I’m making that headline deliberately filled with the pauses that my brain insisted on as I though through this situation. Each one of these concepts was a thing that I had to think through before I could move on further.

And I still can’t fully grasp that this is true.

I can be fairly good at leaping up onto my high horse, and being sure I know what a good, or nice, thing is to do. But here?

Honestly, I can’t even imagine what is wrong with these people.

So, what is the story?

The author Jennine Crucet recently spoke at Georgia Southern University. Before I read this, I had heard of neither. I’m probably not going to forget either of them.

She wrote a book that has been pretty popular for a long time. I’ve even heard of it, though haven’t read it and the author’s name did not stick in my head. (My fault; I read a lot and tend to not retain author names, ever!)

Make Your Home Among Strangers: A Novel, by Jennine Capó Crucet.

“A New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice, winner of the International Latino Book Award for Best Latino-themed Fiction 2016, Longlisted for the 2015 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize.

Named a best book of the season by Cosmopolitan, Vanity Fair, Harper’s Bazaar, Redbook, Bustle, NBC Latino and Men’s Journal

The arresting debut novel from award-winning writer Jennine Capó Crucet

When Lizet – the daughter of Cuban immigrants and the first in her family to graduate from high school-secretly applies and is accepted to an ultra-elite college, her parents are furious at her decision to leave Miami. Just weeks before she’s set to start school, her parents divorce and her father sells her childhood home, leaving Lizet, her mother, and Leidy-Lizet’s older sister, a brand-new single mom-without a steady income and scrambling for a place to live.

Amidst this turmoil, Lizet begins her first semester at Rawlings College, distracted by both the exciting and difficult moments of freshman year. But the privileged world of the campus feels utterly foreign, as does her new awareness of herself as a minority. Struggling both socially and academically, she returns to Miami for a surprise Thanksgiving visit, only to be overshadowed by the arrival of Ariel Hernandez, a young boy whose mother died fleeing with him from Cuba on a raft. The ensuing immigration battle puts Miami in a glaring spotlight, captivating the nation and entangling Lizet’s entire family, especially her mother.

Pulled between life at college and the needs of those she loves, Lizet is faced with difficult decisions that will change her life forever. Urgent and mordantly funny, Make Your Home Among Strangers tells the moving story of a young woman torn between generational, cultural, and political forces; it’s the new story of what it means to be American today.”

This story is based on the author’s real life. She is a Cuban-American woman, who grew up in Miami. Going to college in far-away New York at Cornell University was a huge cultural change. That was the basis for her novel.

Quick note: she then went to the Univ of Minnesota to get her MFA! So yay! We’re also claiming her as a Minnesota author!

Her book, and her talk at Georgia Southern University are, at least partially, about white privilege.

For some reason, the students seemed to radically not understand what that means. (That is literally the kindest interpretation I can come up with for their behavior.)

She was repeatedly attacked during the presentation. You can read all about it in assorted articles. (Including one here. And here. (There are lots and lots for you to browse.) I’m not copying in any text, because I can’t bear to reproduce this.

But the gist seemed to be an incredibly fundamental misunderstanding about the definition of “white privilege.” Again, this is the kindest way I can interpret it. “Ignorant racism” would certainly seem to be another accurate description.

After the talk, at least one group of students took copies of the book outside (at least they had that much sense), and set them on fire.

I’m just going to say that again, so it really sinks in.

STUDENTS TOOK COPIES OF A BOOK AND BURNED IT BECAUSE THEY DIDN’T LIKE THE CONTENT.

(Oh, if you only could see how many paragraphs of fury and inappropriate language I’ve been deleting so far here!)

I am truly sick to my stomach with this.

They were upset because she was discussing white privilege. Which is, again, the focus of the book about her life as she experienced issues with white privilege. These students, in what can most charitably be described as a willful misunderstanding of the term, decided they were being personally offended. Their feeling were hurt. Or something. Honestly, I’m old and no longer care about trying to understand complete idiocy.

