Librarians, who are overwhelmingly progressives, routinely engage in censorship, weeding out factually-accurate books in their collections that offend woke sensibilities or use terminology considered outdated (such as old books that refer to “negroes” or “homosexuals” because that was the term used in the era the book was published).
The state university at Binghamton furnishes a recent example. “The library system at Binghamton University released an anti-racism statement in which it called itself part of a ‘predominantly White institution,’ or ‘PWI.’ It also announced a plan to ‘audit’ its content for racism,” reports Campus Reform:
BU Libraries said that the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and others are “the result of a white supremacist society in which violence is both enabled and effaced by structural racism.” The system therefore acknowledges its “institutional responsibility for addressing racism” and need to leverage resources in order to “advance other anti-racist work ongoing at the University and beyond.”
BU Libraries Assistant Head of Reader Services Timothy Lavis said that the term “PWI” was used to explain the predominant perspectives within the institution.
“When a PWI simply ignores systemic racism, [its] inaction is not actually a neutral position,” Lavis wrote…“Rather, that inaction serves to support the existing power structures that underpin and enable systemic racism.”
As we documented at length in the past, librarians routinely use “weeding” to discard books they think “reflect gender, family, ethnic, or racial bias” or “outdated” thinking.” And large numbers of library books have been removed and destroyed in the name of “equity” and “inclusion.”
Librarians follow “weeding guidelines” that tell them to “discard” library books “that reflect gender, family, ethnic, or racial bias” or are “outdated,” notes law professor Eugene Volokh. To progressives, lots of things reflect “gender, ethnic, or racial bias.” For example, under “‘hostile learning environment’ harassment codes” implemented by progressives, “students and campus newspapers have been charged with racial or sexual harassment for expressing commonplace views about racial or sexual subjects, such as criticizing feminism, affirmative action, sexual harassment regulations, homosexuality, gay marriage, or transgender rights, or discussing the alleged racism of the criminal justice system.”
School libraries typically have books by communism’s founder, Karl Marx, but not the Nobel Prize winning economist Milton Friedman, who wrote “Capitalism and Freedom,” notes education expert Joanne Jacobs. School libraries stock books by Ibram Kendi, who denounces capitalism and advocates racial discrimination against whites, but not John McWhorter, a black author who is critical of Kendi’s ideology.
The Arlington, Virginia public library has copies of Kendi’s book How To Be An Antiracist, which are not checked out, but Milton Friedman’s Capitalism and Freedom is often checked out and unavailable. Even in progressive Arlington, citizens would rather read a book by a pro-free-market Nobel Prize winner than the tedious writings of a woke left-wing ideologue like Ibram Kendi. But librarians buy every book by Kendi, no matter how badly written, or historically inaccurate, like Kendi’s error-filled book Stamped, which peddles baseless conspiracy theories, and depicts Presidents Harry Truman and Jimmy Carter as racists, even though Truman desegregated the military and Carter appointed record numbers of black people to high offices. Stamped is assigned to high school students in English classes in places like Arlington, Virginia, even though it is historically inaccurate and politically extreme.
“To love capitalism is to end up loving racism. To love racism is to end up loving capitalism…Capitalism is essentially racist; racism is essentially capitalist,” says Kendi’s book How to Be An Antiracist. That book is a “comprehensive introduction to critical race theory,” gushed the progressive media organ Slate. The “key concept” in Kendi’s book “How To Be An Antiracist” was that discrimination against whites is the only way to achieve equality: “The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination,” wrote Kendi in that book.
As law professor Eugene Volokh notes, references promoted librarian associations — such as The Weeding Handbook and A Weeding Manual — “expressly contemplate ‘removal of books that, in the view of government officials, contain ‘inappropriate’ ideas or viewpoints.”
Below are some passages from A Weeding Manual (emphasis added):
For all items, consider the following problem categories and related issues:
Poor Content: … Material that contains biased, racist, or sexist terminology or views …
Juvenile Fiction … Consider discarding older fiction especially when it has not circulated in the past two or three years. Also look for books that contain stereotyping, including stereotypical images and views of people with disabilities and the elderly, or gender and racial biases.
323 (Immigration & Citizenship) … Weed biased or unbalanced and inflammatory items.
330 (Economics) … Weed career guides with gender, racial, or ethnic bias.
390 (Customs, Etiquette & Folklore) … Discard books that lack clear color pictures. Holiday-specific books may only circulate once or twice a year. Discard books that are MUSTIE or that reflect gender, family, ethnic, or racial bias.
398 (Folklore) … Weed based on the quality of the retelling, especially if racial or ethnic bias is present.
709 (Art History) … While information may not become dated, watch for cultural, racial, and gender biases.
740 (Drawing & Decorative Arts) … Discard books on crafts that are no longer popular (macramé) or that feature gender bias.
793-796 (Games and Sports) … Watch for gender and racial bias in sports and athletics.
800 (Literature) … Watch for collections that feature gender or nationality bias and outdated interests and sensitivities.
E (Easy Readers/Picture Books) … Weed books that reflect racial and gender bias.
JF (Juvenile Fiction) … Evaluate closely for outdated styles, artwork, and mores, or biased viewpoints.
As Professor Volokh notes, “these criteria” involve “viewpoint-based decisionmaking (as opposed to using viewpoint-neutral criteria such as whether the book has in fact been checked out in the last few years).”
Similarly, The Weeding Handbook, published by the American Library Association, also calls for some viewpoint-based removal decisions.
