This etherpad is for the ALAAC2018 Sunday 10:30am–11:30am session:
Whiteness in LIS: Tracing its Impact, Mapping Resistance

Gina Schlesselman-Tarango, introductions #

Instructional Services and Initiatives Librarian at California State University, San Bernardino (Introducing the anthology Topographies of Whiteness: Mapping Whiteness in Library and Information Science, plus each panelist)
http://libraryjuicepress.com/whiteness.php

Dr. Shaundra Walker #

Associate Director for Instruction and Research Services
Georgia College

  • A Revisionist History of Andrew Carnegie’s Land Grants to Black Colleges

  • Anthology chapter came about as she was working on her dissertation,
    1994 chapter on Carnegie already existed, but did not really represent library workers as agents themselves, so wanted to revisit material

  • Philanthropy, libraries, and African Americans - philanthropy

  • Frame: Critical Race Theory, which emerged in 1970s out of critical legal studies
  • dominant group only permits racial progress when such progress also results in benefits for the dominant group (Delgado quote I think)

  • Whiteness as Property, whiteness as an aspect of identity and a property interest, something both experiences and deployed as a resource (Cheryl Harris)

  • Andrew Carnegie funded 2509 public, 108 academic libraries

  • quote from Carnegie describing the “Negro” as an economic asset

  • HBCUs, accredited higher ed founded prior to Civil Rights Act of 1964 with express purpose of educating African Americans

  • “fiscal disinterest” in Black colleges that did not embrace an industrial educational curriculum; A few schools that could develop teachers, ministers, and doctors were necessary, but industrial-vocational education was the preferred path for the masses of African Americans (from the funders’ point of view, presumably? -Ryan)

  • connected projects of establishing colleges to Booker T. Washington, modeled other applications on how he appealed & also got recommendations from him employed “industrial blackface”

  • tapped into vocational results; leveraging whiteness to increase likeliness of their application to Carnegie, whiteness almost takes on property interest in this respect

  • long term impact on HBCU libraries: assessments of libraries generally rated them poorly
  • philanthropy did not address root causes of any deficiencies for campuses & students
  • libraries & institutions left at the whim of philanthropists’ shifting interests

Maura Seale #

History Librarian University of Michigan @mauraseale

  • first, reading Hathcock & Sendala’s section since they couldn’t be here
  • chapter on whiteness at the reference desk; fighting microaggressions & other racist actions cannot fall to POC alone

  • bystander intervention necessary; what was important from anecdote was that patron learned that author was able to find what he needed, but more importantly that author’s boss had her back

  • “Who Killed the World” chapter
  • representations of libraries & librarians
  • early 20th century: white women who civilized and assimilated
  • 1990s/200s white men

  • now: Silicon Valley and information technology… and therefore, white men, since that’s what Silicon Valley is

  • internet centrism presents internet as break from prior history

  • internet-centrism
    • technological determinism
    • technological solutionism
    • technocracy
  • related ideas
    • claim to be neutral, objective, rational, apolitical
      • librarianship invested in these ideas
    • work from position of white patriarchy
    • enact power by claiming to speak for everyone

  • only white masculinity can speak from the above positions, therefore technocracy is a white masculine speaking position

  • The Future of Libraries
    • reinforces technocracy, determinism, and solutionism
    • invested in white patriarchy
    • innovation, technology, entrepreneurship valued
    • emotional, care, manual, maintenance labor ignored
    • labor behind technology is erased
  • making, coding, etc all seen as future of libraries, things mostly done by white men
  • things like maintenance, emotional, care labor (mostly women and/or POC) seen not as part of future of libraries

  • effects of labor tech mostly felt outside of (global) West, in India, Philippines, elsewhere

  • when we dismiss emotional, care, maintenance labor as “legacy,” reproduces inequities, prioritizes white masculinity

Dr. Nicole Cooke #

Associate Professor and MS/LIS program Director University of Illinois, School of Information Sciences

  • Chapter she co-wrote with students—she wants to highlight their hard work in writing this, they were in Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Information Professions (IS 547)
  • quote from Hawaiian library school instructor about why it behooves LIS programs to teach students about social inequalities
  • reads excerpts from different student sections
  • Students put their reflections / interviews on StoryCorps; her slides had urls but I couldn’t type them all

Kristyn Caragher #

Adult Librarian
Douglass Branch, Chicago Public Library

  • she speaks from perspective of white, queer, mostly working class woman
  • working on the chapter with her two coauthors helped her connect with other white antiracism librarians
  • expanded on Chris Bourg’s framework for (inclusivity? I missed this)
  • Radical Media track recommended by another co-author for antiracist white librarians
  • systems of oppression, systems of domination built into our institutions of librarianship, from collections to staffing
  • inequalities persist through and are replicated by these oppressive systems
  • antioppression rather than “diversity” to highlight the systematic oppression

  • she created three workshops, offered twice, open to all employees, offered as work time, not required; she had to argue to justify why she called them “antioppression” rather than “diversity”

  • perfectionism as an aspect of white supremacy culture

  • a lot of white people do nothing as a result of their fears of doing the wrong thing

  • part of the workshop was for 31 libraries (across campus?) to organize together, figure out how they could work against racist oppression in their different spaces & practices

  • she’d have facilitators who were persons of color if she were to do this again, not as a student project

  • talking is great, but what can we actually do in our libraries, in our day-to-day lives

Questions & Answers #

Gina: practice equity in action, from Kenny Garcia, who learned it from April Hathcock
first the q&a is open to people of color, then to white folks after that

Myeisha Kelly: what will happen when we have “the Comcast Library” or “The Google Library”, how can we learn from those lessons?

A: Dr. Walker: haven’t seen that, but it’ll be important to watch the money
A: Dr. Cooke: in higher ed we’re seeing conference rooms and buildings named after

Bianaca Spurlock: first day of her academic job she was told “we hired you because you’re so articulate”

It’s a weight that she carried for the rest of her time there; just wanted to thank speakers for this session

Carol Gilliam: Roosevelt College on Long Island

She wanted to tell White librarians that she’s only Black librarian in her institution, our library has the biggest resource of Black collection in (NYC? NY State? USA?)
Also, if you have a person of color, librarian in particular, might run certain ideas by them first before going forward with public programming; there was an incident that could have been avoided if asked for feedback

Philipe: thanking presenters, first question asked at conference; for Nicole Cooke, what was your experience designing course & advocating for its inclusion on curriculum; for everyone: what advice would you give to help make these classes elsewhere in library school

A: Dr. Cooke: she revised 2 classes and created 1 (I think I mixed this up?); courses have to be taught three times at least, then “regularization” with faculty vote and go through all levels; faculty thought “can’t these go to education or sociology, why do they have to do that here?” But now they’re regularized and can’t be taken away. WISE consortium students can take her classes & other ones. If you’re an alum, please email your deans and encourage them to add classes. “So what have you been doing since I graduated?” Tuition paying public voice can be taken more seriously than faculty voices as well.

A: Kristyn C.: If it’s not there, create it. Try independent study, etc.

S. Grey: If there are any reference librarians who are not people of color, I’ve noticed that the fear of black people really impacts the services provided to black people.

The service that is needed, especially in places like community colleges, is the only place where people of color can get the technology or other guidance that would help them succeed to their potential. / How can we as librarians implore the human aspect of staff when automation is coming?
A: Maura S.: higher up people make decisions, have to pressure them, we have to vocally valorize face-to-face work