removal at 42.1%, those in New England at 25.2%, and other regions somewhere in between. Book removal is generally a conservative move, protecting the public from corrupting ideas. Politically, the South tends toward the conservative end of the spectrum and New England toward the liberal. Trends in other factors are more instructive. Increasing levels of education correlate with shrinking support for removal in the case of the gay and communist materials. With the racist materials, the trend is reversed. Those with less than a high school diploma became less likely to support removal of a racist book, while those with a college education became more likely to call for its removal. Graduate students were 9.5 percentage points more likely to call for removal in the later years of the study (averaging 19.3% between 1996 and 2006). If we continue to see book removal as a conservative issue (and posit that liberalism increases with education), this change might seem puzzling. Religious affiliation tracked in a similar direction, with Protestants (relatively conservative) becoming more likely to support the library keeping the book (removal support dropped three percentage points to 38.8% during the period in question) and those with no religious affiliation becoming more likely to call for removal (increasing 4.6 percentage points to 23.2%). The change in opinion is very small, possibly insignificant, and Protestants are still more likely to support removal than those with no religious affiliation, but let’s suppose for a moment that the movement is real. According to Joseph B. Tamney and Stephen D. Johnson in the article “Christianity and Public Book Banning” (Review of Religious Research, 1997, as cited by Burke): “… traditional [religious] ideologies lead to beliefs that humans are weak and cannot be trusted to make good decisions, thus censorship is an acceptable way to help people make the right decisions.” Less religious, more highly educated people may be adopting this as a secular philosophy. Such efforts would be in line with liberal politics on social issues, which tend toward government intervention for social justice. On the other hand, it could reflect a growing incidence of racism in white Protestants as opposed to white non-religious people. Race plays out in a fairly predictable way here. African Americans, understandably, support removal of the racist book at a significantly higher rate (about 50%) than whites (about 33%). Black Americans without high school diplomas opposed keeping the racist book even more frequently, at 63.3% in the early years of the study and 57.9% in the later years. Black Americans with graduate degrees increased in their support for removal of the racist book from 20.5% to 31.6%. As seen above, higher levels of education correlate with less support for removal, as intellectual freedom is traditionally valued more at higher levels of education. However, support for removal of racist books among the highly educated—especially highly educated African Americans—has grown significantly over time. Race and religion have some interesting interplay in Burke’s study. Generally, racial differences between white and Black respondents in different Protestant denominations reflect general racial patterns. However, Baptists are a different story. Baptists support removal of the racist book more strongly across the board, “predominately because of white respondents in this group being more likely to support removal than white respondents of other religions.” My speculation is that the Baptist churches, particularly the Southern Baptists, are more heavily influenced by African American traditions and the African American presence in general. Finally, age has a strong effect on support for removal of the racist book, with older respondents supporting removal at a higher rate (43.5% for 57 and over, between 31.1% and 34.1% for younger groups). Over time, however, the older generation’s support for removal dropped a full 10.1 percentage points. Support for removal also fell (to a lesser extent) among 43 to 56-year-olds, but rose among 30 to 42-year-olds while remaining constant at about one-third for 18 to 29-year-olds. Perhaps as the Baby Boomers aged into the 57-plus category, they carried the traditional liberal value of intellectual freedom. At the same time, Generation X carried a new liberal value of social intervention into the younger age group. Whether this is true may be borne out by future research. The point is, racist speech and anti-gay or anti-communist speech are seen as different animals by a significant and growing segment of society. Social tolerance is valued more in some circles than intellectual freedom. Where social tolerance and intellectual freedom co-exist peacefully, as in growing tolerance for gay rights and left-leaning politics, support for public libraries’ retention of relevant materials is on the rise. Where they conflict, as in right-leaning political works that espouse the greater value of white culture, locating the blame for