An Arizona librarian was fired for the "crime" of speaking out against #NiggerLivesMoreImportantThanSocietyMotherFucker and endorsing the view that libraries need to be neutral and (actually) inclusive:
The ALA found a dissident worthy of crushing in bookmobile librarian Ron Kelley. Kelley devoted his life to diversity and inclusion, not in the way that woke college students pretend to by posting platitudes on Twitter and attending the occasional Black Lives Matter protest, but in real ways that left him poorer than he started and eventually out of a job.
The propagandistic posting below, apparently forwarded from the current president of ABOS, about the Black Lives Matter organization is extremely unwise. Overt politicization of this list-serv will destroy this forum. Do members want a political battlefield, strong-armed by ALA-sanctioned propaganda, or an open exchange forum for outreach improvement? Or, truly, in the heart of our festering Culture Wars, are only dictated political perspectives permitted about library outreach programs in these discussions? Such ham-handed, totalitarian directives are apparently endorsed by ABOS, as well as the ALA, to the obvious exclusion of other views. Will this ABOS discussion group kick out (censor) individuals who advocate for a non-political forum?It’s an old adage that is increasingly under attack: Libraries should provide aid and information to ALL who seek it and not function as a politicized, prejudicial Advocacy Factory.Diversity? Inclusion? 82% of American librarians are women. Why no interest in gender diversity in this genre of workplace? Or is the presumption here that of the usual “social justice” template, that all males are innately oppressors, naturally affluent, born cursed, and they don’t like “women’s work?” Or are men relatively illiterate? Which stereotype suffices to righteously ignore this glaring stat about women’s dominance of the library world?Here, below, are some Black authors with alternative perspectives on the Black Lives Matter movement, and/or beyond. I’ve read/viewed some of this material, but not all of it. I formally endorse nothing, I do not know all of which every individual advocates, but recognize that the fundamental purpose of a library is to provide a broad range of information/materials for ALL patrons, and a wide realm of fact and opinion, not solely bending to a favorite, dictated ideological line. A much-needed “diversity of viewpoints,” perhaps the greatest diversity of them all, cuts across race, class, and gender.Libraries – and this discussion forum — should remain apolitical. ALA — and ABOS, apparently now in tow by the neck — adheres to one-dimensional thought in heralding a single political view while implicitly dismissing/censoring other perspectives, something akin to Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, or Orwell’s masterpieces. Ignoring some strains of thought — and relentlessly highlighting, and overtly advocating for, others — is a discrete form of censorship, as any librarian knows in collection development.Library workers are supposed to be informed. They ought to be readers, and open wide the doors to ALL visitors, not shut – or narrow — them.And a librarians’ job should be to serve their communities’ respective needs, not to manipulate information and tell people what to think.The ALA email below solicits activism in the Black Lives Matter movement and offers “resources on educating yourself.” In this regard, do you think that this grossly prejudicial email would dare to encompass the following?
There are many more alternative Black perspectives, but they are not popularly heralded by those with vested ideological devotion to Marxism, post-Modernism, and/or, generally, the “social justice” narratives of the political Left, i.e. the likes of the American Library Association. The ALA has long since failed – by conscious political design – to be an objective arbiter of what is or is not “fake news.” (See, for example, its endorsement of the prejudicial and partisan ideology of “critical librarianship,” which rejects the aims of an objective neutrality. Examine also what brand of individual speaks at the ALA’s conventions, both national and sectional. And who/what is forbidden its forum.)Over the past few years, critical librarianship has become a force that pervades every area of our work, from reference to library instruction, collection development, cataloging, and storytime. Biweekly #critlib Twitter chats (critlib.org) address topics across all areas of librarianship. Many librarians are thinking about how they can fight for social justice in their work, which raises the question of whether that work reflects the neutrality that has long been a value in our profession.One tenet of critical librarianship is that neutrality is not only unachievable, it is harmful to oppressed groups in our society. In a world that is fundamentally unequal, neutrality upholds inequality and represents indifference to the marginalization of members of our community. If the majority of what is published represents a white, male, Christian, heteronormative worldview, then we are not supporting the interests of other members of our communities by primarily buying those works.
As Megan Fox notes in her article, Ron Kelley has his own bona fides that should put his accusers to shame. Instead, they fired him for simply disagreeing with them:
In my current library job, one of my responsibilities is to serve the Navajo Nation that strides the eastern side of Arizona. (God help them during the Hell they are going through in the current pandemic). I have written proposals (my ideas, my initiatives) and landed TWO grants to get books and movies – about the Navajo, and some other Native Americans, including the Hopi – for use by the Navajo community and others. The first grant was expressly devised to acquire books and movies created BY NAVAJO individuals who defined their OWN experience and community—memoirs, poetry, films, and on and on. Whatever I was able to find…The later, second, grant was to get books and movies by anyone about the Navajo. This recent effort has been to get as many perspectives as possible, to widen and inform the results of the first grant.
I also went out of my way (beyond bookmobile duties) to land a THIRD grant (I also wrote that proposal – by my own initiative) to get a few thousand dollars-worth of educational/technological tools for a “STEM” project at a Navajo school in Leupp, Arizona. I joined with a wonderful library coworker whose expertise was to set up a program at that school, and she further partnered with an educational center in Phoenix to get the project accomplished.
MAYBE one of my persecutors at ABOS has done something vaguely like that.
But I’m still not finished pulling myself out of the extremists’ cesspool. If you’re lying down on the floor, flustered with shock that your routine stereotypes of dissenters don’t stick in my direction, don’t stand up yet.
Don't think for a second that the situation at tax-funded Canadian libraries aren't even worse...the question becomes will anybody be willing to speak out about it?
