Ethnic and Racial Diversity in Libraries: Arguments for

Decolonization

It’s long overdue

“If the profession is serious about understanding race and racism as they relate specifically to librarianship, we would push them

from the margins and into the center. Race studies would be accorded the respect for intellectual expertise we award to other

areas, and not dismissed as a subject area that emanates from personal characteristic and experience. But acknowledging race

studies, not as personal experience, but as the domain of scholars, where scholarly inquiry, intellectual rigor, integrity, and

authority are assumed as the ability to be an expert, is a threat because this would supplant the white experience as the

experience worth of scholarship. It is this arrogance, as well as ignorance, that hinders race studies from flourishing in

librarianship.” (172-73)

Peterson, L. 1996. Alternatives perspectives in library and information science: Issues of race. Journal of Education for Library and Information Science, 37

According to research, “African Americans and Hispanics are significantly more likely than whites to consider [libraries] ‘very important’ to the

community” yet “among a total credentialed library population of 118,666, only 6,160 are black and 3,661 are Latino.” (Kelley 2013)

For my project, I would like to discuss the lack of diversity in librarianship as connected with institutionalized oppression of minority communities via colonization and normative whiteness, and propose various solutions

to removing these barriers and decolonizing the profession.

Project Proposal

Core Values of Librarianship

“We value our nation's diversity and strive to reflect that diversity by providing a full spectrum of resources and services to the communities

we serve.”ALA Policy Manual 53.8 ( Libraries: An American Value)

So what’s the problem??

Current Employment LandscapeReality

Diversity Counts is a comprehensive study of gender, race and age in the library profession, originally conducted in 2006 and released in 2007. The study was updated in 2012 using 2009-2010 American Community Survey analyses.

“Although the findings show some improvement in the diversity of the library workforce, we clearly have a long way to go,” stated Maureen Sullivan, ALA president. “To continue to serve the nation’s increasingly diverse communities, our libraries and the profession must reflect this diversity. We must continue to offer initiatives like ALA’s Spectrum Scholarship Program to recruit and educate librarians of color. We also must do the research necessary to discover effective ways to increase the numbers. This is a matter of urgency for all of us.”

Source: Chang, H. F. (2013, April). Ethnic and Racial Diversity in Academic and Research Libraries: Past, Present, and Future. In biennial conference of the Association of College & Research Libraries, Indianapolis, IN. Retrieved from http://0-ww. ala. org. sapl. sat. lib. tx. us/acrl/sites/ala. org. acrl/files/content/conferences/confsandpreconfs/2013/papers/Chang_Ethnic. pdf.

Current Employment Landscape:Credentialed Librarians

Here’s a snapshot:

118,666 credentialed librarians

White: 88%Black: 5%Asian: 3%

Native American: < 1%Two or more races: <

1%Latino: 3%

There are only 138 active African American library directors in the entire country, according to a list kept by the University of Kentucky Libraries

Current Employment Landscape:Directors

The majority of higher level positions in libraries are occupied almost exclusively by white males

Current Employment Landscape:Library Assistants

http://www.ala.org/offices/sites/ala.org.offices/files/content/diversity/diversitycounts/diversitycountstables2012.pdf

Current Employment LandscapeStudent Enrollment

Source: Chang, H. F. (2013, April). Ethnic and Racial Diversity in Academic and Research Libraries: Past, Present, and Future. In biennial conference of the Association of College & Research Libraries, Indianapolis, IN. Retrieved from http://0-ww. ala. org. sapl. sat. lib. tx. us/acrl/sites/ala. org. acrl/files/content/conferences/confsandpreconfs/2013/papers/Chang_Ethnic. pdf.

Current Employment LandscapeLibrarians vs. U.S. Population

Source: https://chrisbourg.wordpress.com/2014/03/03/the-unbearable-whiteness-of-librarianship/

The persistent lag in diversity in our LIS schools, the number of librarians and library assistants

leaving the profession prematurely, the aging of racial and ethnic minority library workers, and the

continued under-representation of workers with disabilities, suggests a proportionally less diverse

library workforce on the horizon.

-Diversity Counts

Racial Discourse & LISQuestions to Consider

• Why is it that scholars and students do not talk openly and honestly about issues of race and LIS?

• Why does the field have a tendency to tiptoe around discussing race and racism, and instead limit the discourse by using words such as “multiculturalism” and “diversity”?

• Why is the field so glaringly white yet no one wants to talk about whiteness and white privilege?

-Trippin’ Over the Color Line: The Invisibility of Race in Library and Information Studies

Racial Discourse & LISRace

Despite a long legacy of race-based scholarship in many fields of the academy, as well as the ever-diversifying user population in the United

States, the field of library and information studies (LIS) has failed to keep up with the on-going discussions and debates about race, and instead

functions in a race-blind vacuum while failing to recognize the disfiguring implications such blindness embodies.

