"Discard [Library] Books … That Reflect Gender, Family, Ethnic, or Racial Bias"

Professional librarian sources seem split on viewpoint-based book removals: some firmly call for viewpoint neutrality, while others say that books should be evaluated for "biased viewpoints."

[1.] Next week, the entire en banc Fifth Circuit will be hearing Little v. Llano County, a case involving allegations of viewpoint-based book removals in a public library. As I've noted before, the Supreme Court has never resolved whether such removals are unconstitutional. Pico v. Bd. of Ed. (1982), which considered the matter as to public school libraries, split 4-4 on the subject, with the ninth Justice, Justice White, expressly declining to resolve the substantive question. (The Pico Justices generally agreed that schools could remove some material as age-inappropriate because of its vulgar or sexual content; the debate was about viewpoint-based removals.)

U.S. v. American Library Ass'n (2003), which dealt with the related question of Internet filtering in public libraries generally, was also a splintered decision, and didn't resolve the broader question, either. A 1995 Fifth Circuit panel decision had generally precluded such viewpoint-based removals, but the Fifth Circuit en banc court will need to consider whether that decision should stand: Rehearing by the full en banc court is the normal way that federal appellate courts reconsider whether three-judge panel decisions should be overruled.

I'm not sure what the answer here should be. I tentatively think a public school is entitled to decide which viewpoints to promote through its own library: School authorities can decide that their library will be a place where they provide books they recommend as particularly interesting/useful/enlightening/etc., essentially as supplements to the school curriculum (over which the school has broad authority). The process of selecting library books is part of the government's own judgment about what views it wishes to promote. And the ability to reconsider selection decisions—including in response to pressure from the public, which is to say from the ultimate governors of the public schools—should go with the ability to make those decisions in the first place. To be sure, some such decisions may be foolish or narrow-minded, but they're not unconstitutional.

But this doesn't necessarily resolve the question of how librarians should administer non-school public libraries, which aren't the adjunct to any sort of school curriculum. Libraries are much more about giving more options to readers, rather than about teaching particular skills and attitudes to students. The case for viewpoint neutrality is therefore stronger there—though not, I think, open and shut. (Note also that even the challengers in this case leave open the possibility that courts shouldn't scrutinize book acquisition decisions to decide whether they are viewpoint-based, but only book removal decisions. See Appellees' En Banc Brief at 43-44 & n.13, 50.)

In any case, that's the big picture; here, I want to talk about a particular twist in the dispute, which can be particularly well seen in a friend-of-the-court brief filed by the Freedom to Read Foundation, the Texas Library Association, and American Library Association. The passage, and the sources it cites, refer to the necessity to remove books on some criteria—this is called "weeding," and some sources suggest that each year a public library would generally weed out 5% of its stock—and discuss which criteria are proper:

There are various methods for weeding library collections. One is the "CREW" method, which stands for "Continuous Review, Evaluation, and Weeding." CREW contains six general guidelines under the acronym "MUSTIE":

Misleading: factually inaccurate

Ugly: beyond mending or rebinding

Superseded by a new edition or by a much better book on the subject

Trivial: of no discernible literary or scientific merit

Irrelevant to the needs and interests of the library's community

Elsewhere: the material is easily obtainable from another library.[26]

When weeding, the goal is "to maintain a collection that is free from outdated, obsolete, shabby, or no longer useful items."[27]

Weeding is not the removal of books that, in the view of government officials, contain "inappropriate" ideas or viewpoints. Professional librarian practice is crystal-clear: "While weeding is essential to the collection development process, it should not be used as a deselection tool for controversial materials."[28]

[26] Lester Asheim, Not Censorship But Selection, Am. Libr. Ass'n, www.ala.org/advocacy/intfreedom/NotCensorshipButSelection (last visited Sept. 10, 2024); see also Rebecca Vnuk, The Weeding Handbook: A Shelf-By-Shelf Guide 6 (2d ed. 2022) (describing MUSTIE method).

[27] Jeanette Larson, CREW: A Weeding Manual for Modern Libraries at 11, Tex. State Libr. & Archives Comm'n (2012), at 11, https://www.tsl/texas.gov/sites/default/files/public/tslac/ld/ld/pubs/crew/crewmethod12.pdf (last visited Sept. 10, 2024).

[28] Collection Maintenance, supra note 23 (emphasis added) [Collection Maintenance & Weeding, Am. Libr. Ass'n, https://www.ala.org/tools/challengesupport/selectionpolicytoolkit/weeding (last visited Sept. 10, 2024).

But here's the twist: As the government defendants earlier briefing makes clear, both The Weeding Handbook (note 26) and A Weeding Manual (note 27) expressly contemplate "removal of books that, in the view of government officials, contain 'inappropriate' ideas or viewpoints." Here 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.

Some of these criteria, to be sure, may be defended on various grounds, including that books that contain what to appear outdated viewpoints are just not going to be as useful or interesting to new generations of readers. But that still involves 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).

The Weeding Handbook, published by the American Library Association itself, likewise calls for some viewpoint-based removal decisions:

It is … imperative to view materials through the lens of diversity and inclusion. Outdated or misrepresentational material needs to be removed on a regular basis. The Washington Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction has a very thorough tool for screening for biased content available online, … Washington Model Resource: Screening for Biased Content in Instructional Materials. [That tool is focused on classroom materials, but the Weeding Handbook is suggesting that it be adapted to library materials as well. -EV]

Carefully evaluate books on Black history, women's issues, and gender for language and bias…. Are materials free of stereotypes and assumptions?

[Quoting one librarian favorably:] "Removing the Dr. Seuss books that are purposefully no longer published due to their racist content is absolutely acceptable because it's an act of basic collection maintenance. It is our professional duty to make those carefully chosen decisions to ensure our collections are up-to-date and suitable for the communities we serve…. Librarians who claim to be antiracist need to remove these books…."

Libraries would do well to remember the first 'M' in MUSTIE: Misleading. CREW goes even further to define that "material that contains biased, racist, or sexist terminology or views" should be weeded.

[Quoting another librarian favorably:] "… This … highlights a new and much needed discussion in weeding principles: the weeding out of harmful materials with racist cultural stereotypes." "My philosophy is indeed to let it go when it comes to racially offensive material."

