My friend recently became a librarian at a public library downtown in a large city. She grew up very privileged, very wealthy, is still very much supported by her wealthy family, etc. and always went to private schools where 99% of the population was white and Christian. I have always had problems with her saying very ignorant things, but I’ve blamed it on her being truly tone deaf and clueless about the real world. She told me once I grew up in the “ghetto” and I had to explain to her why that was racist and problematic and she was genuinely shocked.

Anyway, so this library gets a lot of traffic from underprivileged people and she’s having trouble with them. She says they stink, they’re loud, rude, etc. A situation arose the other day and now she may be fired for it. A black man came in and asked for help with his son’s homework. He was from some part of Africa and his English was choppy. He told her he did not understand the assignment and can she help him. She told me this aggravated her because he shouldn’t be doing his child’s homework for him and she didn’t want to help him. She said she explained the instructions to him and then told him that’s all she will do for him. But this man kept asking her to explain further and that he didn’t understand. She got frustrated and told him to leave and that he was being disruptful. He said he was just trying to help explain the assignment to his son in their native language. But she said this wasn’t her job and again told him to leave.

He didn’t leave though and instead went to go find someone else. He happened upon her boss and explained the situation. Her boss was very enraged that my friend did not assist this man properly and explained to her that it IS her job to help with things like that, because a library is an accessibility to information regardless of what the information is. Her job is on the line because her boss (who is also black) seems to think this had something to do with race, even though my friend didn’t say anything about his race. However, knowing her, I have the same suspicion as her boss and am wondering if she didn’t want to help him because of his race/inability to speak fluent English. There is a meeting today about whether she’ll be able to keep her job.

What do you think?