Carnegie Carnegie: In calm and in crisis, the library is here to help

For weeks now, hundreds of thousands of Americans have taken to the streets to denounce the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis and the centuries of racism that still haunt our country. Others are struggling to understand what’s going on.

For white people who are feeling confused by this movement, unsure why there is a need to say that Black Lives Matter — I understand. Comprehending racism as a white person in America can be a lifelong journey. It’s a path I’m traveling myself.

I grew up in rural southcentral Pennsylvania, surrounded by tractors and dairy farms. Almost everyone I knew was white: my neighbors, my friends, my classmates and teachers at school. Racial injustice was largely a theoretical matter – I knew that “racism is bad,” but without any real exposure to diversity, my understanding of racism hardly extended past the Civil War and Martin Luther King, Jr.

But this doesn’t mean that race didn’t shape me. Over the years, it’s become clear to me that my upbringing left me with an enormous blind spot when it comes to race – a gap in understanding and empathy that too many other well-meaning white people share without realizing it.

It was my privilege to grow up largely oblivious to the struggles and prejudice that people of color still face today - at the hands of racist individuals, yes, but also at a systemic level. The more I learn, the more impossible it is to ignore the insidious fingers of racism threading through nearly every element of our society, from educational achievement gaps to sentencing disparities to syrup logos.

I became a librarian because I believe learning is a lifelong process. One great gift of our time on Earth is the vast breadth of knowledge and experience for us to explore. Reading offers us the incredible ability to see through another human’s eyes and understand their experiences. At their best, books carry us beyond our own limited perspectives to show us a wider and more diverse world than we could have imagined.

This is a moment when many white people are grappling with their understanding of race in America. Examining your unconscious biases can be painful, but it’s hard for me to imagine a worthier lifelong learning project than working to better understand our neighbors, to help form a more cohesive community. Wherever you are on this journey, the library is here for you with access to nearly unlimited materials to enhance your understanding.

Public librarians have long prided ourselves on the nobility of our mission. Our community’s namesake, Andrew Carnegie, proclaimed, “There is not such a cradle of democracy upon the earth as the Free Public Library, this republic of letters, where neither rank, office, nor wealth receives the slightest consideration.” This is indeed what we aspire to – but I know firsthand how easy it can be to overlook your blind spots.

I am still new to the Andrew Carnegie Free Library & Music Hall, and I have so much to learn from and about our patrons. In the coming months, I hope to learn from the marginalized members of our community about how our library can do better by them. As we reopen our doors to the public, I am thinking of Andrew Carnegie’s words, and working to draw closer to the lovely ideal that he expressed so many years ago.

Walker L. Evans is the Andrew Carnegie Free Library & Music Hall library director.