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The definition of diplomacy, as hanging in a space I frequent, is the ability to tell someone to go to hell in such a way that they look forward to the trip. That's certainly not the way this entry is going to go, although there is an art form to keeping your professional head when there's someone calling you and everyone else around you the derogatory term for a gay man among other several colorful imprecations and threats of violence, as happened to a coworker today.
Since that's the lead, let's start with the Temple Public Library fielding complaints from a group named Concerned Christian Citizens that their displays of LGBT books and information was advocating for a viewpoint, and libraries should not do that.
To accept that there is a debate on this issue, you have to accept the underpinning idea that one can choose to be LGBT in the same way that one can choose to be a Christian. This is clearly the case from the group making the complaint, as they provide the clear dog-whistle of an "agenda" being promoted in a taxpayer-funded library and that there needs to be balance of viewpoints such that the library remains natural.
The library neutrality argument is a canard at best, given that the institution of librarianship doesn't have a track record of being neutral, and that neutrality is functionally impossible anyway.
The best points made in the article are in subsequent paragraphs, but I'm going to reorder them to make the most sense. Mr. Hall says "By allowing the display, the library unintentionally endorsed these ideas and beliefs."
Nothing unintentional about it, Mr. Hall - we're "professionals and [...] require a professional level of training to carry out [our] duties." So you don't get to paint us as flighty-headed people who, oh gosh, now that you've shown us how we endorsed it, of course we pull them down because we don't want to endorse anything, much less LGBT folk. Grab a ticket, line's that way, past the abyss of Go Fuck Off. We have LGBT people in our community, they have just as much right to use the library and to have themselves represented in the collection and on displays.
Mr. Blair makes an even better point about endorsement. "The state, county, and cities recognized Confederate heroes a week and a half ago. Does that recognition advocate armed rebellion, treason or slave holding? Of course not." We respectfully disagree on the endorsement point there, given the track record of people who do hold Confederate values, and those same values themselves, but that's not the focus here. Mr. Blair's point is that, generally speaking, nobody accuses the public library of holding Nazi beliefs because we have a translated copy of Hitler's Mein Kampf on the shelves, or of military fetishism because we have entire sections of fiction and nonfiction devoted to military matters, or of being partisan hacks because we carry books written by members of the other political party. It only seems to be a problem when the library is seen as saying that people who don't look like you, or don't love like you, or don't believe like you are also people who deserve to be recognized, protected, and served like you. You know, when we're trying to be the neutral you seem to want us to be. Which suggests people who claim there's an "agenda" that needs balance not only don't see other people as human, what they want the library to do is help enforce power structures and ideas that benefit the perceived majority that believe they deserve that power. Instead of being a truly public institution.
Because they're taxpayers, or future taxpayers, too.
Second, Angie Thomas's The Hate U Give was pulled from curricular usage after a parent objected to the content and that they hadn't been given the option to pull their permission for a child to read the book. Now, when people make complaints about the library, like the ones above, they're usually expressing a sentiment that boils down to "you are not living up to the ideal of the library that I have in my head, for reasons X, Y, Zed." For things like that, we can talk about whether the ideal itself is flawed, what the ideal picture has for assumptions as its support structures, and whether or not that ideal is one that comes in conflict with the ideal that the library holds for itself. There's space for a conversation. And for the practice of the fine art of diplomacy.
