Statement Against White Appropriation of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color’s Labor
We, the undersigned Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) library, archives, and information workers and educators, reject the historical and increasing trend of white library, archives, and information workers and educators at all levels appropriating the work and professionally profiting from the lived experiences of BIPOC. This appropriation harms BIPOC and diminishes our opportunities and accomplishments. You advance your career and raise your profiles at our expense. We call for a collective interrogation of your self-professed commitment to and “expertise” in equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI/DEI) and accessibility (IDEA)[1]. We call for a deep examination of your participation in the EDI industry that repeatedly panders to the lowest white consciousness in the room. We call for a reckoning with the historical and ongoing trauma you have caused through your continued adherence to white supremacist culture and ideals.
Stop trying to profit off of the labor that BIPOC workers have put into racial justice work or benefit from our existence or experiences in this field.
You say that you value social justice without actually practicing it. In fact, you do the exact opposite of what you think you are signaling, which some of you do intentionally. You compete for and win professional opportunities in our institutions and largest professional organizations, such as ALA and ACRL. These spaces continue to be historically white because white people continue to support and endorse their white peers. You say you want to dismantle oppressive systems and decenter whiteness, but you are not actually willing to give up any of the opportunities or power that those actions require. We see all of you upholding a culture of self-congratulatory whiteness. Other white people might celebrate you, but BIPOC know better. Behind the scenes, you abuse, bully, racelight [2], marginalize, invalidate, police, exclude, and maintain hostile work and educational environments for BIPOC who navigate these spaces with you.
A vastly incomplete history of recent, reproduced, and sustained inciting actions:
Past ACRL presidents have bullied and marginalized BIPOC librarians while claiming commitment to racial justice.
White folx trying to benefit from proximity to BIPOC:
Multiple candidates for ALA divisions, sections and roundtables claiming membership in library associations of color without either actually paying dues or engaging in significant contributions or activity as a member;
Recently elected ACRL Board of Directors Vice-President/President-Elect naming and claiming the work of BIPOC who they harmed in the past;
SAA leaders claiming the work of BIPOC under their leadership as a way to convey their participation in racial justice work.
The proliferation of anti-racism statements put out by information institutions and organizations in 2020 without also taking on actions addressing the lack of BIPOC workers or how the BIPOC within those very libraries and organizations have been ostracised and disrespected for years prior to 2020, while allowing the mistreatment to continue.
Issuing boilerplate statements claiming that your institution or organization does not tolerate acts of intolerance, racism, discrimination, bullying, belligerence, or overt and covert bias in response to formal or informal reports of these acts without actual redress;
Preventing recommended changes within your institution while gaslighting BIPOC who attempted to make these changes by stating that they aren’t making progress or doing enough;
Recruiting diverse participation (e.g., job applications, author submissions, or committee membership) without doing prior work to ensure those who are recruited aren’t coming into a hostile environment or racist experience.
Use of our work without compensation or citation.
Tone policing of us and our work.
Putting together all-white or majority-white conference presentations and panels on EDI, and doing so without engaging white supremacy or structural whiteness as the systems that control institutionalized EDI.
Putting out presentations, blog posts, or other recognized forms of scholarship about others’ experiences with racism in GLAM (galleries, libraries, archives, museums) fields. This is particularly egregious when the presenters themselves previously caused or enabled racial trauma and are attempting to receive kudos or at least recognition for their self-proclaimed expertise in EDI.
Expecting BIPOC to do more and more emotional and unpaid labor:
“Voluntelling” BIPOC to lead/join diversity committees without power, autonomy, authority, or budgets;
When a Black person is murdered on camera and you can’t ignore it, voluntelling your Black staff member to write the statement in support of #BlackLivesMatter.
While you benefit from your performance of EDI, BIPOC workers are expected to keep our mouths shut about our honest, sometimes painful experiences with our previous or current colleagues, supervisors, administrators, or places of work. And you make sure that sharing our experiences reflects badly on us rather than those who perpetrated the harm and abuse. To share our experiences is deemed unprofessional and therefore could and do lead to numerous forms of retaliation, including termination and ostracization from the field. Speaking up and taking control of our narrative is vital to our healing from the trauma you have caused us. It is vital to holding you and yours accountable for that harm.
BIPOC library, archives, and information workers and educators have the experience and have been doing the unpaid hard work, the emotional labor, and the intellectual labor. Before our ideas became trendy, some of us were punished and dismissed within institutions/organizations for challenging the whiteness of institutions/organizations and articulating the need for anti-racist practices. Not acknowledging this past and current labor is a form of erasure that extends the long history of erasing BIPOC labor, knowledge, and experience from this nation-state known as the United States of America.
We been telling you and you still don’t listen.
