7 Examining and Reducing Bias in Libraries
“[P]eople are a resource to be cultivated—not a problem to be ‘fixed.’”
–Melissa Hall Sommer, 2017, para. 5
Chapter Overview
The purpose of this chapter is to:
- Introduce key vocabulary.
- Explore concepts to help us recognize and work against ongoing inequities created by bias and structural racism.
Introduction
In my experience, most students who take this Public and Access Services course want to work in libraries because they enjoy libraries. That means they are less likely to have had negative experiences in libraries than the general public has had (Johnson & Kazmer, 2011, p. 393). If you think of yourself as someone who likes libraries, this chapter may feel like either an unfair criticism or an unnecessary reminder because you think of library workers as already being neutral and accepting of differences. If you have had any bad experiences either using or working in a library, this chapter may also be emotionally challenging because it could remind you of difficult interactions you have had.
One of the great promises of libraries is that they can help communities to overcome digital, economic, and demographic divisions in society because they are a generally trusted organization that is open to everyone, thereby “reducing inequality and promoting interactions between different classes of people” (Igarashi, Koizumi & Widdersheim, 2023, p. 61). And it is true that in the public library, “people are not categorized by profession or as being unemployed, a patient or a client, but are all library users” (Aabø & Audunson, 2012, p. 138). In this way, libraries manifest “social inclusion,” allowing patrons to “float between life spheres and roles; family, neighbor, colleague, citizen” (Aabø & Audunson, 2012, p. 138). But extensive research suggests that people, including library workers, are not generally capable of encountering a person without immediately categorizing them. And then we automatically activate beliefs and feelings based on those categories even when we do not mean to or want to do it (Fiarman, 2016; Wolfers, 2017). We then act on our beliefs by “making assumptions and interpreting other people’s words and actions in unhelpful and potentially harmful ways” (Montoya & Polkinghorne, 2023, p. 41). This unintended categorizing and the reactions that follow from it are called unconscious bias.
Library workers’ unconscious bias affects library policies and how they apply the policies, but if we think of unconscious bias instead as unexamined bias, we can work to change the beliefs that limit our actions. Though we are not always consciously aware of our biases – especially when they go against our stated values—these biases affect our actions (Fiarman, 2016; Grant-Thomas, 2011; Paterson, 2011; Wolfers, 2017). Researchers at Harvard offer a set of implicit bias tests that you can take for free online as part of becoming aware of biases you may not realize that you have (Banerji, 2005). And the test writers believe that by becoming aware of our biases, we can prevent ourselves from acting on them even if we still feel them. For this reason, I prefer to refer to unconscious bias as unexamined bias, because we can become conscious of it if we choose to. Some people find that they can even change some of their own biases by deliberately exposing themselves to art, literature, research, music, comedy, and so forth that challenges their beliefs and instills in them a value for the humanity of the people they were previously judging unconsciously (Davidson & McHugh, 2020). We should consider, however, that other researchers suggest that unconscious biases are too deeply rooted for most people to be able to change on their own or even after receiving anti-bias training (FitzGerald, Martin, Berner, & Hurst, 2019), and so organizations like libraries and schools should put rules in place to prevent workers from acting on their biases (Greenwald, 2020). I recommend trying out the set of Implicit Association Tests to see how they are structured and possibly gain insight into your unexamined biases.
The focus of this chapter is on how library workers should prepare ourselves to counter our own biases and the barriers they create. The good news is that not only can library workers prepare ourselves to counter our own biases and barriers, but we can learn to support one another to sustain ourselves despite the ways that patrons’ and colleagues’ biases can also marginalize library workers. The goal of this chapter is to introduce you to the relevant anti-bias and inclusion concepts that you are likely to encounter in library work.
Inclusion, Diversity, Equity & Accessibility
In your library work, you are likely to see an acronym like DEI or IDEA as short-hand for library workers’ efforts to remove barriers that affect some patrons and employees more than others because they are barriers created by racism, classism, sexism, xenophobia, and other biases that are built into libraries in the United States. The common components of these acronyms are the words:
Inclusion – a measure of how easily a person who wants to participate is able to participate. Inclusion is constrained by physical, financial, time-related, and cultural barriers that either directly limit a person’s access or make the person feel that they are not allowed to participate. This is an important point that recognizes that just being allowed to use a library or work in a library doesn’t help you very much if the library services, policies, spaces, and collections perpetuate systems of marginalization and power differences. To achieve our goals of inclusivity, libraries have to change to adapt to the community to avoid making the community change itself to adapt to the library.
Diversity – a measure of how much difference is valued. Diversity is sometimes mistakenly thought of as something like checking off a list, in which a representative of each “type” of person is added to the team so that each type or group gets their chance to be represented. Representation is important so that people can see people like themselves in the organization (Crist & Clark/Keefe, 2022), but is not the goal of pursuing diversity and can lead to unintended consequences. Diversity is better understood as seeking, trusting, and learning from perspectives that challenge your own because you appreciate the “community cultural wealth” (Yosso, 2005) of other communities as much as you appreciate the cultural wealth of your own community. A diverse team can more effectively solve problems because the team draws from multiple perspectives to define the problem accurately and weigh the pros, cons, and likely unintended consequences of a decision before it is implemented and as its effects are being evaluated in the long run. A truly diverse staff sees disagreements as opportunities for deeper understanding and uses their cultural awareness to work through conflict together.
