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silveradeptOkay, 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.)
These things are happening all over the country, regardless of the perceived political lean of the place. Sometimes they're obvious, like these requests and demands that material be removed, process, procedure or any other method by which things get formally reviewed be damned. Some of them are much more subtle, like the conversation a parent had with my boss about how they were expecting to see things like "fall," "leaves," and other such things in the autumn season and instead were confronted with faceouts that talked about "solidarity," "protest," and "antiracism." They felt we were inappropriately viewing children solely as political actors and wanted to see less political material. They were a parent of children not of their own race, and they didn't see color, you see, and therefore we shouldn't either, because it would be gauche to talk about them in racial terms.
To his credit, my boss passed the message along and said he didn't expect any changes to happen based on this. I sincerely hope that parent educated themselves about how early a non-white body gets politicized and how many grownups need picture books about not being racists and teaching antiracist behaviors to themselves and their children. Most of these people inappropriately using their power, or using their power to achieve inappropriate results understand that if they went through that process for formal review, and let the subject matter experts have a thorough and nonpartisan investigation into the matter, they'd lose, because the materials themselves, if taken as a whole, instead of only by whatever piece is being waved around as "proof" of the inappropriate-ness of the material for children, would have value for students, classrooms, or even, possibly, would pass the Miller test if it were put before a court. Assuming that the judge(s) in the court test wasn't someone who also was willing to put aside precedent or who decided to read the governing precedent in some way that was favorable to the people who want to get materials out of the system, which is also a new hazard of our days, thanks to more of that decades-long project to put people sympathetic to their views in positions of power, rather than trying to find the person who is going to apply the law and precedent in as non-partisan a manner possible.
A colleague of mine noted, in all of this, that there wasn't a whole lot of people coming for adult material in the books to try and censor them out for all of their sexual material. Which, yeah, that's true - the adults seem to be mostly going for trying to defend their hagiographic versions of history, trying to support the myth of the meritocracy, or going straight up into fascism and authoritarianism with the idea of banning people from being allowed to exist or trying to implement their TurboJesus religion as official state or federal policy, trying to getting around whatever laws are in their way and trusting that their appointed justices will find a way to rubber-stamp such a policy in complete defiance of precedent, and possibly even in the face of the law itself. Where the real action is and always has been, is about the childrens. Just about every moral panic of the last fifty years can be traced in one way or another about the supposed innocence of children and their exposure to "inappropriate" elements.
Or, more flippantly, they're not going after adult materials with similar amounts of content because they don't want to dry up their own supply of hot reading. (The things that teach history rather than hagiography, or that expose popular myths, those do get attacked still, even as material for adults, because they're partisanly or doctrinally unacceptable, but at least for those, nobody's hiding behind the idea that it's somehow being used as indoctrination material for children.)
The reason we're hearing about these things more than usual is because people get loud when they believe they can't lose, or when they think the people are on their side. And because so many of these things are situated around kids and schools, the best ways for stemming the tide against censorship isn't buying the book and distributing it, because that's only going to favor the kinds of people who can get tied into that kind of distribution network. The best way to fight it is to do the same thing that allowed many of these authoritarians to get into positions of power in the first place - run for library boards, run for school boards, demand accountability and transparency from your local officials and stay current on them, all of those small-d democratic and long-dismissed as unimportant things that make sure local stuff and state stuff runs well. It might be uphill, and there will be a lot of probably very boring stuff, but if you leave the local and boring stuff to the fanatics, I guarantee, they've figured out all the ways they can use and abuse what little power they have to further their own aims.
