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silveradeptI was perusing a professional publication, a letter from the editor of said publication, when I was struck with the sensation that Someone Was Wrong On the Internet, but it took me a bit to untangle how to articulate it that didn't veer off into Wrong Ideas That Appeal To You.
Here's the offending quote:
I freely admit that my first response to reading that was something to the order of "No, no, both of those parents do not need to be in the library space," but then I spotted the possibility of inelegant phrasing and that made me have to think harder about what was actually meant and what the later paragraphs suggested was the intent of the phrasing, rather than what it actually said.
For those who have not been following the book banning sprees that are going on across the United States, until very recently, while there have never been zero challenges to materials in any given year, for the most part, there have been a small number of challenges, and a large number of those challenges have resulted with the materials staying put in the collection, as the defined process to review and evaluate such materials generally concluded that the material was not obscene or pornographic and had one or several aspects of the narrative, characterization, or even the identities of the creator(s) that made it a good fit for a collection that wanted to carry a broad array of viewpoints, or accurate information, or reasonably okay entertainment, in it. The materials were generally evaluated on the whole, not on singular elements, and the fact that the material had been selected in the first place generally meant that someone who has been trained in the selection and evaluation of materials considered it and approved. The understanding basically was that there would always be people with fringe beliefs attempting to remove materials because they wanted to impose their fringe beliefs on everyone else, and while the library or school would listen politely to the objections and try to come to some understanding of the position, because people trusted the librarians knew what they were doing, a materials challenge was generally going to fail (and one might correctly think the challenger would need to provide a significant burden of proof to override the decision of the librarian.)
I handled such a thing myself once, where the person wanted to object to the presence of materials in the collection, and I listened to the concerns, trying to make sure that I understood them correctly, and explained that the people the library employed to select materials and the underlying policies that we have governing such meant we were trying to produce a wide swath of potential materials so that there would be something for everyone to find in the collection that suited for them. That they were welcome to make a more formal complaint, if desired, and what that would entail in terms of materials evaluation and decisions. It was mostly a listening and acknowledging the concerns, and making sure to explain what remedies and options were available for someone who wanted their own children not to be exposed to such materials. There wasn't any formal challenge that followed, it really just was someone wanting to express concerns. And probably who knew, after the explanation that had been given them, that pressing forward with their claim would likely go nowhere. (It would have gone nowhere.)
It's a snappy slogan, for example, to say "Libraries are for everyone." And usually, the graphics that go along with this suggest that we mean this along religious creeds, skin colors, ability levels, and the like, that there is no person who will be excluded from the library based on things that are intrinsic to themselves. The supporting paragraphs in the offending post extend this idea out by making the argument that the things that should be focused on are the commonalities of people who have opposed viewpoints. If we focus on the fact that the person accusing the librarians of promoting agendas and the person looking for representation are both concerned about children and want to do what's best for children, then we can have an environment where the two of them can co-exist, even if the librarian reading this is supposed to be on the side of those seeking representation and not on the side of those seeking censorship. (Librarians like to believe they are, as a profession, on the right side of history, but the actual history of librarianship says that if you threw a dart into the pool of library workers and librarians, you're still more likely to poke someone who believes in censoring queer people than you are someone who believes censoring queer people is unacceptable.) And if we hew to the idea from the supporting paragraphs that parents are allowed to select what materials they show their children and to choose to leave alone the material they don't want to select, then so long as those parents also stick to "well, I get to choose what my child sees and I can refuse my child's choices if what they're choosing is not acceptable to me," everybody goes away with something they want, even if they're unhappy about the presence of something that they definitely don't want.
That's not usually what happens, and that's not what happened here, either. There's a subtle sleight of hand in the offending post that equivocates two things that are not actually equal, and then says that we can produce harmony (or, at the very least, not have to choose sides) by not dealing with either of those things under the banner of "we have to welcome all points of view", and then focusing on something else entirely that both sides of this dispute can say they're for, and therefore believe that the library aligns with their view. But these two example things that happened are not actually equivalent. The parent with the two moms family is looking for "books that validated her family's existence." It's a request that the library has materials on hand that acknowledge the existence of their family structure and treat it as a family structure. It's not asking for a referendum on whether the family structure should exist, or asking for the library to declare their family structure is superior to other family structures. It's asking the library to have something in the collection that someone can read to find another family structure like theirs.
