Saturday, September 12, 2009

Always controversy

Librarians sometimes feel it's impossible to do everything right. SLJ's report on the recent controversy in Brooklyn, NY, over a Tintin book is a case in point. The 1930s versions of many books were undoubtedly racist. Most of them have disappeared from library shelves, but Tintin is a classic, and Tintin au Congo has been a part of library collections, but has now been moved to a limited-access section of the collection. Showing Africans as childlike and dependent on white people to help them is undoubtedly unrealistic. Most of us do not want our children to see images or read stories that show such dated and unjust portrayals of Africans--or anyone else. But the New York Civil Liberty group objects to removing the book from open shelves because that is censorship. Who is right? When a book is in a restricted collection, it is undoubtedly kept from most children. Should a book like this be available only to adults who can understand the historical context? Many of us would agree that it should be, but that puts us on the side of censors and that's an unpleasant place to have to stand. But we can't have it both ways. Glib anti-censorship statements often don't cover all the situations that arise in real life libraries.

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