Analysis Of Exclusion Rules By Laurel Holliday

The author Laurel Holliday in Seattle Public Library’s Exclusion Rules Disproportionately Push out People of Color argues that SPL discriminates against non-whites. To make her point, she has selectively used the term “excluded” without throwing light on our safety versus access issue in an appropriate manner. As per Holliday, “break one, and you can be “excluded” (SPL’s chosen term) from all of its 27 branches for up to two years”, but she fails to explain that we resort to protecting the rights and safety of Library patrons, volunteers, staff, and property with our stringent Rules of Conduct.
Exclusion of any patron is enforced in a fair and reasonable manner and not “without the benefit of counsel, the ability to present witnesses or even being able to plead your case in …show more content…
But, what she certainly overlooked is to make a genuine comparison. She herself admitted that King County Library System’s annual door count is more than the SPL’s. The metrics for a real comparison should be based on the demographics of a region, annual influx, rules and regulations of the library systems that are comparable to that of SPL. The author is literally trying to create an apples-to-apples comparison, but in reality it is more of apples-to-oranges. The author has done SPL comparison with other big systems like that of King County, Palm Beach County, Miami-Dade Public Library Systems for the reasons best known to her.
Demography
When Laurel made a comparison of our “discriminatory exclusion” with the afore-mentioned big public library systems, she hasn’t stated the demography of those cities. Nevertheless, we will highlight that to our readers that the population of white is lowest in our city when compared to the ones she’s mentioned. Take a look at the statistics below – Seattle Demographics in