poverty in the poor themselves, and other beliefs seen as hostile to minorities, intellectual freedom increasingly loses out to creating a more welcoming atmosphere for marginalized people. Burke includes in her review of the literature a discussion that forms my conclusion to this post. What happens when we intervene to promote social tolerance? The slippery-slope argument comes up, of course: “If we ban racist speech, how then do we not move inexorably to the suppression of other unpopular thought?” (Nicholas Wolfson, Hate Speech, Sex Speech, Free Speech, 1997) But also the idea that being berated and denigrated by racists might be good for marginalized people: “… a necessary component of any education is learning to think critically about offensive ideas—without that ability, one can do little to respond to them.” (Judge Stephen Reinhardt, 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, Monteiro v the Tempe Union High School District, 1998) “I cannot believe that all these so-called victims of hate speech possess fewer resources or intelligence or simple moxie than an eleven-year-old child so that their lives will fall into ruin because of the words some fool utters.” (Harry White, Anatomy of Censorship: Why the Censors Have It Wrong, 1997) This idea appeals to the boot-strap ideology of which white Americans (and others) are so fond. Don’t blame your troubles on the environment or the power structure. You should be able to rise above. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger! I think there is something to be said for this. Battle-tested mental and emotional strength can be useful, and there is always a minority whose inner resources are up to the challenge. We would never have had Nat Turner, Frederick Douglass, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, etc., without that fact of life. However, for every Malcolm X, there are thousands, even millions of those who are too tired from the daily fight to make any progress at all. These quotes consider that exhausted majority: “… racist speech is used to intimidate, degrade, and silence people of color and thus is an important mechanism by which minorities are subordinated.” (James Weinstein, Hate Speech, Pornography, and the Radical Attack on Free Speech Doctrine, 1999) “… the impact of hate speech deeply affects the lives of the targeted groups, including affecting the individuals’ ability to live without fear and harassment and affecting the pursuit of activities or occupations that they might otherwise pursue.” (Burke paraphrasing Bhikhu Parekh, “Hate Speech: Is There a Case for Banning?” Public Policy Research, 2006) To allow materials that tell marginalized people that they deserve to be marginalized—that they are naturally less intelligent, less kind, less human—amounts to posting a sign on the door of the public library that says, “Minorities need not apply themselves. You are probably incapable of making good use of our materials anyway.”
This is not to say that the public library endorses the ideas in all of the materials it holds, nor does it need to do so in order for the chilling effect to manifest. But, to take a more obvious and extreme example, imagine a Neo-Nazi group using library space to spew their particular brand of racial hatred. Their opinion exists, and everyone has a right to know about it. In fact, I would argue that suppressing it completely does not kill it but drives it underground where it festers like an unseen, untreated wound. The infection spreads. “Sunlight is the best disinfectant.” On the other hand, how many targets of the Nazi hate are likely to feel welcome (although, legally, they are able) to sit in on the event or even enter the library when, day after day, they encounter the more subtle but just as persistent messages that they are not as worthy, not as strong, not as smart as the white majority? We can reasonably assume the library’s materials have the same effect, though on a lesser level. Materials are also more easily subject to side-by-side competition from an ever-growing body of counterargument in favor of diversity, inclusion, and celebration of marginalized cultures. What about the effect of this competition? And what about so-called “reverse racism,” the case of anti-white materials or groups and their effect on the majority? Can a fair comparison even be drawn? There is much more about this topic that needs to be explored. But I’m going to let it rest for now and move on to formulating an analysis of the document in my research plan that comes next, chronologically: Sendaula’s Library Journal article from 2017, “Libraries are not neutral spaces: Social justice advocacy in librarianship.” See you in a week or two.
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I saw a meme shared by a conservative friend that said, “You must always be willing to truly consider evidence that contradicts your beliefs and admit the possibility that you may be wrong. Intelligence isn’t knowing everything. It’s the ability to challenge everything you know.”