And this seems to represent broader attitudes among many librarians. A 2021 School Library Journal report notes, without criticism, that 47.3% of public library respondents (and 65.1% of school library respondents) included in "criteria for weeding" "inappropriate content (e.g., racist, biased, etc.). The California Department of Education Weeding the School Library publication (to be sure, it's focused on school libraries) expressly noted that "Books containing racial, cultural or sexual stereotyping" should be weeded as "misleading."

To be sure, there are other documents from the ALA that seem to take a much more pro-viewpoint-neutrality view, e.g., this statement (originally adopted in 1973) from "Evaluating Library Collections: An Interpretation of the Library Bill of Rights":

The collection-development process is not to be used as a means to remove materials … because the materials may be viewed as controversial or objectionable. Doing so violates the principles of intellectual freedom and is in opposition to the Library Bill of Rights.

Some resources may contain views, opinions, and concepts that were popular or widely held at one time but are now considered outdated, offensive, or harmful. Content creators may also come to be considered offensive or controversial. These resources should be subject to evaluation in accordance with collection-development and collection-maintenance policies. The evaluation criteria and process may vary depending on the type of library. While weeding is essential to the collection-development process, the controversial nature of an item or its creator should not be the sole reason to remove any item from a library's collection. Rather than removing these resources, libraries should consider ways to educate users and create context for how those views, opinions, and concepts have changed over time.

Failure to select resources merely because they may be potentially controversial is censorship, as is withdrawing resources for the same reason.

The American Library Association opposes censorship from any source, including library workers, faculty, administration, trustees, and elected officials. Libraries have a profound responsibility to encourage and support intellectual freedom by making it possible for the user to choose freely from a variety of offerings.

And when I talked to librarians about this earlier this year, many of them also endorsed the viewpoint-neutrality approach. I also asked Deborah Caldwell-Stone, Director of the ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom / Freedom to Read Foundation, and she reaffirmed the viewpoint-neutrality position of the FFRF and ALA amicus brief, as well as of the Evaluating Library Collections statement quoting above. She added, "Citing to examples of weeding resources that are published by others or books that represent the view of a particular author should not be seen as an endorsement of every statement contained in those resources."

But I think it's hard to say, as the ALA Brief does, that there's a "crystal-clear" "[p]rofessional librarian practice" of viewpoint neutrality. Rather, it appears that there is a pretty major split among librarians and among those who discuss library weeding policy: Some view the weeding of certain views as legitimate and indeed recommend such weeding, while others insist on viewpoint-neutral criteria.

Who is right and who is wrong is a complicated question. But the debate shouldn't be seen, I think, as being between some solid professional norm of viewpoint-neutrality and conservative political departures from such a norm.

Comments

[John F. Carr]

In my opinion, viewpoint neutrality in a general purpose library is not possible even as an aspirational goal. There is not enough budget or shelf space to buy and store everything published by a somewhat reputable source. Much of the decision process is very subjective. The courts can decide who gets the last word. Is it a librarian, a director, or an outside supervisory committee? The courts can decide whether biases should be in the open or kept quiet.

[Drewski]

This case is about removals specifically, not additions. While one might want the same principles to apply to either, the practical realities may not make that reasonable and in any case won't be addressed by this decision.

[Malika]

Not being able to have every book doesn't mean they should be weeded via the viewpoint of the book.

[Brett Bellmore]

My own experience with a small town library, donating books, was that they were very determined to avoid viewpoint neutrality even if somebody was willing to pay for the books themselves. You could observe they only had books on one side of an issue, donate a book on the other side, and then find it in the next used book sale priced for pennies on the dollar.

In this case the library had several books espousing the anti-gun position, including Belesilles' Arming America, (Well after it was exposed as a fraud.) and I donated hardcovers by some of the Conspirators here on the topic.

Only, as I said, to find them in the next used book sale.

[Brett Bellmore]

I suppose it's worth mentioning that the ideological bias of the librarians was VERY different from that of the community they served...

[Malika]

Librarians like that certainly don't help their cause much.

[Roger S]

My local public library frequently flies progressive pride flags. So yes, the librarians have an extreme ideological bias.

[Reallynotbob]

Pride flags are no longer "extreme ideological" symbols. Nor are peace signs anymore. Society grows. Deal with it.

[y81]

That is why public libraries, like public universities, should either be defunded or brought under tight control by the people's elected representatives.

[Reallynotbob]

The intelligentsia is usually the first target. It was for Franco and Pol Pot, anyway. Gotta bring those gosh durn academics to heel so they don't keep pumping out those "thoughts" things.

[TwelveInchPianist]

Franco and Pol Pot made sure public education was controlled by the people’s elected representatives?

[Purple Martin]

...I suppose it's worth mentioning that Brett routinely uses Ideological bias defined as anything VERY different from what Brett believes, which, coincidently, is also his definition of the community.

[BadLib]

Brett's example of his local public library keeping Arming America on the shelf while not stocking books with alternative viewpoints seems like a clear example of likely ideological bias no matter which side one is viewing it from.

(I'm assuming, since Brett didn't mention it, that the library hadn't correctly shelved Arming America in the Adult Fiction section - or perhaps in a special Mythology collection.)

[Stephen Lathrop]

Bellmore — You have pushed this nonsense before, and had your misunderstanding explained. For bystanders only—Bellmore is beyond hope—professoinally operated libraries budget not only dollars, but also shelf space. And the latter is in some ways the scarcer commodity.

To accomplish that space budgeting, the professionals in charge of the library—in collaboration with their own superiors, and with any identifiable user community (especially applicable in school libraries)—create written collection development policies.

It is of course unlikely that a rando would-be library donor will arrive with something that fits current needs called for by the pre-existing policy. But librarians have learned from experience that it is bad PR to tell would-be donors to just get lost. So they graciously accept most book donations, and then, just as Bellmore complains, try to sell them off at low prices. What does not sell they trash.

So Bellmore, your paranoia about bias against your donations is almost certainly unfounded. Like almost everyone else, almost all the time, you did not bring in any book that deserved a niche in the shelf-space budget.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

He says he donated books written by the operators of this very blog, but that those books were sold off based apparently on the view that the authors were less relevant to the community than Bellesiles.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Had he donated a copy of Bellesiles, that would almost certainly have been sold too. Someday the Bellesiles they probably bought by mistake before the controversy will also be sold.

More generally, professional librarians, even those privileged to issue a card to Bellmore, are unlikely to empower every rando with a book to donate to set collection development policy.

[Dr. Ed 2]

John -- the people paying for the library -- if they are willing to say "fuck it, we'll have no library AT ALL if you want to play that way."