The first thing, the accusation of promoting the "gay agenda" and the following accusation of inappropriate sexual behavior toward children, those are slanders against the library staff. They are not requests asking for the collection to have something that represents the viewpoint of the accuser, which it most likely does. They are not even requests to the library to limit the access of someone they have guardianship and responsibility over, because they do not want their child exposed to viewpoints different than their own. (The appropriate response to that request to limit a child is, in a more polite and diplomatic register, "Tough shit." Which is why some states have passed laws that give those parents the ability to wield the state's monopoly on violence against any library or school that would say, accurately, based on what a school or library is supposed to do, "Tough shit." to that request. Although, in some places, it might be a very polite "Tough shit," because some librarians are sympathetic to what is desired, but it's simply not possible to achieve if the child is left to their own devices and choices.) The slanders are meant not to invoke a change in collection, or display, or policy, or any other item that a library could reasonably discuss and adopt or reject proposed changes to. They are instead an accusation that the library staff, as agents of the government, are engaging in unacceptably partisan political speech and an accusation of severe sexual misconduct by the staff toward minors who cannot give meaningful consent. Because they are slanders against the staff, rather than any other aspect of the library, such accusations demand the removal of the staff as the remedy.
So, on the one hand, we have a slander against the staff that demands the removal of staff to fix the alleged problems, on the other we have a request for the collection of the library to carry materials that reflect the reality of the community around the library. These two things are not equal and they should not be equivocated. Most of the motion that we see in states hostile to schools and libraries is meant to take the power of selection, deselection and decision making out of the hands of the trained staff and place them in the hands of the most fanatical elements possible, whether in government or in the public. They are actions against collections only indirectly, or as a consequence of actions that are primarily against the staff. The shift in tactics to slander against the people, rather than the materials, still acknowledges that, for the most part, people find they cannot defeat a good selection policy and trained people making good decisions without opening up the possibility that someone might wield that same logic against them and their points of view, and perhaps more easily make materials friendly to them disappear or be in short supply. (We see the collection every day and make decisions about it on most days. If there's anyone's prejudices that will be reflected in the collection, it's the staff's.) The only way to succeed against those policies and trained staff is to replace the staff and those with oversight responsibility over the staff wholesale with people willing to reinterpret, repeal, or set aside the stated policies of the library or school and do what they want to do, regardless of consequence (or with the belief that they will be shielded from consequence.)
With all of that context, let's go back to the text. The offending piece posits that the person who wishes to slander the staff and the person who wishes the collection to be more reflective of reality should feel like they belong in the library. I will grant that both people should be able to enter the library, find materials that they wish to check out or services they wish to take advantage of, and receive excellent professional assistance from the staff, so long as they do not behave in ways that violate Rules of Conduct or similar policies. Someone can even think all they want in their heads about how much they believe the library staff are actually pedophiles pushing sexually explicit materials on vulnerable children, but if they don't articulate that belief, or behave in ways contrary to the Rules of Conduct, they should be treated as any other person using the library. If that gives them a sense of belonging to or in the library, so be it.
The second a person articulates slander against the staff, however, or behaves in a way that indicates they have taken action based on slander, they have lost their right to feel like they belong in the library. Depending on the articulation or the behavior, they may also have lost their right to be present in the library. Yes, the slogan says "Libraries are for everyone," but there's an asterisk next to that, because libraries are not for people who wish to destroy the materials in the collection or remove them with the intent of preventing others from accessing them, they're not for people who threaten or behave boorishly toward the staff or other library users, they're not for people who fail to behave according to the Rules of Conduct. These are all things that generally do not need to be made explicit, except as the explanation to someone who is in breach of them and is refusing to leave or otherwise accept the consequences of that breach. We don't want someone to feel like they belong in the library when they are behaving in ways that are anti-library. We may have only limited options about how we can deal with someone who is behaving in anti-library ways, but it should be clear to them that the behavior is unacceptable. Same thing for schools and school staff. Unfortunately, in places that have become hostile to those staff, such behavior is given official cover, if not condoned or repeated by people with more power.