Equity – a measure of how likely people are to get the same quality of service or the same chance to achieve universally valued goals. A social worker who designs training, education, and housing programs for low-income communities defines equity this way: “’systematic fair treatment of all people of all races that results in equitable opportunities and outcomes for everyone’” (Sommer, 2017, para. 8). Fair treatment is not just about what is available to patrons now. Instead, as former president of the ALA, Nancy Kranich (2007), explains, “fairness also demands remedies to redress historical injustices that have prevented or diminished access in the first place” (para. 2). Some people misunderstand fairness and think that it means the same thing as being neutral or treating everyone the same way. Equity is a concept that we can use to correct this common misunderstanding. Instead, fairness, like targeted universalism that I will cover later in this chapter, is about providing people with what they need to achieve success, even when that means that different people get different types of or levels of support to make their success possible.
Accessibility – a measure of how well people’s different impairments and abilities are anticipated so that the supports that facilitate their participation are provided by the library as a matter of course, not as a result of special requests. Barriers to patrons’ participation are not created by their impairments, rather they are created by the “material, physical, and social environments that impose limitations or create barriers for people with impairments” (Kumbier & Starkey, 2016, p. 473). Accessibility in libraries usually refers to a type of targeted universalism that includes providing technologies or designing spaces and services so that our physical, cognitive, and psychological impairments do not prevent us from getting value from the library and fully participating as either a patron or worker. Understanding this social model of disability (Oliver, 1990) helps us to see how library workers can redesign physical and online library spaces, services, and collections to reduce the barriers that are typically created because of lack of awareness or the desire to save time and money.
In this video, Dr. Jac den Houting provides a personal example that helps to illustrate how a social model of disability reframes the relationship between individual experiences and disabling social environments. If possible, please watch the video now. The whole video is great, but especially watch from 3m22s through 7m26s. If you are reading this book in print, use the URL in the References to access the video.
Critiques of IDEA
As interrelated concepts, inclusion, diversity, equity, and accessibility imply, and many library workers agree, that the way libraries and library services are designed is not neutral and not equally useful for everyone. Many who see the need for deeper changes in libraries find that the concepts of IDEA are not radical enough to accomplish the stated goals. IDEA is widely criticized because it is “committed to improving (gradually) the structure that is already in place, not radically challenging the very core logics, terms, and conditions offered and set by the structure itself” and some even conclude that these concepts will never help to transform library and information science (Cline & López-McKnight, 2023, p. 182). For example, barriers that create disability are not only physical or caused by technology. Social practices, including in our libraries, also create disability through “marginalization, stigmatization, disenfranchisement, stereotyping, and the perpetuation of […] power relations” (Kumbier & Starkey, 2016, p. 473). And many efforts are made on behalf of people with disabilities without including them in the design and assessment of the library’s offerings. But “Libraries [can] play a catalytic role in the lives of people with disabilities by facilitating their full participation in society” (ASCLA, 2001, para. 2). As library workers, we are the key to ensuring patrons’ access by working with patrons to understand the “brick walls” that they hit when using the library. Many of the barrier are invisible to those who do not share a similar impairment (Ahmed, 2012, p. 174) and library workers need to hear from patrons what changes would remove or at least lower the brick walls.
Now is a good time to skim through the Accessibility in Libraries: A Landscape Report that the ALA released in 2022. If you are reading this book in print, please go online now to find this report on the ALA website. The URL is in the References.
Diversity is another often-criticized concept. Scholars and community activists contrast diversity and affirmative action to show the weaknesses of pursuing a general increase in organizations’ “diversity.” As of 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court has blocked many affirmative action efforts that universities were using to reverse historical racial discrimination, but affirmative action remains the most effective way to change large organizations. So it is still relevant to point out the difference between affirmative action and diversity initiatives. Affirmative action efforts require “the recognition of past and ongoing wrongs” to directly and intentionally increase participation by people who have been historically excluded because of biased requirements and exclusionary norms (Kẏra, 2014, para. 5). Unlike affirmative action, diversity initiatives “benefit those in power by taking advantage of the various experiences and vantage points of different racial/gender/sexual backgrounds […] to exploit multiculturalism for its economic value” (Kẏra, 2014, para. 5). Pursuing diversity does not require the organization to make any changes to itself, it just invites people from various backgrounds to contribute to the goals the organization already has.
