Qualified optimism for the future

While I could wish the world responded and adapted faster to leaving behind prejudice and othering, I remain hopeful. Sociology and Neuro-Science are documenting the historical record of evolution and adaptation, culturally or biologically. The relationship is quickening, if at a snail’s pace.

I am saddened to realize how long discussions about privilege and othering have been recorded (centuries). I am aware of the place libraries can play in privileging certain voices across time. Thus, the growth of critical librarianship in my MLIS program gives me hope. I have to remind myself my school is new and edgy. People trained elsewhere or earlier aren’t stubbornly ignoring critical librarianship. Rather, like my own studies in economics, a few months makes so much difference in the curriculum and theories.

One Book, One Community programs are new and privileged. Either requiring sponsorship of a living author (and publishers) or patience as limited copies circulate through a community over a year or two. Every time it happens, a community-reads program gains credibility and becomes part of “culture.”

Patience is not the virtue to aspire to. Agitation, if you have the capacity, to keep relevance alive, is virtuous, if applied justly. Reading “Just Mercy” also reminds me how the definition of justice and mercy need to be challenged and defended, too.