Reflections on Are Libraries Neutral?Highlights from the 2018 Midwinter President’s Program9/21/2020 Friends, yesterday was a hard day. Ruth Bader Ginsburg died on Friday, potentially opening up the Supreme Court for another ultra-conservative appointment that could put the last nail in the coffin of a progressive, compassionate United States for some time. To complicate that mourning, a friend reminded me yesterday of Ginsburg’s troubling response to Colin Kaepernick’s “take a knee” protest and white gay men’s tendency to throw Blacks under the bus after their rights are advanced (she posted this article on Facebook, but this one might explain it better). “I got mine. Fuck you.” What a world. In this context, I’m trying to figure out this public library neutrality thing. The stakes are high and getting higher, and, as Rush said, “If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.” To end up reinforcing the status quo is not an option, for the status quo is a division and stratification where everyone, except white, Christian, straight, rich, cis-males, loses. The central questions that arise from this article, recording Jim Neal’s 2018 Midwinter President’s Program, include
The first question is answered best, I think, by R. David Lankes, director of University of South Carolina’s SLIS: “I have seen libraries organize brutal conversations on racism that have included the views of white supremacists, not to ensure neutrality, but to directly counter hateful ideas.” Include it all but take a stand as to which is right during library programs and events. This ensures neutrality in collection development (we collect the publications so that people have access to all sides, and thus all the information they need to refute the errant side) and justice (including letting marginalized people know that they are welcome in the library) at the same time. Am I being naïve? Is this a recipe for disaster? Certain questions would be easier to take a stand on than others, no doubt. But surely, white supremacy is a no-brainer. For now, I’m leaving it at that. We can pick it apart later. (“But,” you may say, “What about the white supremacists who are obviously not made welcome?” My initial thought is “Fuck ‘em.” But perhaps I will think more deeply about that and come back to it.) The second question involves both ethics and public relations, which naturally have an uneasy relationship in many instances. According to the ethics of our profession, we must market to everyone. (How can you say the right to read exists if they don’t know where to find the books?). (La Rue reminds us that we place limits on behavior and refuse to let anyone act in an abusive way in the library. Does this extend to obvious symbols of abuse—a swastika, for example—or to other expressions of beliefs that are inherently abusive, such as white supremacy? Including Nazi and white supremacist works in the collection might be valuable for reasons explained above, but allowing a real live adherent to these ideas to take up physical space in the library, prepared to enact or defend their chosen belief erects a reasonable barrier to access for the targets of their beliefs. Would we ask a Jewish person or African-American to simply “have courage” to face this potential danger? James La Rue, to be clear, does not endorse this idea; he states, “There has to be imminent and immediate physical danger.”) A problem arises, however, when we consider the practical matter of sending the message that we include everyone. The hypothetical case of the Black patron who decides not to share space with a Nazi has been explored. What about the working class white conservative patron who sees all of the liberal claptrap in today’s public library and decides that they are not welcome? I base this on an exchange reported by Kathleen de la Peña McCook, distinguished university professor at the University of South Florida, lifetime member of REFORMA, the National Association to Promote Library and Information Services to Latinos and the Spanish-Speaking, and 2016 recipient of the Elizabeth Martinez Lifetime Achievement Award, among other awards: The worker who came to my house to help me said, “You might not want me to come in. I am a deplorable.” And I said, “Why would you say that?” And he said, “Your kind of people”—I guess I had Hillary things up still—“don’t like me, and I don’t want you to feel uncomfortable.” The image of the library, with its LGBTQ Club and Black Lives Matter display, is what keeps this potential patron away. He (mistakenly?) thinks he is not welcome because the liberals have marked their territory. And we have, really. But our intention, I think, is not to repel people just because they identify as Trump voters. Is it? That clearly goes too far.
In her journal article “From the One-Mule Tenant Farmer to the Hillbilly Highway: How Librarians Can Support the White Working Class” (The Library Quarterly, 2017), McCook posits that library service to three groups, overwhelmingly white in composition, has dwindled over the past few decades. Reduction in focus on “union members, the drug-addicted working class, and veterans” has left behind large groups of working-class whites who would benefit from public library materials and programs. Embracing these three groups would go a long way toward fixing the library’s image problem with white working class conservatives without reducing services to (other?) marginalized groups. Other members of the panel expressed other ideas and weaved other eloquent phrases. It’s definitely worth checking out. But my time has run out, so I must away.
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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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