In the face of all of these things happening elsewhere, I've been trying to get my organization to at least own up to the idea that the library has an opinion on things, and that we're going to act in accordance with our official opinions, as laid out in policy. I don't envy my administration trying to chart a path of what kind of morality the library system is officially going to have, but I do need them to tell me what that is going to be and why so that I know what needs doing, whether that's thumbs-up enforcement for policy or leaning as hard as I can on the administrators and policymakers to get them to change a wrongheaded policy that does not actually serve our interest or the interest of our communities. And I also need to have board people and administrators who believe that the library should carry less -ist material and more queer material, more non-white material. I also want them to believe there should be less -ists on staff, and more queer people, more non-white people, and to back those beliefs by seeking, retaining, and promoting not-white people (and especially queer not-white people), since I guarantee you, most systems serving a population above a certain size have not-white, not-cis, not-het people who are part of the community and should have representation in both collection and staff.
The national organizations aren't providing much help in this regard, but they're large, slow-moving entities that have to both understand and then act on change, and they're not ready to give up the fig leaf of apolitical-ness that clinging to "neutrality", "colorblindness", and other such policies provides. Because I suspect a lot of libraries are afraid that if they start stepping up to the plate to defend their communities and their collections, they'll be targeted by all of the fanatics at all levels of power. I suspect a lot of libraries feel like they might lose that battle, or they'll find there's no support for them against people who are claiming that the library is indoctrinating or promoting "deviant" behavior to children, or at least the fight will be dragged out to ruinously expensive amounts of time fighting for themselves, only to have the next people elected into power go right back at them on some different matter that will also have to be expensively defended. Which, y'know, individual libraries might have those fears, but that's what a national organization is supposed to help with, when it becomes something that is threatening all of their members, or all libraries.
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.)
These things are happening all over the country, regardless of the perceived political lean of the place. Sometimes they're obvious, like these requests and demands that material be removed, process, procedure or any other method by which things get formally reviewed be damned. Some of them are much more subtle, like the conversation a parent had with my boss about how they were expecting to see things like "fall," "leaves," and other such things in the autumn season and instead were confronted with faceouts that talked about "solidarity," "protest," and "antiracism." They felt we were inappropriately viewing children solely as political actors and wanted to see less political material. They were a parent of children not of their own race, and they didn't see color, you see, and therefore we shouldn't either, because it would be gauche to talk about them in racial terms.
To his credit, my boss passed the message along and said he didn't expect any changes to happen based on this. I sincerely hope that parent educated themselves about how early a non-white body gets politicized and how many grownups need picture books about not being racists and teaching antiracist behaviors to themselves and their children. Most of these people inappropriately using their power, or using their power to achieve inappropriate results understand that if they went through that process for formal review, and let the subject matter experts have a thorough and nonpartisan investigation into the matter, they'd lose, because the materials themselves, if taken as a whole, instead of only by whatever piece is being waved around as "proof" of the inappropriate-ness of the material for children, would have value for students, classrooms, or even, possibly, would pass the Miller test if it were put before a court. Assuming that the judge(s) in the court test wasn't someone who also was willing to put aside precedent or who decided to read the governing precedent in some way that was favorable to the people who want to get materials out of the system, which is also a new hazard of our days, thanks to more of that decades-long project to put people sympathetic to their views in positions of power, rather than trying to find the person who is going to apply the law and precedent in as non-partisan a manner possible.
A colleague of mine noted, in all of this, that there wasn't a whole lot of people coming for adult material in the books to try and censor them out for all of their sexual material. Which, yeah, that's true - the adults seem to be mostly going for trying to defend their hagiographic versions of history, trying to support the myth of the meritocracy, or going straight up into fascism and authoritarianism with the idea of banning people from being allowed to exist or trying to implement their TurboJesus religion as official state or federal policy, trying to getting around whatever laws are in their way and trusting that their appointed justices will find a way to rubber-stamp such a policy in complete defiance of precedent, and possibly even in the face of the law itself. Where the real action is and always has been, is about the childrens. Just about every moral panic of the last fifty years can be traced in one way or another about the supposed innocence of children and their exposure to "inappropriate" elements.
Or, more flippantly, they're not going after adult materials with similar amounts of content because they don't want to dry up their own supply of hot reading. (The things that teach history rather than hagiography, or that expose popular myths, those do get attacked still, even as material for adults, because they're partisanly or doctrinally unacceptable, but at least for those, nobody's hiding behind the idea that it's somehow being used as indoctrination material for children.)