BIPOC library, archives, and information workers and educators are tired of your Diversity Theater. We see you performing with your statements, your display of the vocabulary of anti-racism, your hashtags, profile photos, and symbolic gestures. What we want to see is you clearing obstacles and preventing harm while providing BIPOC library workers with clear tangibles, including but not limited to compensation, positions, opportunities, authority, and the other clear avenues of respect we deserve.
Collective demands (to white folx and predominantly white organizations and institutions):
Candidates for professional leadership positions are held accountable for the words they say, actions they promise, and values they claim to care about.
Intentionally hire, promote, and retain BIPOC at all professional and paraprofessional levels and especially in upper-level management and administrative leadership positions.
BIPOC must be deeply involved in, financially compensated, and professionally recognized for the assessment of integrating any anti-racist practices, policies, and procedures in our institutions.
Examine whiteness and white supremacy in your research, practices, pedagogy, classrooms, syllabi, managerial style, policies, job descriptions, organizational culture, conference programming, and decisions that prevent EDI and anti-racist initiatives from advancing.
Address your toxic, white supremacist, patriarchal, ableist, cisalloheteronormative culture that ultimately forces BIPOC to leave professional spaces and the very profession, while blaming us for not fitting in or being able to “hack it.”
When you release a statement about anti-racism, include the data about how white your library is and how that whiteness affects the wellbeing of BIPOC people in your institution.
When your fellow white colleagues use racist, anti-trans, homophobic, and ableist language, shut them down immediately in those spaces.
Prevent and immediately remove anyone (white or otherwise) who uses formal or informal power on behalf of the organization to normalize or reinforce inequities by silencing BIPOC dissent and attempts to report or seek support or rectification of harmful experiences.
Apologize to your BIPOC colleagues, BIPOC employees, BIPOC bosses, BIPOC students, and BIPOC communities in which your libraries are situated. Take responsibility for the harm that you and your libraries and organizations have caused them, with no burden of expected forgiveness. Your apologies should be as visible as your anti-racism statements.
Mind the power structures. Take a wrecking ball to the institutional brick wall that is designed to protect your oppressive actions and silence. [3]
Step aside and step down. Not every job or professional opportunity is for you, particularly if the position serves a community/communities of color.
Compensate us – for the present and for the past. For the decades of work we BIPOC have done to get us all here.
Pay us extra for the vital experience and knowledge that we bring to the workplace;
Invite and pay those of us with expertise in this area as consultants and expert speakers on the topics we have advanced in LIS;
Do not come to our presentations and ask us to personally curate resources for you or solve your organization’s diversity problem during the question and answer period. You have our contact information - email us with the ask and expect to be charged for our time.
This is not just about monetary forms of reparations, but healing the harms you have caused BIPOC communities over generations. A form of transitional justice (reparations)[4] is needed.
Do the work as information professionals and cite and acknowledge our contributions to our organizations and our fields of research.
Stop centering yourself and whiteness as normal and start centering BIPOC.
Do the work to address past harms that you and your fellow white colleagues have caused. You have always been aware of them and have done nothing until now... right?
We here and we see you. White person, if you think we’re not talking about you, we are. We mean YOU.
Authors
Alexandria Brown
James Cheng
Isabel Espinal
Brittany Paloma Fiedler
Joyce Gabiola
Sofia Leung
Nisha Mody
Alanna Aiko Moore
Teresa Y. Neely
Peace Ossom-Williamson
Co-Signers (Black, Indigenous and People of Color only)
Please use comment box to sign your name. Thank you!
Jaena Rae Cabrera
Chelsea Misquith
Twanna Hodge
Alea Perez
jaime ding
Tatiana Bryant
Alyssa Jocson Porter
