Library Journal is taking a beating over a tweet from Monday arguing that library collections are promoting and proliferating whiteness, so much so that the whiteness is taking up most of the physical space.
Library collections continue to promote and proliferate whiteness with their very existence and the fact that they are physically taking up space in our libraries. Via @sofiayleung https://t.co/iKEk0462Mh pic.twitter.com/ov8hZ5Zt2J
— Library Journal (@LibraryJournal) April 16, 2019
The thing is, that tweet doesn’t even begin to encapsulate the argument by Sofia Leung — not by a long shot:
If you look at any United States library’s collection, especially those in higher education institutions, most of the collections (books, journals, archival papers, other media, etc.) are written by white dudes writing about white ideas, white things, or ideas, people, and things they stole from POC and then claimed as white property with all of the “rights to use and enjoyment of” that [Cheryl I.] Harris describes in her article.
…
Library collections continue to promote and proliferate whiteness with their very existence and the fact that they are physically taking up space in our libraries. They are paid for using money that was usually ill-gotten and at the cost of black and brown lives via the prison industrial complex, the spoils of war, etc. Libraries filled with mostly white collections indicates that we don’t care about what POC think, we don’t care to hear from POC themselves, we don’t consider POC to be scholars, we don’t think POC are as valuable, knowledgeable, or as important as white people.
Hey, don’t look at us — we’re not librarians. Blame yourselves.
Unfortunately, Sofia Leung is not a parodist, but Titania McGrath is:
If white parents simply raised their children as illiterate, they’d stop producing so many books and our libraries would flourish. pic.twitter.com/c6sbvKcs5F
— Titania McGrath (@TitaniaMcGrath) April 17, 2019
Sounds like the problem is racist librarians.
— A Rosnibo (@ahrob27) April 17, 2019
Exactly.
More likely, they just need to find more authors who are black.
— DarthMallard?❗️ (@drumhellor) April 17, 2019
Nailed it again.
— Ty Caldwell (@prestoncaldwell) April 17, 2019
— First Lord of the Space Force Admiralty (@Noah_Pology) April 17, 2019
We should start burning books by all white authors until we balance things out. Everyone, the most Woke thing you can do right this second is, get your copy of "Woke" by @TitaniaMcGrath and burn it! Burn it for the good of humanity!!! ???
— Rob Morris ? (@RobBrown_69) April 17, 2019
Of course if you locked up white kids inside libraries then set them on fire, you'd get rid of both the past, present and future of whiteness. Just a thought.
— The Mess (@careful_now0) April 17, 2019
We need a bookpocalypse! From the ashes will rise a decolonized enlightened era of indigenous knowledge production! #downwithwhitey
— Greg Rubino (@rubinogreg) April 17, 2019
Book pages are white. Let’s start with that.
— David Bolger (@Augmented9) April 17, 2019
I think making all the pages black with white text would solve the problem
— Hυηт and your wife (@CRHUN7) April 17, 2019
I'm rather concerned that you still believe we should allow white people to have children, at least by natural means. #parody
— Outsider Insight (@outsider63) April 17, 2019
Unfortunately I taught my kids to read before I became self- loathing
— Psalm91_1 (@psalm91_1) April 17, 2019
White children should skip reading and all learning and spend their days feeling profound shame. How will society improve otherwise?
— Steve Hornbeck (@SteveHornbeck1) April 17, 2019
Why are white people still allowed to have children anyway ?
— Antony Lawler (@AntonyLawler) April 17, 2019
We’ve been told that maybe two is OK. In the name of the planet.
Have a bonfire with the books by white males and throw in cis white females too, then boycott all modern medicine because you know, that white male thing.
— Liz O (@eoros1012) April 17, 2019
My local library also oozes whiteness. And, quite frankly, it's embarrassing. Not just to me, personally, but to my ancestors, my dentist, and my massage therapist.#MAGA
— The Wall Street Poet (@WallStPoet) April 17, 2019
I predicted this day was coming, I just thought it'd be 200-300 years after I was safely dead
— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) April 16, 2019
With all these damn books in the library, where are the hobos supposed to masturbate?
— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) April 16, 2019
Related:
WaPo editor fears for Rep. Ilhan Omar because she’s ‘everything white America has been taught to fear and eliminate’ https://t.co/ubMWdqWN1F
— Twitchy Team (@TwitchyTeam) April 13, 2019
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