In early 2017, a call for chapter proposals began circulating on library Listservs for a forthcoming book titled Tolerance: Social Justice and Activism in Libraries, Moving Beyond Diversity to Action. The aim of the book is to discuss how librarians can take diversity, social justice, and social change to the next level and promote tolerance in libraries. As a librarian, scholar, and educator who specializes in issues of diversity and social justice, and how to integrate them into LIS pedagogy and education, I was instantly taken aback by the use of the word tolerance. Tolerance and diversity are not words I regularly put together; in fact, I view them in opposition to each other.

Merriam-Webster's Dictionary defines tolerance as:

1. capacity to endure pain or hardship;
2. sympathy or indulgence for beliefs or practices differing from or conflicting with one's own;
3. the allowable deviation from a standard;
   1. the capacity of the body to endure or become less responsive to a substance (such as a drug) or a physiological insult especially with repeated use or exposure;
   2. relative capacity of an organism to grow or thrive when subjected to an unfavorable environmental factor.

How can the concepts of diversity and social justice be equated with the above definitions? These definitions consider diversity to be a hardship; something unpalatable that should be indulged; something that deviates from the norm; something foreign that becomes easier to take after multiple exposures; or something that thrives in hostile environments. This is the exact opposite of how we should be thinking and talking about diversity in LIS. As a popular adage advises us and our patrons, “Go where you are celebrated, not where you are tolerated.”

Cultural awareness

Perhaps the call for chapters was instead using the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Declaration of Principles on Tolerance’s definition: “Tolerance is respect, acceptance and appreciation of the rich diversity of our world’s cultures, our forms of expression and ways of being human.” I appreciate this definition and am actually a fan of the Teaching Tolerance organization, but I still maintain that tolerance is not the baseline by which we should be expecting the profession to interact with diverse communities. This interpretation of the word tolerance is, in effect, cultural awareness. Better but still not good enough. Why not use the concept of cultural competence instead?

CALLING FOR COMPETENCE

At the 2017 Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) conference, I delivered a talk entitled, “How Would You Like To Be Remembered? Expanding Your Pedagogy and Professional Practice,” in which I discussed cultural competence and how I use it to prepare aspiring library professionals to enter the workforce. Cultural competence is about knowing your communities in a personal and comprehensive way. Cultural competence brings us to action. It means that we have gone beyond awareness and are at the point at which we can actively work to improve our environment based on new knowledge and relationships with those who are different from us. Cultural competence is an ongoing and dynamic process that asks us not only to acknowledge the cultures of those different from us but to celebrate them. As author, activist, and librarian Audre Lorde said in her book Sister Outsider, “It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences.”

Inclusion matters

Library professionals work with all kinds of diverse communities, and they need to reflect and consider critically what their service looks like. Are they prepared and able to work with people who don’t look like them, or who come from different backgrounds? Librarianship may be notoriously white and female, but our communities are not. The profession should be willing and able to celebrate diverse communities; its members should not be reluctant, resentful, or unprepared because they are being forced to “tolerate” those coming through the doors.

The aforementioned call for chapters was mentioned frequently at the recent ACRL conference, and it was emphasized that this misguided call for tolerance impacts the library workforce as much as the diverse communities being served. Librarians from underrepresented or otherwise marginalized groups often find themselves being tolerated at their libraries and in the field as a whole. This should not be, and is among the reasons the profession has significant retention issues in spite of successful diversity recruitment programs. An environment that is not welcoming and/or inclusive of diverse librarians may unsurprisingly have difficulty working with and celebrating diverse populations. The profession needs to do better, and we can start by rejecting the low bar of tolerance. We’re better than that, and our communities deserve better, too.

Nicole A. Cooke is an Assistant Professor, School of Information Sciences, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her research and teaching interests include human information behavior, critical cultural information studies, and diversity and social justice in librarianship. She is a 2007 LJ Mover & Shaker, the 2016 recipient of the American Library Association’s (ALA) Equality Award, and the 2017 recipient of the Achievement in Library Diversity Research Award, presented by ALA’s Office for Diversity, Literacy & Outreach. Her latest work is Information Services to Diverse Populations (Libraries Unlimited, 2016)