In a town meeting, move to amend the budget line to $1. Then the librarians no longer get paid...

They have the right to purge the books and you have the right to purge the librarians... And sadly, that's what it has to come to sometimes...

[Krenn]

There probably needs to be some clarification here on how public funding for public libraries works, exactly.

I would certainly accept a very narrow filter based on books that are 'absolutely contrary to the mission of the library or it's sponsoring community'.

For example, books advocating or instructing for the fire-bombing of libraries are right out. Pornography which is likely to turn the entire library into something very close to a sexual harassment environment waiting to happen is out. Books instructing how to run assassination terror campaigns against the sort of small-town local officials who pay for libraries are out. A practical guide to the business realities of prostitution is PROBABLY out, except maybe for certain parts of Nevada....

[Reallynotbob]

I think the problem for some folks is that they see the "mission" of the library as reinforcing their preferred viewpoints. They stick a fig leaf of "democracy" on it by invoking community sensibilities, but no US public library has ever seen its mission as protecting the community from other people's ways of thinking.

[Lee Moore]

Reallynotbob :

no US public library has ever seen its mission as protecting the community from other people’s ways of thinking.

Reallynotreadingtheopeningpost :

Libraries would do well to remember the first ‘M’ in MUSTIE: Misleading. CREW goes even further to define that “material that contains biased, racist, or sexist terminology or views” should be weeded.

[Reallynotbob]

Surely you can distinguish "misleading" from "unpopular." Or maybe that's why we should keep the librarians around.

[Lee Moore]

I confess I can't distinguish :

“material that contains biased, racist, or sexist terminology or views” should be weeded

from

"protecting the community from other people’s ways of thinking."

Perhaps you can explain the difference.

[Reallynotbob]

You got me. The Annals of the KKK probably doesn't make the cut.

I forgot that "other people's [reprehensible] ways of thinking" is what you're protecting. Funny how it used to be the liberals who were the moral relativists. These days, it's Police Lives Matter Too and Equal Rights for Whites... because context is dead.

[Lee Moore]

I understand completely. You're for protecting the community from the risk of reading wrongthink. Very liberal.

[Dr. Ed 2]

” A practical guide to the business realities of prostitution is PROBABLY out,”

In the Adult section?

Depending on how it was written, including both the readability and quality of the text (and they are not the same thing), I could see it being a human interest text for adults.

And, again depending on how it was written, I can see it relevant for someone running a nail salon or auto body shop. Customer relations and employee management are skills independent of the trade. How to deal with an upset customer or an employee you suspect is something less than sober is something that Nail Salon and Auto Body Shop managers have to deal with as well….

[Ed Grinberg]

This is just a variation of “my speech is fine, yours must be banned.” Here, it’s “my censorship is fine, yours is awful!”

I’d treat public libraries exactly how I’d treat public school libraries:
If we’re going to have such establishments (i.e., public libraries and public schools) — and there’s a good (libertarian) argument that we shouldn’t — I’d let the local taxpayers — you know, the people who’re paying for the establishment in question — decide which books to acquire / keep. (Of course, rather than having to run a referendum on each title, the taxpayers can delegate this task to their elected leaders / representatives (or their appointees).)

[Malika]

Under this rule majorities would never have to encounter any speech they disapprove of. I'd say that undercuts the usefulness of a library. Also, why not apply the same logic to a park (why should I have to pay to maintain a place where people might say things I don't like?)?

[Lee Moore]

They wouldn’t have to, but they might choose to.

In any event the point is whether it’s better for the majority to make the choice, or for a minority of one, to make the choice.

Obviously as some have suggested there may be mechanisms for achieving some diversity in the book selection, of which the most practical would seem to be selecting an open minded librarian. But if the librarian has joined la lutta you need a mechanism to swap him or her out.

[bernard11]

it’s better for the majority to make the choice, or for a minority of one, to make the choice.

What choice, Lee?

Whether to include a specific book? Whether to include books that represent certain points of view?

Do you really think that 51% of the community should be able to block books expressing views held by 49%? That seems rdiciulous to me.

[Lee Moore]

I think it makes more sense that 51% can block books expressing views that 49% hold than that 0.01% can block books expressing views that 99.9% (or 60% or 23.7%) hold.

To the extent that blocking books according to their viewpoints is considered necessary and to the extent that these decisions apply to government libraries, I’m struggling to see why the voters and their representatives wouldn’t get to tell the employee what to do, or swap him out if he paddles his own canoe.

Who thinks it odd that Truman got to tell McArthur what to do ?

Which is not to say that I am against public libraries carrying books with a diverse selection of books. But when it comes to weeding by viewpoint I would not be privileging the librarians views over the readers.

[y81]

Under your rule, people will never encounter any speech the local librarian disapproves of.

[Dr. Ed 2]

You've never attended a town meeting, have you?

The prevailing majority is usually a coalition of minorities -- you support me on this and I'll support you on that. I may not like having lesbian books in the library but if you defend the books I like, I'll defend yours.

[Reallynotbob]

The taxpayers DO delegate this job to their elected leaders. They're the ones who hire professional librarians. The function of a library is multifold. They are civic meeting points, they encourage intellectual vigor, they offer exposure to challenging ideas, they offer comforting cultural "classics."

And I would argue that the public library, like the public school and army and air traffic control system, and securities exchange regulators... are core examples of what libertarians support.

The philosophy that "I want to pay for nothing and everyone should handle his own business" has a name: Anarchy. It's a valid philosophy, but not a sensible one.

[ReaderY]

Suppose a library systematically replaces older editions of academic books with newer ones when they come out. Even something as simple-seeming as this will not actually be viewpoint neutral. Newer editions will tend to reflect more current thinking, including current viewpoints. For example, case studies and examples in business texts that were previously non-controversial might become unexceptable and be replaced by ones considered less biased or more diverse.

So even replacing older editions by newer ones, if the older editions are discarded, will tend to result in changes in viewpoijt and will not be viewpoint neutral. I don’t think viewpoint neutrality is possible.

In the 1990s, a group of art professors challenged federal arts grants restrictions against art considered morally offensive. They argued that unlike aesthetic merit, which they claimed to be objective, judging based on morals is subjective and should be prohibited. Nonsense! Aesthetic merit is at least as subjective, and ones view of aesthetic merit is just as subjective as ones view of morals. If government can’t discriminate based on viewpoint, it can’t discriminate based on perceived aesthetic merit either.

