Dear Prudence,
I am a librarian in a small, mostly white and middle/lower middle-class town. I am also white. Presumably because of this, and because I have a front-facing job where I’m generally friendly with everyone who comes in, several patrons have assumed it’s alright to say bigoted things in conversation with me. It’s mostly run-of-the-mill racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, etc.
To give an example, the mother of a tween was talking to me about non-Twilight vampire books that might be appropriate for her child, and when the topic of Life and Death: Twilight Reimagined (Stephanie Meyer’s gender-swapped Twilight cash grab) came up, out of nowhere this woman told me how she wouldn’t like it or let her child read it because it would be “unnatural” for the gender roles to be switched. Ma’am, these are vampires! She then proceeded to take my confused silence as permission to start complaining about the reboot of The Wonder Years and how she thought Black people shouldn’t “take over our TV shows.”
The library’s policy is that we are allowed to engage in political discussions if the patrons bring up political topics first, but I’m struggling with how to convey a firm message of, “I am not the sympathetic audience you’re looking for!” I know that I won’t be able to influence every library patron into rethinking their stances on certain issues, but how can I shut down these conversations in a way that makes it clear I do not agree and that we don’t tolerate discrimination in the library?
—Lost Librarian