The ALA Annual Conference 2017 was a big deal. Hillary Rodham Clinton was the closing speaker, just about a year after her loss to Donald Trump. In a speech surprisingly devoid of political rancor, Clinton praised librarians, saying, “The work you do is at the heart of an open, inclusive, diverse society.” The stark reality is that to do this work properly, librarians must take sides.
Traditionally, mythically, public libraries have held on to a “neutral” stance, providing a place equally for all voices in the community. The argument gaining in popularity now is that neutral stances encourage the status quo, perpetuating the marginal status of marginalized groups. Librarians’ focus, according to this stance, should emphasize equity, not equality, helping marginalized people overcome barriers specific to them in order to bring about equality of the outcomes of service. Do I have that right? Sendaula’s article reports on an ALAAC 2017 panel discussion on public library neutrality, kicked off by librarian Cory Eckert. Speaking from her experience working with the Navajo community in New Mexico at the Octavia Fellin Public Library, Eckert recommends reaching out to all parts of the community and in languages other than English where needed. Kendra Jones, District Manager for Youth & Family Services at Timberland Regional Library in Washington talks about kicking Santa Clause to the curb along with all other holiday programming. Karen Jensen, creator of the Teen Librarian Toolbox, discusses her controversial Black Lives Matter display in her “conservative, mostly white town.” Debbie Reese focuses on her work with American Indians in Children’s Literature and the importance of serving the often invisible native members of the community. Jessica Anne Bratt of the Grand Rapids Public Library, just a bit north of me, advocates pointing out racial differences during story time to model inclusion. Nicole Cooke, of the University of Illinois’s School of Information Sciences, describes the activities of the Ferguson Public Library in the wake of Mike Brown’s death. The panel’s twin themes are creating safety and normalizing radical action. Eckert says that social justice work is “what we've always been doing” and so not radical. While I’m sure public libraries were not working for social justice when they were segregated or when the professional practice of censorship was widespread (see, for example, these articles on public libraries in St. Louis and Chicago early in the 20th century), public libraries have for a long time now strived for equitable service to marginalized people. I’m guessing Eckert means to reference this period, roughly since the late 1960s. She recommends reading a blog by April Hathcock called At the Intersection. I read a few posts on this blog about the attitude privileged white folks need to adopt to be effective allies to marginalized groups in the fight against racism. It is eye-opening and a little anxiety-provoking and, yes, radical. I get that “not radical” is a necessary selling point for the majority of timid, mainstream Americans, who did not sign up for a fight when they applied to library school. But this kind of bold rearrangement of the power structure is radical, and radical change is necessary to correct an entrenched systemic racism that comes from hundreds of years of oppression. As Eckert herself said at another point in the discussion, “We don't live in an America where it's safe for people to speak out.” When the country is this far gone, any effective remedy must be radical. Neutrality dictates that library resources be available to everyone equally: no special treatment. It endorses the mainstream inclusion strategies of pretending race doesn’t exist and hoping silent representation of our very real multicultural society is enough to encourage tolerance. These strategies send the message, “Everyone is equal. All Lives Matter. No need to rock the boat.” Like the millions of Americans who claim to be “post-racist” and “colorblind,” these strategies are designed to reinforce the status quo, and the status quo defaults to the historical power structure. What could be more radical in a “post-racist” American than to say with Bratt, “It's okay to be different. Don't ignore it”? Celebrating difference is so far outside the norm in this country, it is bound to make some people (read: straight, Christian, middle- and upper-class white people) uncomfortable. Despite what Eckert says, advertising in languages other than English and to an audience formerly neglected by the library may be viewed by some taxpayers as subversive, radical. When Jensen says, “My job is to create a library where people feel safe,” she is not talking about the conservative white folks in her little town whom one can predict might be frightened at the prospect of the terrorist organization (according to Trump and his followers) Black Lives Matter invading their community. Reese points out that colonialism is not neutral, suggesting that librarians who do not go the extra mile to make sure Native American patrons have the resources they need and literature that reflects them reiterate the aggressive and destructive actions whites have advanced toward the indigenous at least since the 15th century. How is upending hundreds of years of white European cultural and political supremacy not radical? I get the marketing angle, but I think more realism is in order. Perhaps less effort should be spent trying to comfort people that this is just business as usual and more put into preparing librarians for a fight. Communication and legal strategies, resolving ethical quandaries, taking care of one’s own mental health and that of one’s patrons during an extraordinarily demanding and draining period in history: these deserve and need the time and energy currently diverted to the ultimately futile and counterproductive campaign to play down the radical nature of the changes we are undergoing. Obviously, we have to convince taxpayers to continue funding libraries, but there must be more honest and effective strategies than pandering to the majority’s need for comfort. After all, as Cooke says, “People might have to be uncomfortable; that's part of the process.”
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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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June 2021
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