In general, government can’t make every possible work available to the public. It has to to choose. Any choice will involve criteria. If those criteria are cannot be publicly acknowledged, debated and discussed, then what happens is that experts or buteaucrats get to make unfettered choices as they wish, free from the sunlight of public debate and discussion. Better explicit, publicly discussed and debated criteria than implicit ones controlled by completely unaccountable power brokers.

[bernard11]

In general, government can’t make every possible work available to the public. It has to to choose.

Yes, but it doesn't have to choose a particular set of viewpoints. There is room to include a range.

Again, there is room for one than book.

[Malika]

"Even something as simple-seeming as this will not actually be viewpoint neutral."

It at least wouldn't be intentionally so.

[bernard11]

I’d let the local taxpayers — you know, the people who’re paying for the establishment in question — decide which books to acquire / keep. (Of course, rather than having to run a referendum on each title, the taxpayers can delegate this task to their elected leaders / representatives (or their appointees).)

And how does this work? Remember, there is room for more than one book in the library. Some taxpayers will favor certain inclusions, others will oppose them. Is that to be decided by majority vote or, worse, elected leaders?

How about trying to reflect the entire community's views, rather than those of a 52% majority? If 40% want a book on the shelves, and 60% don't, you should still have it, because the 60% will still get some of their favorites.

The idea is that, within reason and the bounds of practicality, the library should contain material expressing a range of views, not just what the current majority likes.

[Tallman]

We know how this works... the community passes a law saying that the library should exclude certain categories of works from certain libraries. Alternatively, the elected school board does something similar

Typically, the American Library Ass'n then sues to get the law/resolution overturned on 1st amendment grounds. In most cases, this is because the law/resolution was passed in response to the discovery that the library was stocking material in gross violation of community standards (e.g., explicit sexual materials in elementary schools).

[Malika]

"In most cases, this is because the law/resolution was passed in response to the discovery that the library was stocking material in gross violation of community standards (e.g., explicit sexual materials in elementary schools)."

Is that so? In fact, I think often the books are quite mild but have some viewpoint that makes some people fuss (see Heather Has Two Mommies for an example, a child's book but where the main character happens to have lesbian parents).

[Lee Moore]

“happens” is doing a lot of work here

[Social Justice is neither]

Of course the dishonest marxist lies about what's going on and minimizes what their fellow travellers are doing.

[Reallynotbob]

Oh come on. Growing up, every kid I knew could tell you where to find the most explicit materials in the library: the National Geographics and the encyclopedias in the reference section.

Don't hear a lot of calls to ban either of those. Then or now.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Or Heather has four mommies, the youngest being sixteen -- polygamy. Remember the TV show about that?

I'm really tempted to write a parody of Heather has two mommies and then see where we go...

[Frank Drackman]

Barry Husseins Auto-Erotic Biography has the N-word in it, shouldn’t he only use 1/2 of it?

[jimc5499]

A few years ago I was looking at buying a set of books for my Great Niece. I was thinking about the Nancy Drew or The Boxcar Children set. I was at the bookstore looking through the books when I noticed that the book I was looking at wasn't the same story that I had read as a child even though it was the same title and "author". It turns out that the stories had been redone to convey a more "modern" (Liberal) theme. I didn't buy the books.

[Joe_dallas]

fwiw - my recollection is book series such as nancy drew , the hardy boys, and several others are written by a pool of writers. Its often the case where the original author dies, and the publisher is able to find writers that are able to copy the writing style of the original author.

As Jim notices, its fairly easy to change what has been written in previous versions.

[Reallynotbob]

#HanShotFirst

[ThorsProvoni]

In the past a public school library occasionally removed The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Doesn't United States v. American Library Assn., Inc., 539 U.S. 194, 123 S. Ct. 2297 (2003), tell us that the Internet is a government-designated public forum? Packingham v. North Carolina, 137 S. Ct. 1730, 198 L. Ed. 2d 273 (2017), makes a similar assertion.

[CommentMonkey]

The organization publishes guidance to its members authorizing the "weeding" of materials demonstrating "stereotyping" and gender, racial, cultural, ethnic and family bias, and advising that it is "imperative to view materials through the lens of diversity and inclusion." It then represents to the court that "[w]eeding is not the removal of books that, in the view of government officials, contain 'inappropriate' ideas or viewpoints." It claims the latter point is "crystal clear." This strikes me as mighty close to a misrepresentation to the court. If it isn't a misrepresentation, the ALA's position is completely incoherent.

At the risk of wandering off topic, it seems to me the removal of books containing outdated cultural views or stereotypes that have come to be seen as offensive undermines rather than advances the DEI project. If a reader is to understand the historical influence of racial/ethnic/etc. bias, and how it might pertain to current cultural attitudes, it is not helpful to have all instances of such biases scrubbed from the historical record. I think the ALA's outsized view of its role in fighting bias reflects an unwarranted confidence in its ability to recognize and assess bias and an unwarranted lack of confidence in readers' ability to do the same.

[bernard11]

If a reader is to understand the historical influence of racial/ethnic/etc. bias, and how it might pertain to current cultural attitudes, it is not helpful to have all instances of such biases scrubbed from the historical record.

I agree.

[Please, Daivd, Seek Help]

I am not sure I understand why "removals" are deemed a separate question than not stocking the books to begin with. School libraries have several hundred, perhaps low thousands books. That's not many. Hundreds of thousands of books come out each year. Someone has to make stocking decisions. Those decisions are clearly multifaceted: they're going to involve some degree of popularity, but also breadth and category representation. It seems unavoidable that the optimization problem of stocking involves a degree of viewpoint infiltration, even if not as pointedly as debates about removing stuff. What I don't understand is how a school can be barred from removing a book if they can't be compelled to stock the book to begin with.

(A lot of speech cases have this asymmetry: people who lose their jobs for being assholes have a speech case, while people who don't get the jobs to begin with because they were assholes before being hired don't have as strong a speech case. The controversies around universities disinviting controversial speakers don't consider that the vast majority of speakers don't get invited at all. The controversy around cancel culture often speaks to giving people second chances where most don't get first chances.)

It seems like there is a real means-ends distinction here that doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

[SimonP]

Leave it to Eugene to begin the arduous task of educating himself on how librarians actually curate their collections - long after he began first opining on it - only to cherry-pick for the passages that best support the case for blanket, state-mandated, content-based curation. I'm getting a little sick of watching you talk yourself into a censorious approach to free speech, Eugene.