-Todd Honma

Racial Discourse & LISRace

Source: In Visibility: Race and Libraries

• Classification system• Dynamic

• constantly changing• Contextual

• time and place (not universal or transhistoric)

• Operates at many level• both personal and institutional

• Linked to issues of power and privilege • Ideological • Ascribed• Intersectional

What is race?

Racial Discourse & LISWhiteness

Whiteness: “location of structural advantage in societies structured in racial dominance” (Frankenberg, 2001, 76)

“the sociopolitical constitution of the various European cohorts as a hegemonic collectivity coinciding with the history of the formation of the U.S. nation-state as a ‘settler society’” (San Juan, 1998, p. 162)

“an unmarked category against which difference is constructed, whiteness never has to speak its name, never has to acknowledge its role as an organizing principle in social and cultural relations” (Lipsitz, 1998, 1)

Frankenberg, R. (2001). The mirage of an unmarked whiteness. In The making and unmaking of whiteness (pp. 72-96). Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Lipsitz, G. (1998). The possessive investment in whiteness: How white people benefit from identity politics. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.San Juan, E., Jr. (1998). Beyond postcolonial theory. New York: St. Martin's Press.

Source: In Visibility: Race and Libraries

Racial Discourse & LISWhat is a Librarian?

When you think of a librarian, who do you picture...

Racial Discourse & LISWhat is a Librarian?

According to Google, this is what we think librarians look like

What does this tell us

?

Racial Discourse & LISWhat is a Librarian?

Racial Discourse & LISWhite Hegemony and Normativity

Whiteness is normative

To ignore white ethnicity is to redouble its hegemony by naturalizing it.

—Coco Fusco (1988)

Racial Discourse & LISWhite Hegemony and Normativity

White normativity negatively affects historical and contemporary policies, practices, and even attitudes in LIS

All too often the library is viewed as an egalitarian institution providing universal access to information for the general public. However, such idealized visions of a mythic

benevolence tend to conveniently gloss over the library’s susceptibility in reproducing and perpetuating racist social structures found throughout the rest of society.

-Todd Honma

Racial Discourse & LISPower & Invisibility

White normativity renders issues invisible and consequently

perpetuates racist institutionalized

practices Source: http://s307.photobucket.com/user/Paul_H_Rosenberg/media/One-Region-Fig-1-Opportunity-Index.jpg.html

Racial Discourse & LISIntersectionality

Intersectionality: “The view that [individuals] experience oppression in varying configurations and in varying degrees of

intensity. Cultural patterns of oppression are not only interrelated, but are bound together and influenced by the intersectional systems of

society. Examples of this include race, gender, class, ability, and ethnicity.”

-Kimberlé Crenshaw 1989

Racial Discourse & LISIntersectionality

When librarians discuss the lack of underrepresented populations in librarianship, the solutions suggested most often are recruitment and awareness. But these discussions focus on one matrix of identity, like race or class, and ignore the fact that people embody multiple, layered identities. By treating these matrices of identity and marginalization as separate entities, librarians fail to fully understand how oppressions work in varying contexts. We need to go beyond the traditional diversity rhetoric and speak instead of intersectional librarianship.

-Fobazi Ettarh

Racial Discourse & LISIntersectionality

Lack of an intersectional

perspective has far reaching, real world consequences that reinforce dominant

values in LIS

Racial Discourse & LISDiversity & Multiculturalism

“Instead of just celebrating diversity, we must theorize it, interrogate it, and actively seek the parallels and connections between people of various communities. Instead of talking about race, we should be theorizing the social processes of racialization, of how certain groups in U.S. society have been relegated to an oppressed status, by the weight of law, social policy and economic exploitation” (Marable 2001, p. 9)

Marable, M. (2001). Transforming ethnic studies: Theorizing multiculturalism, diversity, and power. Souls, 3(3), 6-15.

“A multiculturalism that does not acknowledge the political character of culture will not, I am sure, lead toward the dismantling of racist, sexist, homophobic, economically exploitative institutions.” - Angela Davis

Racial Discourse & LISGood Intentions & Neutrality

Librarianship is inherently political. Even activities in which librarians are specifically trained to maintain “neutrality,” such as collection development, are intrinsically political. What is seen as normal or neutral is indicative of the status quo or the hegemony…it requires a level of privilege to be seen as detached and neutral.

-Making a New Table: Intersectional Librarianship

Hate groups have historically used libraries and other public facilities in Canada to promote intolerance and recruit members. The main reason why public facilities have been so attractive to hate groups is that they tend to lend the groups credibility which allows them to broaden their membership and to gain credibility for their messages of hate.