A lot of the practicals in the piece, about listening and trying to redirect someone to a thing they can agree is important and happening at the library or school are correct actions to take, because staff are not generally given the power to eject someone who slanders them at the moment of the offense, but instead must find some other way of containing or redirecting the disturbance, or must accept the slander without retaliation. Where the two interactions mentioned in the offending post took place was at a conference, and so it would have been up to the conference organizers and security persons to make a decision about whether to eject the slanderer or not, and generally, because of the protections of free speech and the generally high bar of proof needed to convict someone of making a slanderous remark, people who utter such slanders will generally be allowed to stay, and it will take other behavior to result in an ejection. But I certainly hope that if the slandering parent was known to the librarians, that parent will be given nothing more than exactly what the rules say they get. No favors, no bending in the name of good customer service, no "just this once" that someone who hasn't uttered slanders might get on a good day. Nothing that would be against the expectations of staff, but all the ways that displeasure can be made manifest without crossing the line. That parent should not feel like they belong in the library they've denigrated, until they make apology for what they've done or said, and their behavior has changed so we might believe the apology is anything more than lip service. (But none of that frostiness should extend to their child, because it's very bad form to punish the child for the transgressions of the parent. And many of those children are hoping to use their schools and libraries to get out from underneath the thumb of restrictive parents anyway.)
The offending piece says that they're not advocating for tolerating hate or bigotry, which is good. But that statement comes well after suggesting that the correct action in the face of hate and bigotry is to ignore the hate and bigotry and focus on some other value that people will say they believe in, even if what they mean by that value is still very far away from what the other person means. It's a librarian's piece, honestly, and the telltale sign of it is the unwillingness to say that someone is wrong (for fear that it might be taken as "partisan or doctrinal disapproval," I'd guess), instead couching it as "I personally struggle to welcome those who would not accept people I love for simply living as their authentic selves," putting the fault in the librarian who has those pesky feelings they can't put aside to perform "neutrality" instead of the person speaking the slander.
We can do better than this, but it's probably going to take other people delivering swift social (and electoral) consequences to people who utter these kinds of slanders. Because librarians and libraries are usually forbidden from expressing any opinion on a topic that might be construed as political, even if that opinion is "Step outside and say that again, motherfucker."
Here's the offending quote:
Before I arrived, my colleagues were confronted by a parent who accused them of promoting the “gay agenda” and grooming children. Before I left, we had the opportunity to chat with a parent whose family has two moms and wanted to hear about books that validated her family’s existence.
Both of these parents need to belong in our library spaces.
How, when their views seem so diametrically opposed, do we accomplish that?
I think we start by validating their feelings. In both cases, these parents care about their children. In both cases, these parents seek to have their world view confirmed by the reading material their child accesses. In both cases, the parents want to know that their concerns are heard.
We keep repeating the idea that libraries—all libraries—are for everyone. Everyone has a right to find books that reflect their lived experience in our spaces. Everyone has a right to choose NOT to read specific books or access specific materials or programming. We can’t only welcome the people whose beliefs or values align with our own—we have to welcome them all.
Sometimes, this is a huge stretch. I know I personally struggle to welcome those who would not accept people I love for simply living as their authentic selves. But if we hope to move toward creating a space where everyone truly belongs, we have to start by highlighting what we have in common.
All too often, particularly in online spaces, the focus seems to be on “telling” or “shaming” another person rather than on listening and finding common ground. I am not suggesting that we tolerate hate or bigotry. I’m suggesting that we shift the focus away from hate or bigotry to what we have in common. There, in that commonality, is where we have the opportunity to expand viewpoints and create real change, one individual at a time.
I freely admit that my first response to reading that was something to the order of "No, no, both of those parents do not need to be in the library space," but then I spotted the possibility of inelegant phrasing and that made me have to think harder about what was actually meant and what the later paragraphs suggested was the intent of the phrasing, rather than what it actually said.
For those who have not been following the book banning sprees that are going on across the United States, until very recently, while there have never been zero challenges to materials in any given year, for the most part, there have been a small number of challenges, and a large number of those challenges have resulted with the materials staying put in the collection, as the defined process to review and evaluate such materials generally concluded that the material was not obscene or pornographic and had one or several aspects of the narrative, characterization, or even the identities of the creator(s) that made it a good fit for a collection that wanted to carry a broad array of viewpoints, or accurate information, or reasonably okay entertainment, in it. The materials were generally evaluated on the whole, not on singular elements, and the fact that the material had been selected in the first place generally meant that someone who has been trained in the selection and evaluation of materials considered it and approved. The understanding basically was that there would always be people with fringe beliefs attempting to remove materials because they wanted to impose their fringe beliefs on everyone else, and while the library or school would listen politely to the objections and try to come to some understanding of the position, because people trusted the librarians knew what they were doing, a materials challenge was generally going to fail (and one might correctly think the challenger would need to provide a significant burden of proof to override the decision of the librarian.)