Careful readers, less motivated by the need to support a pre-ordained conclusion, will recognize that MUSTIE already comprises content- and viewpoint-based considerations for "weeding." So pointing to isolated and emphatically bolded passages mentioning the word "bias" (amazing research, Eugene - you used Ctrl+F on a document!) doesn't really tell us much more about librarians' content- and viewpoint-based "weeding" decisions. It just attempts to make a simplistic and misleading comparison between weeding specific examples for "bias" and a state-level mandate to remove everything relating to DEI topics.

It's not hard to understand why (say) a book on women's issues that relies heavily on stereotypes about women may fail under the general MUSTIE rubric, is it? Or why a book on indigenous folklore that relies on racist stereotypes might also fail? If you have illustrated books in the children's section depicting career paths that kids might grow into, is it better to keep the one which portrays doctors and politicians as men, and nurses and teachers as women - all of them white? Or does it make sense to select for books that are more representative of the children who might be reading them?

"Biased" content is necessarily misleading; content that relies heavily on "stereotypes" is likely to be either misleading or superseded by better books; content that consists of nothing but racist rhetoric is likely to be trivial. And so on.

None of this is actually that controversial. And, importantly, none of it goes to the core dispute. None of the passages about "bias" would require weeding out books whose substantive arguments or claims may be unflattering to one group or another. One would and should not apply them to "weed" out The Bell Curve, for instance, or another book purporting to make an economic case for the traditional family. Contrast this with the fact that the anti-DEI crowd is not at all concerned with anti-white or anti-man "bias" in the way material is conveyed - they are threatened by the ideas themselves. I have whole shelves of books these people would ban from our libraries, despite their having artistic and literary merit, despite their being works by well-known scholars. None of them are "biased" in the way described by the excerpted passages here.

[Lee Moore]

So pointing to isolated and emphatically bolded passages mentioning the word “bias” (amazing research, Eugene – you used Ctrl+F on a document!) doesn’t really tell us much more about librarians’ content- and viewpoint-based “weeding” decisions. It just attempts to make a simplistic and misleading comparison between weeding specific examples for “bias” and a state-level mandate to remove everything relating to DEI topics.

Nope. EV's extracts demonstrate that the weeders in question are exercised by a particular category of bias - ie

Weed books that reflect racial and gender bias.

Note - not "anti-business bias or "pro-green bias" or "pro-vegan bias" or "anti-military bias" und so weiter.

Illustrating that it's an effort to weed out anything that fails to conform to DEI sensibilities. A neat mirror to state level mandates to weed out material that does conform to DEI sensibilities. The question then resolving to - if weeding (or stocking) by reference to opinion on DEI material is constitutionally OK, which state officials should be doing it ? The elected ones, or the hired hands ?

Biased” content is necessarily misleading;

Not at all. America presented from the viewpoint of an immigrant from Cameroon may not be typical of the America experienced by everybody, or even by every Camerronian immigrant. But it's not necessarily misleading about the perspective of that particular immigrant (unless it's a deliberately false representation.)

content that relies heavily on “stereotypes” is likely to be either misleading or superseded by better books

Alas, you are behind on your sociological reading. There's plenty of research on stereotypes and it shows that, generally speaking, stereotypes are (a) accurate and (b) favorable. It's common for lefties to diss stereotyping tout court on the basis of zero knowledge. (That would btw be an accurate but unfavorable sterotype.)

"Generally speaking" is of course the only way to discuss stereotypes, since they are by definition statistical animals.

[SimonP]

Lee, I don't need you to explain to me the argument that the state defendants are making, and that Eugene is implicitly supporting here. I, of course, refer to this argument in my own comment, which evidently you didn't understand:

It just attempts to make a simplistic and misleading comparison between weeding specific examples for “bias” and a state-level mandate to remove everything relating to DEI topics.

I'm not going to waste time re-explaining my point to someone lacking reading comprehension. Moving on.

[Lee Moore]

You don't have a point. You're simply handwaving your way past the obvious fact that the weeders wish to weed :

ALL cases of a particular kind of bias

while the anti-DEI state legislatures wish to weed

ALL cases of a particular kind of bias

Totally different, right ?

[SimonP]

Again, you seem to be having trouble understanding what you're reading.

Call it "hand-waving" if you like. But using words to explain to you why you're not reading the words correctly is not going to get us much of anywhere. Maybe someone else will have the patience of walking you through it.

[Lee Moore]

It's OK, I can read between the lines. You got nothing.

[SimonP]

Everything I could or would say to you, in response, has already been said in my OC, which you haven't properly understood. That's why I've "got nothing" further for you. I imagine what a response looks like, and it's just repeating myself.

You're either an idiot or you're intentionally reading in bad faith.

Moving on.

[Reallynotbob]

"...since they are by definition statistical animals."

That's incorrect. Stereotypes are cognitive constructs that serve a tempting psychological purpose. Their effect is compounded by the minority salience bias: when a member of a rare group does something rare and notable, the observer is naturally likely to draw a stronger association between the rare person and the rare act. That's why it's so easy to convince people that new immigrant groups are bad: the news reports the same number of crimes every week, but when a salient newcomer is reported to be a perpetrator, that double-rare fact (minority plus newsworthy crime) sticks in the mind. We all do it naturally unless we actively remind ourselves of the bias and check the numbers.

C'mon, you think "Haitians eat pets" is a statistical animal?

[Lee Moore]

Stereotypes are cognitive constructs that serve a tempting psychological purpose.

Sure, so long as by "tempting" you mean "valuable." They're just an example of humans' ability to generalize from observation. Consequently they are indeed statistical. If an old person doesn't seem to get what you say, speak a bit louder. Won't work all the time, but it's a useful heuristic.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/insight-therapy/201809/stereotype-accuracy-displeasing-truth

There are plenty of academic papers on the subject, besides magazine articles. You can judge the accuracy of stereotypes by comparing the stereotypical expectation with experience. On the whole it turn out that stereotypes represent the reality usefully well.

As with most generalizations that humans come up with.

[Sarcastr0]

Stereotypes are not a useful heuristic if you're in a liberal society, where people are judged as individuals. It is, in fact, corrosive to that social order.

[Lee Moore]

A rather prim response, I would say.

The stereotype on which I am relying for my heuristic here, is of course that old people are more likely to be hard of hearing than younger people.

