Libraries suffer attacks from conservatives
MOBILE, ALA. >> In a miserably polarized America, where politics intrudes on decisions from which beer to drink to which musical artists to listen to, libraries had, for a time, remained safe community spaces. They were quiet oases away from the frenzy, calm gathering places for young and old alike.
Not anymore. As Trumpists have laid siege to educational institutions — in their eyes, educational institutions had made the mistake of, well, educating — libraries, too, have come under attack. This reactionary campaign extends beyond banning certain books. Right-wingers are threatening to withdraw funds from public libraries if their directors don't adhere to a certain narrow set of rules and restrictions.
Last October, that campaign engulfed my home state of Alabama, where Gov. Kay Ivey laid out a set of demands that would determine whether local libraries received state funds. That's a depressing development since Alabama routinely ranks near the bottom in educational attainment. Do we really want to threaten libraries with less money?
Because of Ivey's threats, which included innuendo about the American Library Association, the Alabama Public Library Service voted in January not to renew its membership in the ALA. That trend has careened through several states run by Trumpist factions, including Georgia, Florida, Texas and Wyoming, where conservatives pressured libraries to cut their ties with the professional organization.
The ALA is an esteemed group not unlike the American Medical Association or the American Bar Association, but it became a target for Trumpists last year after it elected a president, Emily Drabinski, who described herself as a “Marxist lesbian” in a now-deleted post on X. Since Drabinski cannot force anyone to read a book about either Marxists or lesbians, that excuse is hardly a fig leaf. Reactionaries resent the ALA because it has fought their efforts to ban books.
Unfortunately, though, the right-wingers are winning in many states. Here, the notorious Moms for Liberty have been joined by a group called Clean Up Alabama, which has mostly targeted books with LGBTQ+ content.
Last August, though, Frye Gaillard and I found our collection of essays, “The Southernization of America: A Story of Democracy in the Balance,” challenged by a “concerned citizen” in Foley, Alabama, who wrote to several local officials, including the library director there. The writer claimed that our book has an “unquestionable far-left bias” and “Black nationalist ideology.” According to the letter, our book assaults “traditional Southern culture, Christianity, white populations in the South and anything Republican.”
For what it's worth, Gaillard, my co-author and friend, is white, and we are both Southerners, born and bred. I self-identify as a church-going Christian, though our book points out the incongruity of so much Christian iconography being displayed among the violent rioters assaulting the capital on Jan. 6, 2021.
So far, “Southernization” has not actually been banned, but that might still happen. The Alabama legislature seemed to be suffering from a fear of missing out on the MAGA bandwagon, so it caught up to its reactionary allies recently with a bill imposing restrictions on classroom discussion of eight “divisive concepts,” most of which, of course, have to do with race and personal identity.
As for Alabama's libraries, I shudder to think of the pressures they face. There have never been any attempts at the “intimidation” or “coercion” that reactionaries claim they are shutting down.
In fact, they want to stamp out the vital and vigorous cultural conversations that fuel grassroots democracy. With libraries under assault, fascism is gaining ground.