I handled such a thing myself once, where the person wanted to object to the presence of materials in the collection, and I listened to the concerns, trying to make sure that I understood them correctly, and explained that the people the library employed to select materials and the underlying policies that we have governing such meant we were trying to produce a wide swath of potential materials so that there would be something for everyone to find in the collection that suited for them. That they were welcome to make a more formal complaint, if desired, and what that would entail in terms of materials evaluation and decisions. It was mostly a listening and acknowledging the concerns, and making sure to explain what remedies and options were available for someone who wanted their own children not to be exposed to such materials. There wasn't any formal challenge that followed, it really just was someone wanting to express concerns. And probably who knew, after the explanation that had been given them, that pressing forward with their claim would likely go nowhere. (It would have gone nowhere.)
It's a snappy slogan, for example, to say "Libraries are for everyone." And usually, the graphics that go along with this suggest that we mean this along religious creeds, skin colors, ability levels, and the like, that there is no person who will be excluded from the library based on things that are intrinsic to themselves. The supporting paragraphs in the offending post extend this idea out by making the argument that the things that should be focused on are the commonalities of people who have opposed viewpoints. If we focus on the fact that the person accusing the librarians of promoting agendas and the person looking for representation are both concerned about children and want to do what's best for children, then we can have an environment where the two of them can co-exist, even if the librarian reading this is supposed to be on the side of those seeking representation and not on the side of those seeking censorship. (Librarians like to believe they are, as a profession, on the right side of history, but the actual history of librarianship says that if you threw a dart into the pool of library workers and librarians, you're still more likely to poke someone who believes in censoring queer people than you are someone who believes censoring queer people is unacceptable.) And if we hew to the idea from the supporting paragraphs that parents are allowed to select what materials they show their children and to choose to leave alone the material they don't want to select, then so long as those parents also stick to "well, I get to choose what my child sees and I can refuse my child's choices if what they're choosing is not acceptable to me," everybody goes away with something they want, even if they're unhappy about the presence of something that they definitely don't want.
That's not usually what happens, and that's not what happened here, either. There's a subtle sleight of hand in the offending post that equivocates two things that are not actually equal, and then says that we can produce harmony (or, at the very least, not have to choose sides) by not dealing with either of those things under the banner of "we have to welcome all points of view", and then focusing on something else entirely that both sides of this dispute can say they're for, and therefore believe that the library aligns with their view. But these two example things that happened are not actually equivalent. The parent with the two moms family is looking for "books that validated her family's existence." It's a request that the library has materials on hand that acknowledge the existence of their family structure and treat it as a family structure. It's not asking for a referendum on whether the family structure should exist, or asking for the library to declare their family structure is superior to other family structures. It's asking the library to have something in the collection that someone can read to find another family structure like theirs.
The first thing, the accusation of promoting the "gay agenda" and the following accusation of inappropriate sexual behavior toward children, those are slanders against the library staff. They are not requests asking for the collection to have something that represents the viewpoint of the accuser, which it most likely does. They are not even requests to the library to limit the access of someone they have guardianship and responsibility over, because they do not want their child exposed to viewpoints different than their own. (The appropriate response to that request to limit a child is, in a more polite and diplomatic register, "Tough shit." Which is why some states have passed laws that give those parents the ability to wield the state's monopoly on violence against any library or school that would say, accurately, based on what a school or library is supposed to do, "Tough shit." to that request. Although, in some places, it might be a very polite "Tough shit," because some librarians are sympathetic to what is desired, but it's simply not possible to achieve if the child is left to their own devices and choices.) The slanders are meant not to invoke a change in collection, or display, or policy, or any other item that a library could reasonably discuss and adopt or reject proposed changes to. They are instead an accusation that the library staff, as agents of the government, are engaging in unacceptably partisan political speech and an accusation of severe sexual misconduct by the staff toward minors who cannot give meaningful consent. Because they are slanders against the staff, rather than any other aspect of the library, such accusations demand the removal of the staff as the remedy.
So, on the one hand, we have a slander against the staff that demands the removal of staff to fix the alleged problems, on the other we have a request for the collection of the library to carry materials that reflect the reality of the community around the library. These two things are not equal and they should not be equivocated. Most of the motion that we see in states hostile to schools and libraries is meant to take the power of selection, deselection and decision making out of the hands of the trained staff and place them in the hands of the most fanatical elements possible, whether in government or in the public. They are actions against collections only indirectly, or as a consequence of actions that are primarily against the staff. The shift in tactics to slander against the people, rather than the materials, still acknowledges that, for the most part, people find they cannot defeat a good selection policy and trained people making good decisions without opening up the possibility that someone might wield that same logic against them and their points of view, and perhaps more easily make materials friendly to them disappear or be in short supply. (We see the collection every day and make decisions about it on most days. If there's anyone's prejudices that will be reflected in the collection, it's the staff's.) The only way to succeed against those policies and trained staff is to replace the staff and those with oversight responsibility over the staff wholesale with people willing to reinterpret, repeal, or set aside the stated policies of the library or school and do what they want to do, regardless of consequence (or with the belief that they will be shielded from consequence.)