When someone appears not to get what you say, there are a host of reasons why this might be, eg :

1. they heard, they understood, they’re not interested and would like you to go away, but can’t be bothered to say so
2. they didn’t hear what you said
3. they heard but did not understand because they have dementia
4. they heard but did not understand because they are very young
5. they heard but dd not understand because they only speak Portuguese, etc

Your response will vary according to your assessment of the reason that you alight on for why they appeared not to get it.

What you almost certainly wouldn’t do would be to recite all the reasons you could think of and ask the person to say which one it was. Here you would be relying on the stereotype that the only sort of person who would do that would be Sheldon Cooper, and you would prefer not to be taken for one such.

But if you were talking to a young child, you might well go for 4, and try again using simpler language.

If you were talking to an old person you might go for 2, using the older people are deafer stereotype. That does not mean that all old people are deaf. It just means that, statistically, the “repeat it a bit louder” option is more likely to work in this case than in other cases.

In short, we all – that includes you – use stereotypes all the time to assess our behavior towards people. That does not mean that we do not treat people as individuals, it means that on the way to finding out what sort of individual they are, we make intiial and rebuttable calculations based on stereotypes – (this applies not only to people, but to animals, and inanimate objects.)

It may be that the old lady dressed as a nun standing on the street corner is a dangerous fugitive, who’s going to whip out a pistol and shoot you; while the big guy with tattoos with a Hells Angels jacket standing at the other corner is a total lamb, eager to escort you to your car and protect you from marauding nuns. But on balance, sane people would aim for the nun’s corner.

Prim sarcastroic folk would claim that there was no way that they could make a decision about which way to go. But performative contradiction would reveal that they are in fact like the rest of us. Just primmer.

[Sarcastr0]

Sure, you can invent scenarios where you need to guess about an individual's characteristics. But stereotyping is not in any way limited by necessity.
It's not even limited by convenience. Like much of our cognitive cruft, it is a vice; we are wired to like it beyond any actual benefit in the modern world. It simplifies, makes things smooth and easy and avoids cognitive load.

It's also immoral. Our history of pre-judging individuals has not been one of great social benefits. Rather the opposite.

[Reallynotbob]

I think I get the syllogism Lee's offering:

Experience informs assumptions about people.
Assumptions are therefore empirical.
Assumptions about people can be useful.
Assumptions about people are therefore not worthless.
Sterotypes are assumptions.
Stereotypes are therefore empirical and not worthless.
Racism, sexism and other bias are stereotypes.
Racism, sexism and other bias are therefore empirical and not worthless.

Here's the pro move: Lee will certainly agree that experience can include second-hand experience related by others. That means stereotypes based on hearsay are also empirical and not worthless.

Ergo the unsubstantiated second-hand statement, "Hatians eat pets," is a valid basis for Lee Moore to believe the stereotype that Hatians do, in fact, eat pets. If one Hatian anywhere at any time ate a pet, then the stereotype is fact because the negation, "Hatians do not eat pets," is disproved. QED.

[Sarcastr0]

He also pulled a 'I can name a scenario where stereotyping would be needed. Therefore it's always fine to stereotype.'

'Would you say the N word if it would save the world' levels of thinkyness.

[Lee Moore]

Yup. Stereotypes are on average useful morphs into “it’s always fine to stereotype” – much like :

“Beware snakes” morphs into “all snakes are deadly dangerous” before our very eyes.

That occasionaly you have something useful to say does not defeat the useful heuristic that if it’s Sarcastro it’s probably trolling.

[Sarcastr0]

You did not establish stereotypes are 'on average useful.' Or anything like that. You made a single hypo.

I've explained my objection, and why it's general to stereotyping and not a specific application.

[Lee Moore]

And yet there's loads of actual research demonstrating that stereotypes are not worthless. On average.

[Sarcastr0]

The on average is a clue, I think. I haven't seen your cites but I'd guess you mean that stereotypes often have some legit statistical correlation associated with them.

That's true, but absolutely the wrong question to be asking. Liberalism requires treating people like real people, not like some statistical likelihood of a person.
When you don't know something about someone, it's bad to just fill in the blanks with what's more likely than not to be true. This is true for policy, and social interactions, and just walking through life.

Life is not a game where you're trying to optimize your assumptions to get a closest to correct complete picture.

[Lee Moore]

Life is not a game where you’re trying to optimize your assumptions to get a closest to correct complete picture.

Actually it is. Perfect knowledge is thin on the ground. About the present, never mind about the future. We proceed on imperfect information. Along the way, if it matters, we try to get more.

Women are much more likely to be infertile at 37 than at 27. Men, not so much.

These are statistical generalities about people, aka stereotypes. It’s not possible to know, individually, when your son and your daughter are 25, whether or when they’re going to become infertile.

And yet, if asked for advice about that family / career trade off thing, these statistics should not be mentioned ?

Because "it's absolutely the wrong question to be asking. Liberalism requires treating people like real people, not like some statistical likelihood of a person. When you don’t know something about someone, it’s bad to just fill in the blanks with what’s more likely than not to be true. This is true for policy, and social interactions, and just walking through life."

Stupid.

[Sarcastr0]

We do proceed with imperfect information. You're the one trying to get closer to perfection; be content with reserving judgement.

Stereotypes don't go as 'much more likely' they go as 'I'm gonna assume X.'
You're already not having the courage of your thesis.

It's fine to talk probabilities; it's not fine to talk 'for sure you are infertile. Now let me tell you what infertile women are like.'

And then you can't even really respond to the 'how to live in our society' bit. Sounds about right.

[Lee Moore]

Nah. I don’t have the courage of YOUR thesis, which is the straw man that stereotypes take the form “All X are Y”.

Whereas in reality they are of the form “Xs are generally Y” or “On average Xs are Y” etc.

Which I explained right from the get go - stereotypes are statistical animals.

[Sarcastr0]

Stereotype: “A stereotype is a widely held, simplified, and often unfair belief about a group of people or things.”

That's not your 'on average' definition.

Your linked article is also not using a probabilistic definition of stereotype, otherwise ‘stereotypes are often accurate’ would not make sense.

You yourself called them a heuristic. in your scenario above you treat them like a rebuttable presumption.

None of those are consistent with your 'generally' or 'on average' formulation.

You’ve shifted your definition to one that is not used by anyone including you yesterday.

[Lee Moore]

Probably best for you to read the article before opining that it does not consider stereotypes from the perspective of probability.