-http://www.stopracism.ca/content/racism-and-libraries-canada (Ku Klux Klan in Vancouver Library crica 1933. Photo credit: BC Archives)

Racial Discourse & LISGood Intentions & Neutrality

Good intentions and neutrality result in:

• Complicity with the status quo

• Unintentional racial consequences

• Colonialism

SolutionsHow are we failing to diversify the profession?

Is it a lack of promotion about librarianship as a career?

A lack of mentors? Barriers to the MLS?

Are we failing to retain minorities that enter the profession?

Current Solutions:Scholarship

• Association of Research Libraries’ Initiative To Create a Diverse Workforce

• Spectrum Scholarship Program

• Discovering Librarianship Program (funded by IMLS)

• Diversity Leadership Online

• Diversity Research Grants

• Empowering Diverse Voices, an Initiative of 2011-2012 ALA President Molly Raphael

• Technology Transforms Communities, supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Initiatives currently include:

Source: http://www.ala.org/offices/diversity/spectrum

Current Solutions:Scholarship

Issues:

• The academy is inherently dominated by the straight white male hegemony, and thus reproduction and entrenchment of the idea of the bourgeois subject

• Knowledge production perpetuates racist exclusion of non-white thought

• Racialized political economy of knowledge within academia

• Socioeconomic realities

Current Solutions:Scholarship

While these efforts at diversification are certainly admirable and necessary interventions, a concentration on simply numbers or

equitable representation appeals to a limited form of identity politics. -Todd Honma

In other words, Scholarships do little to recognize and challenge the structural racism inherent in libraries.

Inclusion of “tokenized bodies of color into LIS will not change the overall system foundationally and institutionally structured around race and racism.” (Honma 2005, 13)

Current Solutions:Outreach

Toolkits:

• The American Dream Starts @ your library• Extending Our Reach: Reducing Homelessness Through

Library Engagement• Handbook for Mobile Services Staff• How to Serve the World @ your library• Keys to Engaging Older Adults @ your library• Literacy for All: Adult Literacy @ your library• The Small but Powerful Guide to Winning Big Support for

Your Rural Library• Guide to Building Support for your Tribal Library• TRAILS - Tribal Library Procedure Manual 3rd Edition

2008

Current Solutions:Outreach

Issues:

• Fails to acknowledge institutionalized racism and subsequent barriers

• Ignores issues within the social system

• Does not consider social processes of racialization and intersectional identities

• Assimilation into “Angloconformity”

Proposed Solutions:Credentials

Not everyone has the wherewithal to serve an unpaid internship or pursue a master’s degree. But there are library employees that come from disadvantaged groups that would conceivably welcome a better recognition, a fuller crediting, of homegrown experience and knowledge.

This is not an exhortation to do away with the MLS but a suggestion that libraries build upon the allegiance of blacks and Hispanics and acknowledge that there are degrees of experience that are worth the title of librarian.

-Kelley, M. (2013). The MLS and the Race Line. Library Journal, 138(10).

Not everyone can win a scholarship.

Source: http://www.masd.k12.wi.us/guidance/images/scholarship.jpg

Proposed Solutions:Credentials

“In addition to the proliferation of new and the expansion of existing LIS diversity education and workforce recruitment programs, efforts must be made to provide accessible career ladders and opportunities for professional learning and development to current library staff.”

-Davis, D. M., & Hall, T. D. (2007). Diversity counts. ALA Office for Research and Statistics and ALA Office for Diversity, American Library Association.

Proposed Solutions:Credentials

These are the 32,775 library assistants who either are African American, Latino, Asian Pacific Islander, Native American, or biracial. These workers, 27 percent of the 122,768 assistants overall according to the American Library Association (ALA), have duties and abilities that can overlap and even surpass those of MLS staff in key service areas (including speaking Spanish and other languages).

More effort should be made to promote these library assistants to librarians, where the ranks are now overwhelmingly credentialed, white, monolingual females. When merited, these assistants should receive expanded responsibilities, training, and higher salaries without requiring a master’s degree. In such deserving cases, the MLS credential is a hindrance to diversity. Face it, the degree is sometimes unnecessary for the work at hand (or the work to be learned), and it costs too much money.

Kelley, M. (2013). The MLS and the Race Line. Library Journal, 138(10).

Non-MLS Hiring

Proposed Solutions:Retention

More than mere representation in the workforce, measures must be taken to promote and advance diversity at the management level in LIS institutions, if not they will continue to serve as revolving doors at best, to members of the communities on whom they will increasingly depend

for survival.

-Davis, D. M., & Hall, T. D. (2007). Diversity counts. ALA Office for Research and Statistics and ALA Office for

Diversity, American Library Association.