The reason we're hearing about these things more than usual is because people get loud when they believe they can't lose, or when they think the people are on their side. And because so many of these things are situated around kids and schools, the best ways for stemming the tide against censorship isn't buying the book and distributing it, because that's only going to favor the kinds of people who can get tied into that kind of distribution network. The best way to fight it is to do the same thing that allowed many of these authoritarians to get into positions of power in the first place - run for library boards, run for school boards, demand accountability and transparency from your local officials and stay current on them, all of those small-d democratic and long-dismissed as unimportant things that make sure local stuff and state stuff runs well. It might be uphill, and there will be a lot of probably very boring stuff, but if you leave the local and boring stuff to the fanatics, I guarantee, they've figured out all the ways they can use and abuse what little power they have to further their own aims.
In the face of all of these things happening elsewhere, I've been trying to get my organization to at least own up to the idea that the library has an opinion on things, and that we're going to act in accordance with our official opinions, as laid out in policy. I don't envy my administration trying to chart a path of what kind of morality the library system is officially going to have, but I do need them to tell me what that is going to be and why so that I know what needs doing, whether that's thumbs-up enforcement for policy or leaning as hard as I can on the administrators and policymakers to get them to change a wrongheaded policy that does not actually serve our interest or the interest of our communities. And I also need to have board people and administrators who believe that the library should carry less -ist material and more queer material, more non-white material. I also want them to believe there should be less -ists on staff, and more queer people, more non-white people, and to back those beliefs by seeking, retaining, and promoting not-white people (and especially queer not-white people), since I guarantee you, most systems serving a population above a certain size have not-white, not-cis, not-het people who are part of the community and should have representation in both collection and staff.
The national organizations aren't providing much help in this regard, but they're large, slow-moving entities that have to both understand and then act on change, and they're not ready to give up the fig leaf of apolitical-ness that clinging to "neutrality", "colorblindness", and other such policies provides. Because I suspect a lot of libraries are afraid that if they start stepping up to the plate to defend their communities and their collections, they'll be targeted by all of the fanatics at all levels of power. I suspect a lot of libraries feel like they might lose that battle, or they'll find there's no support for them against people who are claiming that the library is indoctrinating or promoting "deviant" behavior to children, or at least the fight will be dragged out to ruinously expensive amounts of time fighting for themselves, only to have the next people elected into power go right back at them on some different matter that will also have to be expensively defended. Which, y'know, individual libraries might have those fears, but that's what a national organization is supposed to help with, when it becomes something that is threatening all of their members, or all libraries.
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.)
no subject
Date: 2022-02-09 02:30 pm (UTC)People just need to get involved.
no subject
Date: 2022-02-09 03:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-02-09 04:31 pm (UTC)This may just be my opinion, but Dems seem to have the worldview that human nature is that things will improve of their own accord. Meanwhile, the RNC is actively plotting and working towards taking over the USA. It's obvious who is going to win in such a scenario.
no subject
Date: 2022-02-09 05:42 pm (UTC)If there were a functioning liberal party to exert counter pressure, things might not seem as bad.
no subject
Date: 2022-02-09 05:57 pm (UTC)AND we circle back to my argument that one of the things that fundamentally breaks politics in the USA IS the two-party system!
no subject
Date: 2022-02-09 06:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-02-09 07:02 pm (UTC)Ranked choice voting would be a big improvement. Kang was clearly the better choice.
no subject
Date: 2022-02-09 10:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-02-10 10:23 am (UTC)That's how I go onto 'Lady Chatterly's Lover' and 'The Well of Loneliness 'as a teenager!
Give my own family history, I think every child should read 'Maus'.
no subject
Date: 2022-02-10 07:22 pm (UTC)So yes, people need to read the book, but perhaps more importantly, people need to tell the brigade of people who want to censor on spurious grounds like "naked mice" to get lost, instead of giving them any sort of platform.