A new study by Neal McCluskey at the Cato Institute’s Center for Educational Freedom attempts to quantify this bias in the selection process by analyzing the availability of specific titles that put forward contrasting views on race and American society. A search of library collections in 200 randomly selected public school districts found that nearly half (44 percent) of students have access to progressive books by Ibram X. Kendi and Ta-Nehisi Coates, each of which argues America is plagued by systemic racism. In contrast, less than 1 percent of students had access to books by John McWhorter, Helen Pluckrose, and James Lindsay that offer counterarguments to that progressive perspective.
The specific books that represented the “progressive” view on race relations in this search were the Stamped series by Kendi, which consists of three titles on antiracism geared toward different age groups, and Between the World and Me by author Ta‐Nehisi Coates, who styled the book as a letter to his son about navigating systemic racism in America.
The books that represented the alternative “non-progressive” view on race were Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America by Columbia University professor John McWhorter, Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity―and Why This Harms Everybody by Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay.
Of 348 schools with searchable libraries, 44 percent had access to one of the progressive books on race, the most common of which was Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You, a book aimed at readers ages 12 and up that “shines a light on the many insidious forms of racist ideas” and provides actionable ways for people to “stamp out racist thoughts in their daily lives.”
Two of the books in this study’s sample that offer a counterargument to the narrative of systemic racism, Woke Racism and Cynical Theories, were found in just one school library each.
Manley, who worked as a librarian in the 1970s and 80s before moving on to other roles in city government, noted that bias in collections hasn’t always been this pronounced, with viewpoint diversity held as a chief value during less polarized times.
“The fundamental core value of the library profession, whether it’s school, library, academic, public, or special libraries, is the concept of intellectual freedom… In other words, you basically had to go to bat to make sure that all viewpoints were presented in your library,” Manley said, arguing that the profession stopped holding ideological diversity as a guiding value about 10 years ago and is now more prone to letting personal bias infect collections.
Biased collections in public school libraries threaten to trap students in government-imposed echo chambers, robbing young people of the ability to reason through their own developing viewpoints while preventing parents from moving kids out of ineffectual schools.
“We cannot even know what our own view is, unless and until we have put it in dialogue and competition,” said Edward Remus, a social sciences librarian at Northeastern Illinois University. “Libraries have a duty to the future. Can we facilitate public reasoning? Can we facilitate dialogue, discussion and debate that will allow for the clarification of viewpoints and for people to even realize what their own views are?”
The American Library Association’s latest guidance says that librarians should have “final responsibility for the selection decisions,” though it also notes that the “Board of Education or governing authority is legally responsible for the resources used in a school.”
Remus, whose academic work is focused on training other librarians to organize events about controversial issues with speakers across the political spectrum, believes librarians are uniquely equipped to curate viewpoint diversity amid our increasingly polarized politics.
“Identifying controversial issues and identifying, as a start, some widely held differing viewpoints on the issues, and bringing them together for discussions, conversation, clarification, is an immensely responsible thing to be doing,” Remus said.
But bias might be inescapable for even the most well-intentioned librarians, and the embrace of neutrality is itself a value judgment. There is also a longstanding pedagogical debate about whether the point of education is for adults to inculcate in children what they believe is good and right, or for young people to develop their own perspectives free of subjective guidance.
The root cause of the uproar over book “bans” might therefore lie in our top-down approach to education, which attaches tax dollars to school districts instead of students, arbitrarily forcing Americans – along with their rich diversity of culture, religions, and ideologies – into a single one-size-fits-all system.
So what is the cure to seemingly incessant conflicts over the placement or removal of books from public school libraries? School choice might well be the answer.
“In a diverse society, the only way to avoid the danger of government-imposed bias, and to foster harmony in education, is school choice,” McCluskey said. “Funding must follow children to schools, and libraries that serve them, consistent with families’ diverse values. This is also how true pluralism is achieved: numerous authentic communities, peacefully coexisting.”
