eleventh stack:

Editor’s note: our colleague at CLPTeensburgh, Joseph, has given us permission to reblog his essay on reading fiction in the wake of Steubenville. We hope you find it as meaningful as we did, and that you will add CLPTeensburgh to your list of must-read book/library blogs.

Originally posted on CLPTeensburgh: Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh Teen Services:

It’s hard to read the continuing coverage of the Steubenville sexual assaults without seeing a gross empathy problem plaguing our culture. How else could these sorts of things happen? How could two teens feel that what they did was okay? How could their peers sit idly by as it happened or casually retweet the videos in its wake? Why would adults choose to enable such behavior through attempts to cover-up the attack?

It’s left me thinking hard about my role as a librarian–what I can do ensure that the young people who I am committed to serve can live in a world that allows them to build friendships and relationships with each other and their community at large based on love, trust, and mutual respect.

In turn, I’ve become even more concerned about the many dehumanizing words and messages that powerful people send through the media. These people hope to take away your ability to form the person you want to be, and the beliefs you choose to grow up with. They wish to take away your empathy–your ability to imagine the thoughts, feelings, and struggles of people in the world–and to work toward the sort of world you may wish along with it. And in doing so, they give you an easy out to dismiss these things, to do nothing as people benefit from the suffering of others–or perhaps give you enough of a benefit that you can rationalize such struggles away.

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