Also probably better to avoid casting stones about leaping to conclusions, if that’s going to be your game plan.

[Lee Moore]

For those, like Sarcastro, who have neither the time nor the inclination to read the article at the link I gave, here are a few extracts chosen to demonstrate that his remark “Your linked article is also not using a probabilistic definition of stereotype, otherwise ‘stereotypes are often accurate’ would not make sense” is, very predictably, complete hooey.

“Our evolutionary ancestors were often called to act fast, on partial information from a small sample, in novel or risky situations. Under those conditions, the ability to form a better-than-chance prediction is an advantage. Our brain constructs general categories from which it derives predictions about category-relevant specific, and novel, situations.

That stereotypes are often accurate should not be surprising to the open and critically minded reader. From an evolutionary perspective, stereotypes had to confer a predictive advantage to be elected into the repertoire, which means that they had to possess a considerable degree of accuracy—not merely a "kernel of truth."

First, we have to agree on what constitutes "accuracy." Clearly, 100 percent accuracy is too high a bar, and, say, 3 percent may be too low; but what about 65 percent?

Another complication with measuring stereotypes is deciding what aspect of the score distribution curve we should focus on. For example, stereotypes are often assessed using a central tendency statistic—averages—rather than other qualities of the distribution curve, like mode (the most common score in a distribution), median (the score that divides the distribution into equal halves), or variability (the average distance from the mean of individual scores).

For example, the stereotype of men being bigger than women is based on the correct perception that the average man is bigger than the average woman.

Interestingly, looking at the variability of groups’ trait distributions creates added wrinkles related to evaluating stereotype accuracy. For one, the distribution curves of different groups for most important traits overlap.

The stereotype that men are more violent than women is accurate and can serve as useful predictive heuristic without implying that the man you’re with is violent, or that most men you’ll meet are.”

[ReaderY]

Question. Suppose a linrary doesn’t offer any books in Swahili, or Ugaritic.

Is it censoring Swahili and Ugaritic?

It certainly is. The question is, can it do so?

Under your theory, why mustn’t a library carry a complete line of books in every language that ever existed? And why shouldn’t every public library that can’t afford to do so, e.g. all except pethaps a few of the largest and richest, be required to close as its only practical way to avoid First Amendment liability?

Libraries don’t tend to offer books in ancient languages etc. because few people are interested in them. And that’s viewpoint discrimination. That’s the library catering to the communities preferences and wishes. It’s censorship. It’s exactly what it is. If you don’t want every library to close, you have to accept that libraries in fact censor.

So I think what it comes down to is you actually think censorship is fine, but what you don’t accept is censorship based on criteria you disagree with. It’s as hypocritical as the art professors who didn’t want government to censor art based on moral values they disagreed with, yet had no problem with government censoring art based on “artistic merit.”

[SimonP]

Under your theory,...

Excuse me, but what "theory"? You're stringing together a strawman and a tu quoque from nothing I've said.

I have offered no "theory" that purports to define legitimate curation of library catalogues, much less one that would require total lack of viewpoint- or content-based review. I have rather noted that (1) applying MUSTIE standards involves viewpoint- and content-based review; (2) that reviewing and considering instances of "bias" and "stereotypes", as described by the OP, fits squarely and uncontroversially within the MUSTIE standards; and (3) that categorical prohibitions of certain topics, like CRT, DEI, LGBT, etc., does not fit within the MUSTIE standards.

Books in languages that no one served by a library can read, or books that no one has any interest in checking out, are plainly "irrelevant" per the MUSTIE standards or can be found "elsewhere." They pose no particularly challenging problem for any "theory" I can be said to have embraced.

Christ, your comment is stupid.

[Reallynotbob]

I have noticed a profound absence of articles about polka on the Volokh Conspiracy and in Reason, generally.

I don't think you'd say EV.com is censoring polka-related speech.

[Stephen Lathrop]

I have noticed a profound absence of articles about polka . . .

Reallynotbob — To correct any omission, I offer this comment:

Polka bands are an acknowledged field mark of Czech-immigrant communities. By noting local polka band prevalence today, it is possible to trace the mid-19th century path of Czech immigration into the United States.

It turns out that immigration occurred mostly prior to use of Ellis Island to process immigrants. Czech immigration instead traced a path northward up the Mississippi Valley—a region along which polka bands are still more likely to be found than elsewhere. After that northward ascent, they blossomed generally across the upper Midwest. Thus, it is reasonable to presume that there is at least a history of polka bands in New Prague, MN, and perhaps a likelihood that some might still be found there today. (A Google search confirms it in seconds.)

Of course, VC commenters generally may judge those remarks pointless. But we are not all alike. They are reflections of interest to me principally because I owe half my genetic complement to that history.

And I hasten to add that my interest isn't that much; no more than the mildest of curiosity—the narrow limit my upbringing approved. My Czech-descended mother indoctrinated her children fiercely, to reject all curiosity about ancestry, and family history. She was not just ancestry blind, and history blind. She was also color blind, religion blind, culture blind, and gender blind. She had made herself that way in reaction—in reaction against what I cannot say for sure, maybe polka.

At one point, during the 70s, it occurred to my mother that she ought to get assertiveness training, which was then in vogue for career women—my mom had by then been a career woman in DC for 30 years, and loved it. So she signed up. After not too many sessions she heard custom-tailored advice from the instructor: "I have not felt need to say this before to anyone, but it could be you would do better if you dialed back the assertiveness."

Predictably, it was advice my mom ignored. Who knows? Perhaps the otherwise mysterious persistence of polka is in some way related to that strain of stubborn vitality.

[ReaderY]

I would argue that it is. Deciding to focus on a topic is functionally indistinguishable from censoring all other topics. Human beings have a limited attention span; publishers and repositories have limited capacities and resources. We can’t do everything. We have to prioritize and say we’ll do some things and not others.

As I see it, there is no functional and there should be no constitutional difference between an initial prioritization and reprioritization – changing ones priorities midstream, which requires moving away from (discarding) some things that used to be priorities.

My general philosophy has emphasized that people and communities learn and change as they go along. Learning and changing means ones priorities will change over time. So as I see it, if you can prioritize initially, you can reprioritize and discard things that no longer meet your new priorities.

I’m not saying I support the particular priorities this library has. I’m just saying that as far as the constitution is concerned, it has the right to reprioritize, including priorities I disagree with. I’ve attempted to be neutral about this. I’ve said the same thing when conservatives have taken over school boards and attempted to remove “Heather Has Two Moms” etc.

