“Teachers and librarians are forgetting that their
primary responsibility as educators is not to an author or illustrator they
like, but to the children in their classrooms. As parents, we trust you to do
right by our children and what they learn from you. What you give them is
something they will carry with them as they grow up.” Debbie Reese
This fall, the word “agenda” has been bandied about
quite a bit on social media related to children’s literature and library
service to youth (for a good overview, see this
post from Debbie Reese, this
post from Ellen Oh, and this post from
Charline Jao). I’ll have an upcoming post exploring the absurdity of this label
(spoiler alert: everyone has an agenda!) and how it seems to be most often dragged
out of the drawer, dusted off, and thrown into conversations during times when
social justice issues are receiving public attention as a way to silence those
people trying to challenge the status quo.
Before I get to that post (and others looking at
neutrality, the power of librarians, etc.), I wanted to use this post to talk
about my own agenda.
On my agenda
Me: I am accountable to myself and the way I represent
the core
values of librarianship to my students and the world. When I see that
organizations, libraries, and librarians aren’t acting on these core values (or
are acting against them), it is my
responsibility to point this out to my students (and, oftentimes, the larger library
community). It is also my responsibility to help students engage critically
with the contradictions inherent within these values and other organizational
and disciplinary policies, tenets, actions, etc.
C & S (my stepdaughters): I am accountable to
both, wanting them not to be as ignorant as I was at their ages (12 and 14,
respectively). This means having difficult conversations, questioning
assumptions, offering them books and media outside of their experiences, and
sharing biographies and histories beyond what they see in their textbooks and
classrooms.
J (my niece): As an African-American preschooler near the
birthplace of both Ben Tillman and Strom Thurmond, J will live a life that I
will never be able to completely understand. I hold myself accountable to her
by finding and offering mirror books to serve as talismans and by having
sometimes difficult conversations about race, inequity, and injustice in a
family that would often seek to avoid those conversations.
J (my nephew): Now a toddler, my White nephew also
gets talisman books, in the form of windows and mirrors, so that he can realize
the beauty of his interracial family and his potential to be a different sort
of White Southern male.
The youth of South Carolina (particularly Orangeburg
County): I hold myself accountable to the children and teens of my home state
and county in hopes that they can see the truths amidst all of the silence,
secrets, racial code words, and Whitewashed curriculum and libraries. May they
benefit from teachers and librarians who can help them understand the
historical and ongoing impact of a state built on the forced labor of enslaved
people, the theft of tribal lands (through the Indian Removal Act and other legislation),
the horrors of Reconstruction (violence, land loss, and the Black Codes that
would become Jim Crow), and the backlash to the Civil Rights Movement (the
Orangeburg Massacre, White Citizens’ Councils, etc.) that led to a state where
structural and environmental racism are woven into the very fabric of daily
life. (Not to mention how prevalent sexism, homophobia, and transphobia are.) I
know how difficult it is to live amidst that stifling silence, where racism is
everywhere but nobody (White) wants to acknowledge it, where racial coding (if
not outright hate speech) is as common as pimento cheese sandwiches at a
picnic.
My students: I hold myself accountable to my students
(past, present, and future) by being honest, even when it is uncomfortable. I
use critical theories in my classes to help push the boundaries of the
profession and LIS education. Sometimes I succeed (which is what keeps me going
some days), and sometimes I fail (I have been called a “race traitor” on my
student evaluations and often have vocal resistance in the form of my courses
being “too difficult.”). But I never want a student to look back on one of my
classes and be angry at me for not being truthful, for leaving out the reality
of the problems they will face as librarians. Tempered with this critical
approach, I also speak to the hope and belief that they can make changes (daily
and long-term) to provide more equitable collections and services to everyone.
The communities libraries serve (in theory, if not in
reality): I hold myself accountable to everyone in every community in this
country, of every race, color, belief/nonbelief, gender, sexual orientation, gender
identity or expression, national origin, age, ability, veteran status, spoken/written
language, citizenship status, legal history, economic level, and literacy
level, recognizing that White, heteronormative, cisgender, Christian males
still continue to be seen as the default (AKA status quo) in too many of our
collections and services.
By holding myself accountable to all of these people
on my agenda, I recognize my responsibility in questioning the assumptions and
decisions of many librarians, educators, researchers, institutions,
organizations, publishers, authors and illustrators, corporations, and others
who would seek to privilege the status quo through the silencing, policing,
stereotyping, tokenizing, and/or marginalizing of anyone who falls out of their
version of “America.” In short, I seek (as do so many others, many of them
listed in the blogs to the right) to do my part in creating a better future for
everyone. That is my agenda and I own it completely.
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