This act right here does not. It is the story of thing that would make an educator see red, because it's a parent asserting they know more about what is appropriate for their and every child than the educator with the professional training, and then getting a politician involved in the matter so as to put pressure on the school to do whatever is needed to get the pressure off rather than following procedures or taking their time to evaluate tuner material. That same educator that is being told they have to prepare their students for the world after school, but is apparently not allowed to do so in any way that might actually signal what the world outside school is like. The contract of schooling is that someone agrees to give up control of what is taught to the professionals in exchange for not having to do the schooling themselves. I assure you, dearest parents, that a book about a child witnessing police violence, that contains coarse language and that talks about the ways in which children emulate the sexualized imagery they've seen in society without fully understanding what they are doing is utterly appropriate for middle school, given that the average middle schooler may have already witnessed and heard all of those things in one form or another by middle school. Depending on where they are, possibly multiple times. There are parents that will demand their children not be exposed to those things, but they should be exceptions granted with compelling reasons. If the material would be triggering for the child, certainly. If the parent doesn't want to acknowledge the real world, forget it. They can, instead, do the work of engaging with their child, offering their own views and having discussions with their charge, and treating them and the educator that chose the work with respect. Most teachers aren't going to choose works for shock value, or to shove something in front of a child just to see their reactions. There's thought that goes into curricula, and I'll bet the book was chosen for several very good academic reasons. To have their crafted curriculum be derailed by a parent who didn't seem interested in letting the school process play out has to be frustrating.
I hope the local public librarian, and the school librarian, if there is one, on hearing about this, got all their copies of The Hate U Give that were available in and then put them in display, nice and face-out in a very prominent place, top get the point across that even if a student is forbidden a thing in class, there are plenty of other places where the thing can be obtained. And then the parent has to parent anyway. So why not just skip to that step? Keeping kids out of the coursework on human maturation doesn't stop them from finding information about sex, and it poisons any possibility of conversation about the matter as well, because their parents have already demonstrated an unwillingness to talk. At that point, or any other point where censorship is the option demanded, you're left hoping the kids have enough good information skills to find reliable and reputable information on their own. Or that they have other trusted adults to have those conversations with.
The time is gone where a person can hope that by shutting off avenues, information can be stymied or forgotten. Censorship is perceived as damaged nodes in the network and routed around, even if it requires a few more hops. The best someone can hope for is that the cost of obtaining the information becomes too high for it to be pursued. Even then, that might only be delaying the inevitable. As soon as someone gets access to the unfiltered world, it becomes up to them to decide what they seek. As a parent, it seems your time would be better spent developing their capacities than censoring their inquiries.
But what do I know? I'm just a professional with a degree and training in information and the ways that people seek it out. Since I'm not a parent, I can't possibly understand. And library school certainly didn't teach me how to be a parent.
Since that's the lead, let's start with the Temple Public Library fielding complaints from a group named Concerned Christian Citizens that their displays of LGBT books and information was advocating for a viewpoint, and libraries should not do that.
To accept that there is a debate on this issue, you have to accept the underpinning idea that one can choose to be LGBT in the same way that one can choose to be a Christian. This is clearly the case from the group making the complaint, as they provide the clear dog-whistle of an "agenda" being promoted in a taxpayer-funded library and that there needs to be balance of viewpoints such that the library remains natural.
The library neutrality argument is a canard at best, given that the institution of librarianship doesn't have a track record of being neutral, and that neutrality is functionally impossible anyway.
The best points made in the article are in subsequent paragraphs, but I'm going to reorder them to make the most sense. Mr. Hall says "By allowing the display, the library unintentionally endorsed these ideas and beliefs."
Nothing unintentional about it, Mr. Hall - we're "professionals and [...] require a professional level of training to carry out [our] duties." So you don't get to paint us as flighty-headed people who, oh gosh, now that you've shown us how we endorsed it, of course we pull them down because we don't want to endorse anything, much less LGBT folk. Grab a ticket, line's that way, past the abyss of Go Fuck Off. We have LGBT people in our community, they have just as much right to use the library and to have themselves represented in the collection and on displays.