Jamia Williams
Jina DuVernay
Samantha Quiñon Snair
Kahlila Chaar-Pérez
Melissa J. Nelson
Sandy Rodriguez
Ione Damasco
Tiffeni Fontno
Mimosa Shah
Ebony Magnus
Anastasia Collins
Yasmeen Shorish
Fatoma Rad
Jesus Espinoza
Lizeth Zepeda
Jen Woo
Debbie Reese, tribally enrolled, Nambé Owingeh (a sovereign Indigenous Nation located in what is currently known as New Mexico)
Paula Gaetos
Candice Wing-Yee Mack
LaQuanda Onyemeh
Hridi Das
Eugenia Beh
Juanita Thacker
Cyra Africa
Jessea Young
Ray Pun
Michele Santamaria
Cristina Ramírez
Lorin Jackson
Melissa Cardenas-Dow
Jade Alburo
Tomoko Shida
Nichelle M Hayes
Alexandra Flores
Stacy R. Williams
Cristina Dominguez Ramirez
Treshani Perera
Cheryl Neal
Barbara Williams
Ana Noriega
Magaly Salas
Nastasha Johnson
Danielle Walker
Sol M. López
Yharnet Browne
Raemona Little Taylor
Preethi Gorecki
Kalani Adolpho
Javier Garibay
Rachel Keiko Stark
Anne Cong-Huyen
Max Macias
Tricia Greenstein
José Aguiñaga
kim morrison
Linh Gavin Do
Saira Raza
Jesse Alexander Lopez
Jenny Yap
Kiyomi Deards
Josstin Gogue
Sabrina Wong
Curtis Small
Tina Martins-Gonzalez
Elaine Tai
Sherri Nicole Thomas
Dan Nishimoto
Sheila García Mazari
Young-Joo Lee
Harvey Long
Kathleen "Kat" Kim Bell
Rosalinda Hernandez Linares
Julia Wright
Tova Johnson
Jackson Huang
Tenecia Phillips
Arielle Petrovich
Michele Williams
Emma Antobam-Ntekudzi
Michelle McKinney
Julie Renee Moore
Patricia Payne
Shawna Sherman
Tom Nielsen
Stevie Gunter
Keala Murdock
Vanessa Mejia
Tarida Anantachai
Cyanna Rodney-Hill
Nikita L. Hines
Toni Olivas
Lana Mariko Wood
Holly Hampton
Vani Natarajan
Nelson Santana
Simone L. Yearwood
Talía Guzmán-González
Elissia Buell
Deb Sierra
Nancy Schuler
Sharon Han
Margarita Shawcross
Torie Quiñonez
Aidy Weeks
Shannon D. Jones
Michael Gutierrez
Lydia N Collins
Jessica Dai
Kelli Yakabu
Natalia Estrada
Alvina Lai
Katrina Cohen-Palacios
Amy Vo
Eric Hung
Thomas Dickens
Allie Genia
Ashley Mitchell
Isabel Soto-Luna
Ana Corral
Rebekah McFarland
Ameerah Stafford
Andrew Wang
Feather Maracle
kynita stringer-stanback
Veronica Arellano Douglas
Tina Chan
April Hummons
Claytee White
Ekatrina Sotomayor
Melody Rood
Jessica Ng
Sharon Mizota
Debbie Kagiyama Quakenbush
Sorrel Goodwin
Reneé Bibby
Ayshea Khan
Sarah Hernandez
Lisa Harris
Michael Davis
Tamara Nelson
Marvin Tillman
Indri Pasaribu
Ericka Brunson
Amanpreet Kaur
Marci Ramiro-Jenkins
L. Marie Avila
Analú Maria López
Alma Plasencia
Sarah Okner
Tarienne Mitchell
Vanessa Villarreal
Melvin Hale, Ph.D.
Aaron LaFromboise
Rafia Mirza
Christina Fuller-Gregory
Luisa Leija
Sarah Faith Cruz
Sylvia Figueroa
Trina Keith
Lily Alvarez
Jaime Bravo
Marissa Alcorta
Rebecca Davis
Mayra Cortez
Sumayya Ahmed
Yasmine Abou-El-Kheir
Adela V. Justice
dez alaniz
Nicole Rawlinson
Maria Aghazarian
Crystal Chen
Denisse Solis
Fabiola Hernandez-Soto
Silvia Lew
Karla Lucht
Ashley Rayner
Ana Cuprill
Leilani Dawson
Tiffany Ly
Anastasia Chiu
Elle Eng
Maria Pax Power
Rebecca Orozco
Nicole Strayhorn
Amanda He
Star Khan
Tati Mesfin
Linda Ueki Absher
Kiana Bressant
Janine Mogannam
Kristina Santiago
Paloma Barraza
Xaviera Flores
Seema Bhakta
Betsaida Reyes
Stella Ahn
Jennifer Shimada
Sydney Porter
Robert Taylor
Bohyun Kim
Cinthya Hernandez
Sarah Park Dahlen
Nicollette Davis
Nikhat Ghouse
Megan Sedillo
Martha Anderson
Marisa Duarte
Pascua Yaqui
Lynne Grimaldo Grigsby
Alisa Williams
Carolina Hernandez
LeRoy LaFleur
Maggie Leung
Kelsa Bartley
Jenay Solomon
Ian Chan
Stephanie Porrata
Amy Phillips
Hannah Scates Kettler
FOOTNOTES
- We recognize that there are multiple acronyms that are used. For consistency, we have opted to use ‘EDI’ throughout our statement.
- Dr. J. Luke Wood and Dr. Frank Harris III, Racelighting: A Prevalent Version of Gaslighting Facing People of Color: https://diverseeducation.com/article/209668/ and Racelighting: Three Common Strategies Racelighters Use https://diverseeducation.com/article/209668/.
- Sara Ahmed, On Being Included: Racism and Diversity in Institutional Life (Durham, 2012).
- “Transitional justice is an approach to systematic or massive violations of human rights that both provides redress to victims and creates or enhances opportunities for the transformation of the political systems, conflicts, and other conditions that may have been at the root of the abuses. Some elements of transitional justice include Truth Commissions, Reparation programs, security system reform, and memorialization efforts” (International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ), https://www.ictj.org/).