Essential SolutionsDecolonization

Two problematic paradigms in LIS:• Unacknowledged Whiteness• Celebratory Multiculturalism

Challenge for librarians:• Move beyond identity and representation• Critically discuss race as a social system linked to power, privilege,

and exploitation

What we as LIS professionals can do

White librarians should cement themselves as allies and unconditionally support the voices, experiences, and needs of minorities

Constantly challenge harmful institutionalized practices Breaking and disrupting the system of intellectual property and

other aspects of capitalism, especially the publishing industry Disrupt traditional mechanisms for creating ‘knowledge’ by being

more than a repository for imperial knowledge products Support Indigenous resistance to the settler state and work towards

dismantling anti-Blackness Support and propose necessary reforms Continually discuss issues of diversity with others, especially other

LIS professionals to promote more awareness and education

Even though we as people are not just limited to our color, the fact is that color

shades our cultural experiences and affects how we move about in the world and

receive and share information. Having a diverse staff can help people access

resources and receive information in a way that they are comfortable with.

-The Color of Knowledge: Diversity and Librarianship

Additional Discussion Questions

• R E F L E C T O N Y O U R E X P E R I E N C E S I N L I S ; C A N Y O U N A M E A N Y H I S T O R I C A L O R C O N T E M P O R A R Y I N S T A N C E S O F I N S T I T U T I O N A L I Z E D R A C I S M T H A T Y O U ’ V E N O T I C E D ?

• W H A T A D D I T I O N A L I D E A S C A N B E P R O P O S E D T O I N C R E A S E D I V E R S I T Y I N L I S ?

• W H A T D O Y O U T H I N K I S T H E M O S T I M P O R T A N T T H I N G T H A T W H I T E L I B R A R I A N S C A N D O T O H E L P I N C R E A S E D I V E R S I T Y ?

References

• Aronson, arc. (2014). Diversity in Librarianship, Consider the Source. Retrieved from: http://www.slj.com/2014/03/opinion/consider-the-source/diversity-in-librarianship-consider-the-source/

• Associated Press. (2006, December 19). Minority Librarians Seek To Update Image of White ‘Bun Lady’. Retrieved from http://diverseeducation.com/article/6783/

• Bourg, Chris. (2014). The unbearable whiteness of librarianship. Retrieved from: https://chrisbourg.wordpress.com/2014/03/03/the-unbearable-whiteness-of-librarianship/.

• Chang, H. F. (2013, April). Ethnic and Racial Diversity in Academic and Research Libraries: Past, Present, and Future. In biennial conference of the Association of College & Research Libraries, Indianapolis, IN. Retrieved from http://0-ww. ala. org. sapl. sat. lib. tx. us/acrl/sites/ala. org. acrl/files/content/conferences/confsandpreconfs/2013/papers/Chang_Ethnic. pdf.

• Davis, D. M., & Hall, T. D. (2007). Diversity counts. ALA Office for Research and Statistics and ALA Office for Diversity, American Library Association.

• Ettarh, F. (2014). Making a New Table: Intersectional Librarianship. In the Library with the Lead Pipe, retrieved from: http://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2014/making-a-new-table-intersectional-librarianship-3/.

• Grady, J., & Hall, T. (2004). The world is changing: Why aren't we? Recruiting minorities to librarianship. Library Worklife, 4(8), 1-9.• Honma, Todd. (2005). Trippin’ Over the Color Line: The Invisibility of Race in Library and Information Studies. InterActions: UCLA

Journal of Education and Information Studies, 1(2).• Honma, Todd. (2013). In Visibility: Race and Libraries. Conference presentation at ALA annual. Retrieved from:

http://ala13.ala.org/files/ala13/Honma_ALA%20Spectrum_Race%20and%20Libraries.pdf. • http://hacklibraryschool.com/2011/07/21/the-color-of-knowledge-diversity-and-librarianship/• Jensen, R. (2005). The myth of the neutral professional. Progressive Librarian, 24, 28-34.• Kelley, M. (2013). Diversity Never Happens: The Story of Minority Hiring Doesn’t Seem to Change Much. Library Journal, 138(3), p.8.• Kelley, M. (2013). The MLS and the Race Line. Library Journal, 138(10).• Love, E. (2010). "Generation next: recruiting minority students to librarianship", Reference Services Review, 38(3), pp.482 – 492. • Shaw, K. (2003). The Impenetrable Ceiling: Professional Advancement for Minorities and Women in the Library Profession. Retrieved

from: http://students.washington.edu/aliss/silverfish/archive/april2003/shaw.pdf• Simpson, B. (2013). Hiring Non-MLS Librarians: Trends and Training Implications. Library Leadership & Management, 28(1).