Mr. Blair makes an even better point about endorsement. "The state, county, and cities recognized Confederate heroes a week and a half ago. Does that recognition advocate armed rebellion, treason or slave holding? Of course not." We respectfully disagree on the endorsement point there, given the track record of people who do hold Confederate values, and those same values themselves, but that's not the focus here. Mr. Blair's point is that, generally speaking, nobody accuses the public library of holding Nazi beliefs because we have a translated copy of Hitler's Mein Kampf on the shelves, or of military fetishism because we have entire sections of fiction and nonfiction devoted to military matters, or of being partisan hacks because we carry books written by members of the other political party. It only seems to be a problem when the library is seen as saying that people who don't look like you, or don't love like you, or don't believe like you are also people who deserve to be recognized, protected, and served like you. You know, when we're trying to be the neutral you seem to want us to be. Which suggests people who claim there's an "agenda" that needs balance not only don't see other people as human, what they want the library to do is help enforce power structures and ideas that benefit the perceived majority that believe they deserve that power. Instead of being a truly public institution.
Because they're taxpayers, or future taxpayers, too.
Second, Angie Thomas's The Hate U Give was pulled from curricular usage after a parent objected to the content and that they hadn't been given the option to pull their permission for a child to read the book. Now, when people make complaints about the library, like the ones above, they're usually expressing a sentiment that boils down to "you are not living up to the ideal of the library that I have in my head, for reasons X, Y, Zed." For things like that, we can talk about whether the ideal itself is flawed, what the ideal picture has for assumptions as its support structures, and whether or not that ideal is one that comes in conflict with the ideal that the library holds for itself. There's space for a conversation. And for the practice of the fine art of diplomacy.
This act right here does not. It is the story of thing that would make an educator see red, because it's a parent asserting they know more about what is appropriate for their and every child than the educator with the professional training, and then getting a politician involved in the matter so as to put pressure on the school to do whatever is needed to get the pressure off rather than following procedures or taking their time to evaluate tuner material. That same educator that is being told they have to prepare their students for the world after school, but is apparently not allowed to do so in any way that might actually signal what the world outside school is like. The contract of schooling is that someone agrees to give up control of what is taught to the professionals in exchange for not having to do the schooling themselves. I assure you, dearest parents, that a book about a child witnessing police violence, that contains coarse language and that talks about the ways in which children emulate the sexualized imagery they've seen in society without fully understanding what they are doing is utterly appropriate for middle school, given that the average middle schooler may have already witnessed and heard all of those things in one form or another by middle school. Depending on where they are, possibly multiple times. There are parents that will demand their children not be exposed to those things, but they should be exceptions granted with compelling reasons. If the material would be triggering for the child, certainly. If the parent doesn't want to acknowledge the real world, forget it. They can, instead, do the work of engaging with their child, offering their own views and having discussions with their charge, and treating them and the educator that chose the work with respect. Most teachers aren't going to choose works for shock value, or to shove something in front of a child just to see their reactions. There's thought that goes into curricula, and I'll bet the book was chosen for several very good academic reasons. To have their crafted curriculum be derailed by a parent who didn't seem interested in letting the school process play out has to be frustrating.
I hope the local public librarian, and the school librarian, if there is one, on hearing about this, got all their copies of The Hate U Give that were available in and then put them in display, nice and face-out in a very prominent place, top get the point across that even if a student is forbidden a thing in class, there are plenty of other places where the thing can be obtained. And then the parent has to parent anyway. So why not just skip to that step? Keeping kids out of the coursework on human maturation doesn't stop them from finding information about sex, and it poisons any possibility of conversation about the matter as well, because their parents have already demonstrated an unwillingness to talk. At that point, or any other point where censorship is the option demanded, you're left hoping the kids have enough good information skills to find reliable and reputable information on their own. Or that they have other trusted adults to have those conversations with.
The time is gone where a person can hope that by shutting off avenues, information can be stymied or forgotten. Censorship is perceived as damaged nodes in the network and routed around, even if it requires a few more hops. The best someone can hope for is that the cost of obtaining the information becomes too high for it to be pursued. Even then, that might only be delaying the inevitable. As soon as someone gets access to the unfiltered world, it becomes up to them to decide what they seek. As a parent, it seems your time would be better spent developing their capacities than censoring their inquiries.
But what do I know? I'm just a professional with a degree and training in information and the ways that people seek it out. Since I'm not a parent, I can't possibly understand. And library school certainly didn't teach me how to be a parent.
