![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
silveradeptThis is simply too good (as in skillful, not as in delightful) to not document. A coworker of color left The Organization, but at 30 minutes to the end of their final shift, in the channel meant for all-staff consumption, they left us one of the most masterfully executed "fuck you"s possible, a PDF of a request for reconsideration form and the response generated from The Organization about it.
Inside the document, a person took The Organization to task for one of the selections sent out by Wowbrary, a service the Organization uses to send out what are supposed to be "the 20 highest-ranked items added by the library within approximately the last 7 days." The ranks are apparently Amazon ranks, so you can guess that we're already in trouble. The Wowbrary decided to highlight for this user a book called "Facing Reality: Two Truths About Race In America." by Charles Murray, who uses pseudoscience and misleading statistics to try and justify racism. If it was highlighted by Wowbrary, that means we must have bought a copy or two. (We have.) Probably because it was ranked highly in a category like "Stuff White People Like To Justify Their Racism" on Amazon.
So The Organization has two immediate problems. One, we bought a book by a racist. Probably because it was popular enough, or requested of us, and we are supposed to use popularity or requests, alongside things like "given favorable reviews in reputable publications" in the selection of materials. And in an organization where access and intellectual freedom are considered superior virtues to social justice and anti-racism, this kind of stuff happens regularly. The best our selectors can do in those environments is not but many of those things.
Two, we've now just broadcast to all of our Wowbrary subscribers that we buy books by racists. Nice of us to say out loud that those anti-racism and solidarity statements that we posted a couple of years ago didn't amount to shit in terms of meaningful or actual change! To the person who saw the "recommendation" from Wowbrary, it was traumatizing to see us promoting a clear racist's work.
As we go further through the document, we get the official response to the reconsideration from the newly installed director of collection services. It took about seven months, but because of the upheaval involved, and then wanting to make sure things were done right, it's still about five months too long to have waited to give a response. Especially because the content of the response itself was not encouraging.
It was, however, entirely in keeping with a different piece of information that our newest administrator sent us a little while ago, a presentation meant for Boards of Trustees about intellectual freedom and the role of the library and its trustees in upholding intellectual freedom. One of the slides very specifically told Trustees that a request for reconsideration should never address the content of the material, and no decisions should ever be made about reconsideration based on the content of the material, only on whether or not the appropriate procedures for selection were followed in the acquisition, cataloging, and placement of the material.
As I noted in sending my thousand-word-plus objections to the content of that presentation, it's entirely possible that such a refusal to look at the content of a challenged material is meant to be a feature, rather than a bug, since it absolves the people working on the reconsideration request of any responsibility at all at deciding the case on its merits, and, theoretically, prevents trustees or administrators from injecting personal animus or improperly wielding their institutional powers to push personal agendas about what is "appropriate" for a library to carry. As if one could expect that a sufficiently determined censor would feel constrained and not engage in censorship because it would be an improper use of their power to do so and would damage the institution's credibility to be seen acting in such a nakedly partisan way.
[beat, knowing stare at the camera.]
Except, of course, there's the other thing that gets in the way of smug, self-congratulatory satisfaction at doing your job impartially and without letting "feeeeeelings" get in the way. Once again, the 9th principle of the ALA Code of Ethics, adopted 02021:
So, it took seven months to respond, and then the response was essentially "Yeah, he's described as a racist, but intellectual freeeeeedom!" Which is where we pick up with the Discourse that erupted from the posting, a Discourse that the person leaving the system doesn't have to do anything about, because they're already gone, and that they can probably watch through someone feeding them the information and making sure they've got lots of popcorn. Because there have been apologies for the length of time that it took to get a response, and there's been a blaming of the outside service that we have no control over, excepting of whether we subscribe to them or not. The new administrator, the one who shared the slides, has said that she's going to have to take time to digest and formulate a response. (She's also holding drop-in sessions on intellectual freedom in the next couple of weeks, so our departing co-worker has also thrown a firebomb into what might have been expected to be an anodyne or mostly-sympathetic discussion punctuated by a few firebrands trying to get The Organization to actually take a stand on something, whether it's actually doing the work or whether they want to do lip service and look like they're on board with the necessary changes, but won't ever actually do anything. Pass the popcorn.) Between her and the person blaming the outside service, there's been no other administrator in the thread saying anything, which is pretty par for the course when it comes to issues like that. The Director has departed, not her problems any more, and the new Director isn't formally installed for a little while. The other administrators are generally very silent about such things as it rages in the lower ranks, before someone gets chosen to speak ex cathedra on the matter.
Anyway, there's a fairly solid contingent of comments in sympathy with the reconsideration request and asking why The Organization gave both such a delayed and wholly inadequate response to the situation. And, because there's always going to be at least one, late-arriving to the situation is a library worker who wonders what all the big fuss is about, because the library is supposed to be neutral and not get into politics, and by the way, she complained about a board book that we were giving out as a summer reading reward last year and was told that we were keeping the book, even though she'd said it was offensive. (It was probably Pink Is For Boys, a book about how color and gender have nothing to do with each other at all except in the minds of people who want to enforce rigid gender binaries.)
