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Okay, look, y'all. There's a whole bunch of folks out on crusade trying to get rid of materials from public and school libraries. And by that, I mean they've been campaigning to do it for decades, but they normally haven't manage to do more than get their asses laughed out of wherever they're trying to do it if there was a community of anything other than people who thought the same way present who could argue successfully for the understanding that people need a variety of perspectives, including challenging ones, for their reading.
But we are now in one of those cycles where, because of the increased radicalization, and the long-term project of censors and banners to put themselves in positions of local control so they can more effectively either implement their agendas or be receptive to the kind of fringe characters that want them to do those agendas and then claim they're just following the will of the people, we start seeing all sorts of people at all sorts of levels starting to come for the library collections. Mayors demanding a purge of "sexual" material, by which they mean anything not cishet and intended for an audience younger than adults, principals asserting they have sole control over what books are allowed in a school and demanding the removal of "sexual" material, by which they mean anything not cishet and intended for an audience younger than adults, petty tyrants using the power of the library board and the local government to ensure that libraries reflect their authoritarian and likely Christofascist views, under the guise of being concerned about "sexual" material, by which they mean anything not cishet and intended for an audience younger than adults, parents challenging books that are by and about non-white people on whatever boogeyman is convenient, most recently "critical race theory", or in at least one case, challenging an account of the atrocities of the Holocaust because it has strong language and naked mice in it. And, of course, challenging "sexual" materials in school and public libraries, by which they mean anything not cishet and intended for an audience younger than adults. (Which has been going on pretty regularly for decades at this point, based on what ALA tracks as challenges for Banned Books Week.)
( Cut for length )
So, yeah, especially if you're in the States, there's probably someone in your local politics, as well as your state politics, who is trying to get books taken out of schools and libraries based on the fact that one of the characters says "fuck" once, or might describe a gay encounter with enough detail to make it unmistakable, or might write accurately about slavery, police encounters, or well-meaning but racist white people. While library people as citizens can raise our voices and demand better, libraries as organizations often have a more tricky field to navigate when it comes to having opinions about things that affect us, so we have to rely on you to do most of the work agitating for real changes in your local government or governance. As a practitioner, I would really appreciate it we could pull the discourse back in the direction of people getting laughed out of the room for demanding a book be pulled off because it contains something that might make an impression on children, while also being able to talk about using and having better books for classrooms and libraries than the very laden with -isms "classics." (As if there hasn't been all sorts of good books published since then that do a better job of teaching and adding nuance to the things.)
But we are now in one of those cycles where, because of the increased radicalization, and the long-term project of censors and banners to put themselves in positions of local control so they can more effectively either implement their agendas or be receptive to the kind of fringe characters that want them to do those agendas and then claim they're just following the will of the people, we start seeing all sorts of people at all sorts of levels starting to come for the library collections. Mayors demanding a purge of "sexual" material, by which they mean anything not cishet and intended for an audience younger than adults, principals asserting they have sole control over what books are allowed in a school and demanding the removal of "sexual" material, by which they mean anything not cishet and intended for an audience younger than adults, petty tyrants using the power of the library board and the local government to ensure that libraries reflect their authoritarian and likely Christofascist views, under the guise of being concerned about "sexual" material, by which they mean anything not cishet and intended for an audience younger than adults, parents challenging books that are by and about non-white people on whatever boogeyman is convenient, most recently "critical race theory", or in at least one case, challenging an account of the atrocities of the Holocaust because it has strong language and naked mice in it. And, of course, challenging "sexual" materials in school and public libraries, by which they mean anything not cishet and intended for an audience younger than adults. (Which has been going on pretty regularly for decades at this point, based on what ALA tracks as challenges for Banned Books Week.)
( Cut for length )
So, yeah, especially if you're in the States, there's probably someone in your local politics, as well as your state politics, who is trying to get books taken out of schools and libraries based on the fact that one of the characters says "fuck" once, or might describe a gay encounter with enough detail to make it unmistakable, or might write accurately about slavery, police encounters, or well-meaning but racist white people. While library people as citizens can raise our voices and demand better, libraries as organizations often have a more tricky field to navigate when it comes to having opinions about things that affect us, so we have to rely on you to do most of the work agitating for real changes in your local government or governance. As a practitioner, I would really appreciate it we could pull the discourse back in the direction of people getting laughed out of the room for demanding a book be pulled off because it contains something that might make an impression on children, while also being able to talk about using and having better books for classrooms and libraries than the very laden with -isms "classics." (As if there hasn't been all sorts of good books published since then that do a better job of teaching and adding nuance to the things.)