With all of that context, let's go back to the text. The offending piece posits that the person who wishes to slander the staff and the person who wishes the collection to be more reflective of reality should feel like they belong in the library. I will grant that both people should be able to enter the library, find materials that they wish to check out or services they wish to take advantage of, and receive excellent professional assistance from the staff, so long as they do not behave in ways that violate Rules of Conduct or similar policies. Someone can even think all they want in their heads about how much they believe the library staff are actually pedophiles pushing sexually explicit materials on vulnerable children, but if they don't articulate that belief, or behave in ways contrary to the Rules of Conduct, they should be treated as any other person using the library. If that gives them a sense of belonging to or in the library, so be it.
The second a person articulates slander against the staff, however, or behaves in a way that indicates they have taken action based on slander, they have lost their right to feel like they belong in the library. Depending on the articulation or the behavior, they may also have lost their right to be present in the library. Yes, the slogan says "Libraries are for everyone," but there's an asterisk next to that, because libraries are not for people who wish to destroy the materials in the collection or remove them with the intent of preventing others from accessing them, they're not for people who threaten or behave boorishly toward the staff or other library users, they're not for people who fail to behave according to the Rules of Conduct. These are all things that generally do not need to be made explicit, except as the explanation to someone who is in breach of them and is refusing to leave or otherwise accept the consequences of that breach. We don't want someone to feel like they belong in the library when they are behaving in ways that are anti-library. We may have only limited options about how we can deal with someone who is behaving in anti-library ways, but it should be clear to them that the behavior is unacceptable. Same thing for schools and school staff. Unfortunately, in places that have become hostile to those staff, such behavior is given official cover, if not condoned or repeated by people with more power.
A lot of the practicals in the piece, about listening and trying to redirect someone to a thing they can agree is important and happening at the library or school are correct actions to take, because staff are not generally given the power to eject someone who slanders them at the moment of the offense, but instead must find some other way of containing or redirecting the disturbance, or must accept the slander without retaliation. Where the two interactions mentioned in the offending post took place was at a conference, and so it would have been up to the conference organizers and security persons to make a decision about whether to eject the slanderer or not, and generally, because of the protections of free speech and the generally high bar of proof needed to convict someone of making a slanderous remark, people who utter such slanders will generally be allowed to stay, and it will take other behavior to result in an ejection. But I certainly hope that if the slandering parent was known to the librarians, that parent will be given nothing more than exactly what the rules say they get. No favors, no bending in the name of good customer service, no "just this once" that someone who hasn't uttered slanders might get on a good day. Nothing that would be against the expectations of staff, but all the ways that displeasure can be made manifest without crossing the line. That parent should not feel like they belong in the library they've denigrated, until they make apology for what they've done or said, and their behavior has changed so we might believe the apology is anything more than lip service. (But none of that frostiness should extend to their child, because it's very bad form to punish the child for the transgressions of the parent. And many of those children are hoping to use their schools and libraries to get out from underneath the thumb of restrictive parents anyway.)
The offending piece says that they're not advocating for tolerating hate or bigotry, which is good. But that statement comes well after suggesting that the correct action in the face of hate and bigotry is to ignore the hate and bigotry and focus on some other value that people will say they believe in, even if what they mean by that value is still very far away from what the other person means. It's a librarian's piece, honestly, and the telltale sign of it is the unwillingness to say that someone is wrong (for fear that it might be taken as "partisan or doctrinal disapproval," I'd guess), instead couching it as "I personally struggle to welcome those who would not accept people I love for simply living as their authentic selves," putting the fault in the librarian who has those pesky feelings they can't put aside to perform "neutrality" instead of the person speaking the slander.
We can do better than this, but it's probably going to take other people delivering swift social (and electoral) consequences to people who utter these kinds of slanders. Because librarians and libraries are usually forbidden from expressing any opinion on a topic that might be construed as political, even if that opinion is "Step outside and say that again, motherfucker."