There was an invitation by another staff member to disclose what book this was that was so offensive, delivered in the textual equivalent of the tone that one uses when uttering the phrase "By all means, keep digging." Unfortunately, the original poster did not rise to the challenge, and instead proclaimed they wouldn't be doing so because "there is only one accepted ideology at the library," with the clear implication that hers was not the accepted ideology. Based on the evidence presented so far, in this and other postings on the subject, I think the claim that "neutrality and non-politicalness" is not the favored ideology is laughable. (I also know that people of that type often find it easier to believe they are the oppressed, so as not to have to contend with the reality that they are sympathizing or participating with the oppressors.)
What I would like to say, were it to be consequences-free for me, is to invite that person to resign their position at the library, if they are sufficiently convinced that they are philosophically disfavored, and to let the position pass to someone who will be more in accord with the values of the library, as they are only going to make themselves miserable having to suppress their true feelings for the sake of conformity and their job. I could say that, confident that the underlying point of how so many workers of color have to do just that every day in the predominantly-white world of libraries would fly completely overhead, undisturbed by a thought.
I should also mention that we're finally going to start seeing what are hopefully concrete action steps and the results of all the work the upper administration has been doing with a DEI consultant for the last several years. I don't expect them to actually amount to much, but I am willing to be pleasantly surprised. And to find all sorts of places to apply Nick Fury's Principle of Intelligent Rules to what comes out so that the framework or the considered actions actually move in a Principle 9 positive direction instead of the way they will actually go in practice. I don't expect to be able to spot them easily, or consistently, but I do hope that those who do will be willing to share with the rest of us.
I have to give my thanks to the departed co-worker for a popcorn-worthy "Fuck You," even though I suspect that after some amount of sound and fury from the front-line contingent, since there's no actual power invested in them, the administration will wait out the upset, send out the person who is rapidly becoming the only person who at least listens, and then do what they were going to do (or not do what they weren't going to do) anyway. And then wonder why they can't seem to keep the people they need the most to help them achieve their stated goals about anti-racism, inclusion, and equitable practices. Every time we have the opportunity to do better, the "do better" side is always left waiting for the administration to, in fact, do better.
Inside the document, a person took The Organization to task for one of the selections sent out by Wowbrary, a service the Organization uses to send out what are supposed to be "the 20 highest-ranked items added by the library within approximately the last 7 days." The ranks are apparently Amazon ranks, so you can guess that we're already in trouble. The Wowbrary decided to highlight for this user a book called "Facing Reality: Two Truths About Race In America." by Charles Murray, who uses pseudoscience and misleading statistics to try and justify racism. If it was highlighted by Wowbrary, that means we must have bought a copy or two. (We have.) Probably because it was ranked highly in a category like "Stuff White People Like To Justify Their Racism" on Amazon.
So The Organization has two immediate problems. One, we bought a book by a racist. Probably because it was popular enough, or requested of us, and we are supposed to use popularity or requests, alongside things like "given favorable reviews in reputable publications" in the selection of materials. And in an organization where access and intellectual freedom are considered superior virtues to social justice and anti-racism, this kind of stuff happens regularly. The best our selectors can do in those environments is not but many of those things.
Two, we've now just broadcast to all of our Wowbrary subscribers that we buy books by racists. Nice of us to say out loud that those anti-racism and solidarity statements that we posted a couple of years ago didn't amount to shit in terms of meaningful or actual change! To the person who saw the "recommendation" from Wowbrary, it was traumatizing to see us promoting a clear racist's work.
As we go further through the document, we get the official response to the reconsideration from the newly installed director of collection services. It took about seven months, but because of the upheaval involved, and then wanting to make sure things were done right, it's still about five months too long to have waited to give a response. Especially because the content of the response itself was not encouraging.
It was, however, entirely in keeping with a different piece of information that our newest administrator sent us a little while ago, a presentation meant for Boards of Trustees about intellectual freedom and the role of the library and its trustees in upholding intellectual freedom. One of the slides very specifically told Trustees that a request for reconsideration should never address the content of the material, and no decisions should ever be made about reconsideration based on the content of the material, only on whether or not the appropriate procedures for selection were followed in the acquisition, cataloging, and placement of the material.
As I noted in sending my thousand-word-plus objections to the content of that presentation, it's entirely possible that such a refusal to look at the content of a challenged material is meant to be a feature, rather than a bug, since it absolves the people working on the reconsideration request of any responsibility at all at deciding the case on its merits, and, theoretically, prevents trustees or administrators from injecting personal animus or improperly wielding their institutional powers to push personal agendas about what is "appropriate" for a library to carry. As if one could expect that a sufficiently determined censor would feel constrained and not engage in censorship because it would be an improper use of their power to do so and would damage the institution's credibility to be seen acting in such a nakedly partisan way.
[beat, knowing stare at the camera.]
