http://twitchy.com/sarahd-313035/2021/12/06/nyt-runs-earnest-essay-by-woman-who-was-literally-shook-when-white-couple-violated-her-black-space-by-looking-at-a-book-in-her-homemade-library/
Journalist Erin Aubry Kaplan thought it might be cool to build her own little lending library outside her house.
Little did she know what horrors would come of it:
About a year ago, I decided to build a library on my front lawn. By library, I mean one of those little free-standing library boxes that dot lawns in bedroom communities around the country — charming, birdhouse-like structures filled with books that invite neighbors and passers-by to take a book, or donate a book, or both. ...
Then one morning, glancing out my front window, I saw a young white couple stopped at the library. Instantly, I was flooded with emotions — astonishment, and then resentment, and then astonishment at my resentment. It all converged into a silent scream in my head of, Get off my lawn!
The moment jolted me into realizing some things I’m not especially proud of. I had set out this library for all who lived here, and even for those who didn’t, in theory. I would not want to restrict anyone from looking at it or taking books, based on race or anything else. But while I had seen white newcomers to the neighborhood here and there, the truth was, I hadn’t set it out to appeal to white residents. ...
What I resented was not this specific couple. It was their whiteness, and my feelings of helplessness at not knowing how to maintain the integrity of a Black space that I had created. I was seeing up close how fragile that space can be, how its meaning can be changed in my mind, even by people who have no conscious intention to change it. That library was on my lawn, but for that moment it became theirs. I built it and drove it into the ground because I love books and always have. But I suddenly felt that I could not own even this, something that was clearly and intimately mine.
Talk about a traumatic experience. Our hearts go out to Erin. Poor thing.
New York Times Opinion ~ “My little library, affirming as it is, is also an illusion; it can’t save our neighborhood,” writes @aubry_erin. “Still, in 2021, it has become increasingly important to maintain and grow Black space, on its own terms.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/05/opinion/gentrification-los-angeles-little-library.html?smtyp=cur&;smid=tw-nytopinion
Those damn white people and their — *checks notes* — interest in books.
Seth Barron ~ A woman puts a box of books on her lawn for people to borrow and gets angry when she sees a white couple browsing—their proprietary glance is “untenable, even immoral.”
More hysteria from @nytimes.
KC Johnson ~ Imagine the editorial process associated with the decision to run this piece.
Yeah, what pinhead thought this would be a good piece to run, eh?
Seth Barron ~ I think they probably waved it through when they heard the pitch.
Yeah, the pitch that fit their racist narrative - black woman "victimized" by whites.
Oh, we have no doubt that whoever greenlit this thing thought it was gold.
Glenn Greenwald ~ This is one of the most hilarious op-eds I've ever read. If you wanted to satirize this mentality, you could not do better.
That it made it to the NYT op-ed page is spectacular. As @kcjohnson9 said: "Imagine the editorial process" that led to "the decision to run this piece."
But Erin Aubry Kaplan and the New York Times absolutely deserve all the mockery and derision that have come their way.
SoyRogelio ~ Someone please switch the words white and black and republish the article, see how it goes.
Yeah, NY Times ... make it black folks who stop by a white woman's community library and then let us know if you would publish this piece, eh?
Mademoiselle Hollandis ~ Guess she could have solved all that by hanging a sign: NO WHITES ALLOWED.
THERE. IT. IS.
EF ~ This is illness.
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