In general, success comes from wisdom, wisdom comes from experience, experience comes from failure, and failure often comes from stupidity. So people have to have a right to be stupid and fail if they want to attain wisdom and succeed. If they’re not allowed to be stupid and fail, they’ll never learn. I’ve consistently argued that helicopter courts are as bad for societies’ maturation in democratic self-governance as helicopter parents are for children’s maturation in individual self-governance.

[Brett Bellmore]

"School libraries have several hundred, perhaps low thousands books."

I would have said that was an exaggeration, having had about 5K books in my personal library until my move South forced me to winnow them down to a few hundred that would fit in the remaining space in the moving van. But I found it was actually true at one charter school we considered putting my son in. We had more books at home than they had!

But that was a poorly funded charter school, your average public school will have a substantial library.

[Rossami]

Yeah, I've never seen a school library that small either. My elementary school (the smallest in my experience) had tens of thousands of books. My kids' schools (in a more affluent area) had even bigger libraries.

[SRG2]

I don't see actual literary quality mentioned as a criterion.

[ReaderY]

But selecting books based on “literary quality” is as much viewpoint-based censorship as selecting them based on any other criterion.

[Sarcastr0]

No, it's not!

You can argue viewpoints are smuggled in as one makes the judgement, but quality is not a viewpoint.

[Malika]

It's the 5th Circuit so they'll probably rule libraries are unconstitutional and you can't get abortion pills in the mail.

[Purple Martin]

Ah, but will they ban getting mifepristone at the library!

[Reallynotbob]

They'll rule libraries can only stock books that were offered as part of the historical tradition of lending when the First Amendment was drafted.

So, hymnals and antebellum textbooks.

[Bruce Hayden]

One question that I would ask is at what point does policing content for hate or inaccuracies turn political? In the recent Presidential debate, Trump was repeatedly Fact Checked, only to be proven correct in most instances. Is crime up or down? He said up, the moderator said down, and it turns out the culprit was a new FBI recording system that didn’t include yet crimes from several states. How many books will be banned that explicitly or implicitly claim that there are only two genders? What about Israel’s claim to its territory? Or, almost the opposite logic that Whites stole their land in this country from the Indians? Does this mean banning most US history texts up through much of the 20th Century, that extolled just that? Apocalyptic novels for well over the last 3/4 century have warned against just this – governments controlling thoughts through essentially burning books. Books like Fahrenheit 451 and Nineteen Eighty-Four. Will they be banned, because they were warnings about just this sort of book banning?

[SRG2]

Trump was repeatedly Fact Checked, only to be proven correct in most instances.

Tell me you’re a True Believer without telling me you’re a True Believer

[Kords]

It's hard to fathom any removal criteria that doesn't, at least in part, depend on some sort of viewpoint discrimination. There is little value in keeping outdated science manuals in libraries, but deeming such materials "outdated" or "inaccurate" necessarily requires some sort of opinion-based judgment on the viewpoints being expressed in those scientific works.

I don't know enough about the constitutional issues to be able to have a strong opinion on how these cases should resolve as a matter of law. But as a matter of public policy, it seems reasonable to me that librarians could remove materials they deem racist, sexist, or otherwise offensive if the particular work isn't being circulated very much. Basically, if a library would normally discard a book after it hasn't been checked out for five years, it might make sense to discard a problematic book after it hasn't been checked out in two.

I think that would generally promote having good materials in libraries while also allowing the public to have access to materials the any particular librarian might disagree with, and would also prevent librarians from removing "problematic" books that continue to enjoy some measure of popularity due to their literary significance (e.g., Gone with the Wind, Huckleberry Finn, etc.).

[Brett Bellmore]

" But as a matter of public policy, it seems reasonable to me that librarians could remove materials they deem racist, sexist, or otherwise offensive if the particular work isn’t being circulated very much."

The problem is that librarians are, in terms of their politics, wildly skewed to the left relative to the general population. So their judgment of what's racist, sexist, or otherwise offensive is similarly skewed.

[Kords]

That might be true, but that's why I suggest not allowing viewpoint discrimination to be the sole factor in whether a book is removed. Rather, it could just accelerate the timeline of removal for books that the market has already deemed of lesser value as evidenced by lack of circulation. It's not perfect, but I think its better than any alternatives I've seen.

[y81]

Shouldn't librarians also remove materials that they deem anti-American, undemocratic, anti-free enterprise, pro-Communist, etc.?

[ReaderY]

Plenty of them have. Most cases in the recent past have involved conservative folks removing books for conservative reasons. It’s only recently that we’ve gotten more people on the left removing them for Progressive reasons.

[y81]

There are three rules I could support: (1) no viewpoint discrimination or (2) viewpoint discrimination adjudicated in the democratic political arena or (3) viewpoint discrimination administered by people whom I acknowledge as my moral and intellectual superiors. What I can’t accept is viewpoint discrimination by unelected librarians.

[bernard11]

If start removing materials someone deems "anti-American" you are taking not just the first but many steps toward political censorship and worse.

Terrible idea

[Lee Moore]

Isn’t the point that this is not the first step ?

The first step has already been taken by the wokie librarian jihad against “biased, racist or sexist terminology or views.”

The doom you (rightly) fear is not around the corner, it is already upon us.

[Sarcastr0]

it appears that there is a pretty major split among librarians and among those who discuss library weeding policy: Some view the weeding of certain views as legitimate and indeed recommend such weeding, while others insist on viewpoint-neutral criteria.

We do have competing published standards.
And the one about unacceptable viewpoints is a bad one, IMO. There are other ways to get diversity of viewpoints into your stacks, they just may take longer.

But! Without looping in the actual practitioners it's hard to say how well adopted or widely adopted each is.

[Ben of Houston]

The problem is that certain groups treat every removal of a book for any reason as a ban and scream to high heaven about it.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

If these are the policies libraries are following, then maybe we should reconceptualize Banned Books Week.

That's when libraries highlight and exhibit books which drew complaints from the public, which nowadays includes lots of gay books.

Maybe they can supplement these predictable displays with books which were discarded for bias based on the guidelines of certain librarians.

I wonder which books got discarded under the "antiracist" guidelines, thus making them eligible for Banned Books Week under my proposal?

Kipling? Lovecraft? The problematic Dr. Seuss books? Huckleberry Finn?