And so they yelled at her. They said they were being discriminated against. AND THEY BURNED COPIES OF THIS BOOK!!!

I have no words.

But I’ve heard this before. “Oh, I don’t have white privilege; I grew up poor!” or similar foolishness.

Again: TRYING to give it the nicest spin. Really, at this point in history, not understanding the concept of white privilege is a willful thing. Is it an expression of stupidity or of hatefulness? Not sure, and it probably varies with the speaker. And, it IS both of those things, so I don’t feel the need to examine these motivations more closely.

So just a quick definition of white privilege. (QUICK! Explore more! There is much more!!) I got this from Wikipedia (so you know there are more and better resources to keep learning!) “White privilege is the societal privilege that benefits white people over non-white people, particularly if they are otherwise under the same social, political, or economic circumstances.”

Again, that’s the basic gist. It doesn’t mean white people are rich, or didn’t have to work hard, or anything else. It doesn’t mean white people are inherently bad, or deliberately did anything wrong. It means that being white gives us advantages we didn’t earn. (Speaking as a white person.)

• If we buy makeup, most if it was designed for our skin tones.
• If we buy hair products, most of them are designed for us.
• If we apply for a job we probably never took a moment to wonder whether your name would make people disregard your skills
• If we have sons, we probably have not had to talk with them about how to behave when (not if) they are treated badly by police officers, teachers, and other authority figures based on their ethnicity, skin color, accent, or other aspects of themselves

Obviously, it goes on. Obviously, we are barely even talking about the breadth here.

But….this is obvious, right?

There was a time we probably could have not understood this privilege. But that time is over.

This should not be unclear.

Speaking for myself, I’ve been fortunate enough to have a whole raft of privileges in life, some that I earned and some that I didn’t. I try to be conscious of that all the time. I’m white, I’m well educated, I’m tall – all of these give me unearned advantages in life. I’ve worked hard, but I’ve been really lucky too. “Really lucky” is such a handy thing in making life better. So I try to do what I think we all should be doing, and what I know many others are doing: spread that luck and that privilege around as far as I can to as many people as I can.

And really, that’s not a “nice” thing – it’s the only rational response. Even Spiderman knew this: With great power comes great responsibility. If you get a bunch of good stuff, especially unearned stuff, you need to spread it around.

I’m establishing a new standard for the world, and I’m calling it “Library Nice.”

In libraries, we are pretty professionally nice people! We are a customer service profession! We exist only to help people! We’re pretty nice, darn it!

And in my own “ruler of the world” status (note: not the ruler of the world. We should all hope that continues – I’d be terrible at it!), I’ve decided the world should be classified as “Library Nice” or not.

Library Nice means things like cooperating, sharing things, listening to people, being respectful, not shaming your grandmother (or some archetype of a grandmother) with bad behavior. Decency.

“Not” encompasses things like lying. Also: being rude, being disrespectful, destroying the environment, taking away people’s civil rights, and eating other people’s food out of the refrigerator . This is not an exhaustive list. Yes: it includes people who burn books. It can be a pretty wide range. And lying.

I’ll put it out there now, to establish my known biases, that I have a special hatred in my heart for lying liars who lie. If we can’t rely on the truth, and on people to tell the truth, everything else is pointless. (Footnote: saying “you look great it that!” or similar possible untruth doesn’t count. I’d argue that fits better into the category of Library Nice.) I’m done with liars. Take note, World!

So, there we go. I’ve had the chance to rant about something that I found personally and professionally truly sickening. And I’ve set up the idea of Library Nice.

The world should be Library Nice. If you want to go out there this week and work on making your area of the world a little more Library Nice, I support you in that!!!

Go. Be Library Nice. Remember your privileges (we all have them), and spread them around to everyone else whenever you can.

It doesn’t fix everything. It doesn’t even fix most things. But the more people who can make their lives Library Nice, the better things will be for us all.

#LibraryNice

(And wow! If you made it all the way here, thank you for your patience! And if you just skipped to here – also fine; go be Library Nice anyway!)