Good, solid, liberal advice from my youth: Question everything. The problem with this sentiment in the age of COVID-19 unfolds like this: It seems (to me) to assume that all information is equal, that the opinions of the average high-school dropout are equal to those of the expert with a relevant doctorate. They’re not. Much has changed since I was a kid. When I was a child, cultural relativism and suspicion cast upon expert opinion was the purview of the countercultural Left—the neo-hippies, the punks, etc. Now, the Right has embraced postmodernism as a great equalizer for science and religion. Science is suspect. Double-blind, randomized placebo trials go head-to-head against wild conspiracy theories … and lose. How to argue for critical thought when I in my youth defined “critical thought” as analysis of majority opinion and adoption of its opposite? In some ways, I’ve finally outgrown my rebellious adolescence just in time to see the enemy regress into childish tantrums. In some ways, nothing has changed. In some ways, everything is turned on its head. The plan for the next few posts is to delve into this issue: Do public library collections need to include all perspectives? Including those without rational or legitimate scientific basis? Including those that conflict with the goal of providing a safe, welcoming space for marginalized people? Questions of neutrality and diversity will weigh heavily on this issue. Perhaps the most important question will be, Does the world need yet another opinion from a white male of middle-class extraction? The answer to this is profoundly and resoundingly “No.” But I am posting anyway, for these reasons:
So far, and possibly finally, I will include the following articles, blog posts, and papers in my exploration. I welcome other resources, especially those from the conservative side and/or in favor of neutrality, as I wish to understand that part of the debate more fully. It’s not easy to find the conservative voices among librarians. If you want to get a hold of me, just comment below or send me a message on the Contact page. Burke, S. K. (2010, Summer). Social tolerance and racist materials in public libraries. Reference & User Services Quarterly 49(4), 369-379. Farkas, M. (2019, November 4). When libraries and librarians pretend to be neutral, they often cause harm [Blog post]. Retrieved from https://meredith.wolfwater.com/wordpress/2019/11/04/when-libraries-and-librarians-pretend-to-be-neutral-they-often-cause-harm/ Farkas, M. (2020, May 1). When speech isn’t free: Ensuring free speech requires more than neutrality. Retrieved from https://americanlibrariesmagazine.org/2020/05/01/neutrality-when-speech-isnt-free/ Lauren (2020, June 8). We need to talk about diversity and neutrality in libraries [Blog post]. Retrieved from https://hacklibraryschool.com/2020/06/08/we-need-to-talk-about-diversity-and-neutrality-in-libraries/ Mary Elizabeth (2020, February 25). Libraries should take sides: Breaking down the neutrality myth [Blog post]. Retrieved from https://hacklibraryschool.com/2020/02/25/libraries-should-take-sides/ Neal, J. (2018, June 1). Are libraries neutral? Highlights from the Midwinter President’s Program. Retrieved from https://americanlibrariesmagazine.org/2018/06/01/are-libraries-neutral/ Rinne, N. A. (2018, May 25). Against the Library Bill of Rights — unpublished essay from 2013. Retrieved from https://reliablesourcessite.wordpress.com/2018/05/25/against-the-library-bill-of-rights-unpublished-essay-from-2013/ Rinne, N. A. (2018, June 4). Should offensive books be removed from your library’s collection? [Blog post]. Retrieved from https://reliablesourcessite.wordpress.com/2018/06/04/should-offensive-books-be-removed-from-your-librarys-collection/ Sendaula, S. (2017, July 7). Libraries are not neutral spaces: Social justice advocacy in librarianship. Retrieved from https://www.libraryjournal.com/?detailStory=libraries-are-not-neutral-spaces-ala-annual-2017 Sonnie, A. (2018, April 5). Advancing racial equity in public libraries: Case studies from the field. (Issue Brief No. 8). Government Alliance on Race and Equity. Retrieved from https://www.racialequityalliance.org/advancing-racial-equity-in-public-libraries-case-studies-from-the-field/ |
AuthorJeffrey Babbitt, MLIS, is a graduate of the School of Library and Information Science at Wayne State University who is pursuing a career as a librarian in Michigan. Subject Headings
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