Becky's Response to the Whiteness as Collections by Sofia Leung Backlash

Over the last few days, the post entitled, "Whiteness as Collections" by Sofia Leung an academic librarian with a focus on libraries, social justice and critical race theory and editor at In the Library With the Lead Pipe, has garnered a lot of attention. I wanted to talk about the attention and the piece both because I think me readers need to read the post AND because I think the attention it is getting says a lot about the on going problems we are having with issues of equity, diversity, and inclusion in our profession.

First, read the article. And actually read it because I think many of the people who are getting "angry" about Leung's points haven't actually thought about what she said. The idea that our library collections are dominated by the white male viewpoint and that this is problematic is 100% valid.

But no where does Leung say we should start removing every books by white males form the library. Nowhere is she advocating for burning books by white men, as people are suggesting.

And this is the second point. I am beyond upset by people's reactions. Not surprised, but upset. People are reading Leung's very thoughtful discussion of a complicated issue and reacting poorly. They are reacting viscerally instead of thoughtfully. Shame on you. Her post was a mix of personal feelings and actual research by respected scholars, and yet, people have been awful in their replies. And I don't just mean the obvious racists. I am talking about the library workers who are upset and speaking up again Leung and attacking her personally and trying to get Library Journal to renounce her.

Um, all of her points are thoughtful and valid. I know I have said this multiple times already, but I fear many of you aren't listening. You can disagree with her if you want-- I don't as you will see below-- but you don't get to be mean, hurtful, and personally attack her. She does not deserve that in anyway.

Now to my opinion-- Her point is accurate. Our collections at EVERY LIBRARY [not just academic] are way out of proportion. The amount of materials written by and from the white male perspective greatly out number everything else. We should be striving to bring our collections into proportion with the racial and gender mix of out country. Our collections should represent us as a people. And as we shift and change, so too should our collections.

Why are people upset with a completely rational and well founded argument? Okay I know it is because white people feel threatened by the fact that POC are actively speaking up about injustice, injustice that they have known and fought their whole life, but often without bringing it up in the wider, public discourse. An injustice that white people haven't even noticed because we just made everything white as the standard and never considered how that effects those who don't fit our standard.

As a Jewish woman I have seen a tiny bit of this in my life. Growing up I went to Hebrew school, I learned all about Judaism and knew very little about Christianity and Jesus as a child. But, I quickly learned that I had to learn about the Christian religion in detail if I wanted to succeed at school, especially in English class [my favorite class] because all of my classes seemed to use books that used a Christian world view as the basis of the stories and if I didn't understand Christ as a metaphor or frame, I wouldn't be able to pass the class.

The unsettling feelings of this othering [although I didn't realize that was what it was] stayed with me for every class. IT was an extra level of thought I had to put into everything; I had to recalibrate to a Christian viewpoint. That is until I was able to take a Jewish American Lit class toward the end of college. It wasn't until then that I understood how stressful every other English class had ever been for me. I saw my non-Jewish classmates get upset that they had to learn about a different religion in order to understand this literature and I sorta lost it in a discussion. But it was cathartic for me to finally understand the concept which we now call EDI.

Now, this is so small compared to what non-white, LGBTQ, and ability diverse people deal with every single day because my religious world view is not something others can see and it does not come up every day [especially because I am not someone who goes to temple often]. But if you are brown or queer or whatever is non standard in a way that people can see every single day, what I felt is nothing. I have had conversations with my gay friend with children in the public school where she is feeling that the social aspects of the school fundraising are getting to be more reinforcing of heteronormative behavior than less, even thought there are more seem sex parents of students than ever at the school.

Now, third, imagine that you, as a white person [because let's face it, most of you reading this are white ladies since that is over 80% of our profession], had only ever been in libraries where the vast majority of scholarship and leisure reading was built on a non-white perspective. That is the issue every person who is not white, heteronormative, or abled deals with every single time the are in our libraries or use them for research. You would hate it. You would feel unwelcome. You would feel like the world was against you.

It is a deeper issue than any of us can imagine. Our entire amassed and cataloged knowledge as humanity is built off of one single viewpoint. And instead of trying to recalibrate this, we are getting upset and attacking the messenger.

Leung is correct in pointing this out. And we need to start thinking about righting this wrong. But NO ONE is saying we start by going in a throwing out all of the books by white males. This problem was built over centuries. It cannot be solved tomorrow. We begin by acknowledging the problem through smart analysis and thoughtful research as Leung mentions. We don't take it personally because it IS NOT personal.

But as a profession we need to act. You should be angry that this imbalance has persisted for so long. You should use your energy to work to make our collections better. Start at home. There are plenty of terrible books by white males that we are keeping in our collections. Get out there are look at your collections. Really look at it critically and from a non-white perspective. Get rid of books that you think you cannot weed because they are "classics" even though no one is checking them out. Guess what, you are a public library, not an archival library. You are supposed to have responsive collections, not preserve titles forever.

If no one is reading them, they can go and be replaced with more diverse and inclusive titles. Titles that have won awards, titles that will allow for our patrons to see themselves in stories, titles that will make our collections more accurately represent the population of our country-- not just your specific neighborhood. Because while you may be located in one place, your patrons are citizens of this country and they need to see its wonderful breadth reflected in our collections.

Friday, my colleague Karen Toonen had more to say on the issue of weeding in response to the responses of Leung's piece here. Please read her guest post too. Because her and I are also done with librarianship's aversion to weeding in general.

Everyone needs to read books about everyone. We need to start recalibrating our collections. Stop being mad that people are calling attention to the problem and start being part of the solution. Period. End of Discussion.