Except, of course, there's the other thing that gets in the way of smug, self-congratulatory satisfaction at doing your job impartially and without letting "feeeeeelings" get in the way. Once again, the 9th principle of the ALA Code of Ethics, adopted 02021:
We affirm the inherent dignity and rights of every person. We work to recognize and dismantle systemic and individual biases; to confront inequity and oppression; to enhance diversity and inclusion; and to advance racial and social justice in our libraries, communities, profession, and associations through awareness, advocacy, education, collaboration, services, and allocation of resources and spaces.So, if a work by a well-known racist is in our collection, and it is brought to our attention that a work by a well-known racist is in our collection, what's the ethical thing to do with it, then? If we remove it, the racists will cry "Censorship! Partisanship! WOKENESS! HYYYYYS-TERIA!" and one of the other ethical principles says that we oppose censorship in all its forms. Of course, if we let the book stay on the shelves and do nothing about it, then we're certainly not advancing racial and social justice, so that's not an ethical course of action, either. Guess we'll have to decide which of our principles is superior to the other, and which we choose to enforce when it's merely convenient to do so.
So, it took seven months to respond, and then the response was essentially "Yeah, he's described as a racist, but intellectual freeeeeedom!" Which is where we pick up with the Discourse that erupted from the posting, a Discourse that the person leaving the system doesn't have to do anything about, because they're already gone, and that they can probably watch through someone feeding them the information and making sure they've got lots of popcorn. Because there have been apologies for the length of time that it took to get a response, and there's been a blaming of the outside service that we have no control over, excepting of whether we subscribe to them or not. The new administrator, the one who shared the slides, has said that she's going to have to take time to digest and formulate a response. (She's also holding drop-in sessions on intellectual freedom in the next couple of weeks, so our departing co-worker has also thrown a firebomb into what might have been expected to be an anodyne or mostly-sympathetic discussion punctuated by a few firebrands trying to get The Organization to actually take a stand on something, whether it's actually doing the work or whether they want to do lip service and look like they're on board with the necessary changes, but won't ever actually do anything. Pass the popcorn.) Between her and the person blaming the outside service, there's been no other administrator in the thread saying anything, which is pretty par for the course when it comes to issues like that. The Director has departed, not her problems any more, and the new Director isn't formally installed for a little while. The other administrators are generally very silent about such things as it rages in the lower ranks, before someone gets chosen to speak ex cathedra on the matter.
Anyway, there's a fairly solid contingent of comments in sympathy with the reconsideration request and asking why The Organization gave both such a delayed and wholly inadequate response to the situation. And, because there's always going to be at least one, late-arriving to the situation is a library worker who wonders what all the big fuss is about, because the library is supposed to be neutral and not get into politics, and by the way, she complained about a board book that we were giving out as a summer reading reward last year and was told that we were keeping the book, even though she'd said it was offensive. (It was probably Pink Is For Boys, a book about how color and gender have nothing to do with each other at all except in the minds of people who want to enforce rigid gender binaries.)
There was an invitation by another staff member to disclose what book this was that was so offensive, delivered in the textual equivalent of the tone that one uses when uttering the phrase "By all means, keep digging." Unfortunately, the original poster did not rise to the challenge, and instead proclaimed they wouldn't be doing so because "there is only one accepted ideology at the library," with the clear implication that hers was not the accepted ideology. Based on the evidence presented so far, in this and other postings on the subject, I think the claim that "neutrality and non-politicalness" is not the favored ideology is laughable. (I also know that people of that type often find it easier to believe they are the oppressed, so as not to have to contend with the reality that they are sympathizing or participating with the oppressors.)
What I would like to say, were it to be consequences-free for me, is to invite that person to resign their position at the library, if they are sufficiently convinced that they are philosophically disfavored, and to let the position pass to someone who will be more in accord with the values of the library, as they are only going to make themselves miserable having to suppress their true feelings for the sake of conformity and their job. I could say that, confident that the underlying point of how so many workers of color have to do just that every day in the predominantly-white world of libraries would fly completely overhead, undisturbed by a thought.
I should also mention that we're finally going to start seeing what are hopefully concrete action steps and the results of all the work the upper administration has been doing with a DEI consultant for the last several years. I don't expect them to actually amount to much, but I am willing to be pleasantly surprised. And to find all sorts of places to apply Nick Fury's Principle of Intelligent Rules to what comes out so that the framework or the considered actions actually move in a Principle 9 positive direction instead of the way they will actually go in practice. I don't expect to be able to spot them easily, or consistently, but I do hope that those who do will be willing to share with the rest of us.
I have to give my thanks to the departed co-worker for a popcorn-worthy "Fuck You," even though I suspect that after some amount of sound and fury from the front-line contingent, since there's no actual power invested in them, the administration will wait out the upset, send out the person who is rapidly becoming the only person who at least listens, and then do what they were going to do (or not do what they weren't going to do) anyway. And then wonder why they can't seem to keep the people they need the most to help them achieve their stated goals about anti-racism, inclusion, and equitable practices. Every time we have the opportunity to do better, the "do better" side is always left waiting for the administration to, in fact, do better.