A focus on diversity also can have unintended consequences if library leaders do not have enough knowledge about the community they are striving to serve. For example, one of my colleagues who has since become an Access Services Librarian started out his career in libraries as one of the first two bilingual library techs hired at a library in Arizona to help the library serve patrons who speak Spanish. My colleague observed that the library director and librarians felt they had checked off a box on their diversity checklist by hiring two bilingual and bicultural techs. But they did not realize that the other bilingual library tech they had just hired was saying rude, judgmental, demeaning, and exclusionary things in Spanish to Spanish-speaking patrons. When library workers say that they are striving for diversity, we have to remember that it is not achieved simply by adding staff from different backgrounds but leaving the hierarchical values and oppressive structures the same. Treating diversity as a checklist without the additional awareness of factors that contribute to oppression and expecting one or two people on staff to take care of the library’s “diverse” patrons, replicate in our libraries the power imbalances that plague society. A truly diverse staff would have enough cultural awareness and enough trust with the community they serve, that a library worker who was demeaning patrons in any language would be noticed and managed before they could do further damage to the library’s standing in the community.
Disability Justice
Disability justice and accessibility are related concepts but should not be considered the same thing. Accessibility in library work generally refers to making accommodations so that existing structures and services are more usable for people with different types of impairments that would otherwise keep them from being able to make use of the library. Disability justice, on the other hand, is about fighting ableism, which is a common bias that many people have and which can lead to behaviors that isolate people with disabilities by disregarding or avoiding their presence in, as well as their influence on, our organizations. Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha (2018), a disability justice activist and artist, explains her experience trying to get leaders of organizations to understand that accessibility is not enough:
I’ve been asked to do disability and access trainings by well-meaning organizations that want the checklists, the ten things they can do to make things accessible. I know that if they do those things, without changing their internal worlds that see disabled people as sad and stupid, or refuse to see those of us already in their lives, they can have all the ASL [American Sign Language] and ramps in the world, and we won’t come where we’re not loved, needed, and understood as leaders, not just people they must begrudgingly provide services for. (p. 76)
Piepzna-Samarasinha (2018) challenges able-bodied people to fight their internalized assumptions about people with disabilities, including the common “deficiency model by which most people view disability [and] disabled people as a lack, a defect, damaged good, in need of cure” (p. 69). One of the ways she counters able-bodied people’s assumptions is by sharing examples of the “cultures, skills, science, and technology” that are the things “disabled people could know […] that the abled don’t” (p. 69). Some of the “crip skills” that Piepzna-Samarasinha enumerates (2018) include:
Crip emotional intelligence means not taking it personally sometimes when another disabled person is short with you, is fumbling for words, is frustrated. […] I’m talking about the ways we start from the assumption that someone might be dealing with a lot of pain or facing a seven-layer cake of ableism and impairments. (p. 70)
It’s not assuming. Anything. It’s always asking […] It’s understanding that each disabled person is the expert on their own body/mind. (p. 70-71)
Crip emotional intelligence is understanding isolation. […] How being isolated, being shunned, being cut off from the social world of community is terrifying because you know that it can literally kill you. And that being alone […] can also be an oasis of calm, quiet, low stimulation, and rest. (p. 71)
Is the ability to read someone’s face, body language, and energy to tell that they are in pain or struggling. Is being fluent in the skills of noticing pain, fatigue, overwhelm, and trigger. (p. 72)
Is understanding that when someone does something themselves, even if it looks like it’s full of struggle, that’s not always them ‘being passive-aggressive.’ Sometimes, this is just us, hauling the groceries up the stairs, the way it looks when we do that. Sometimes we don’t want a pat on the head. Sometimes, we have learned not to depend on people who then fail to show up and complain about how hard it is to help a disabled person. (p. 73)
These and other skills and knowledge that people with disabilities have because of their experiences are one good reason why the most famous slogan to come from the disability rights movement of the 1990s is “Nothing about us without us.” The slogan is a helpful reminder that to serve people with disabilities in libraries, library workers need to work in collaboration with, not on behalf of, the experts on disability, accessibility, and justice. And the experts will always be the people living with impairments and experiencing disability. They will know the most about what they want and working in collaboration with them will allow library workers to earn trust and work against the library workers’ own ableist biases. For examples of expert-created resources, I recommend the film Crip Camp (2020) and the self-paced online course, Autism Essentials (2023). Crip Camp is an Oscar-nominated film about the people who championed the disability rights movement. And the course Autism Essentials is created by Reframing Autism, an organization “providing Autistic-developed, -designed, and -led educational opportunities and resources to the Autistic community and to their families and allies.”
Whiteness Theory
The culture of libraries is very closely tied to cultural whiteness because of the history of the US and the ways that libraries developed here. To be more specific about what we mean by whiteness in libraries, we can use the definition provided in educational materials from the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC). The NMAAHC (2021) uses this definition: “[w]hiteness and white racialized identity refer to the way that white people, and their customs, culture, and beliefs operate as the standard by which all other groups are compared” (para. 3). The NMAAHC definition of whiteness theory helps us to understand why some exclusionary library policies are so hard to get changed even when they go against a library’s stated mission.
Whiteness theory especially focuses on whiteness as a culture and the theory originated in the field of anthropology, which is the study of human cultures. But the first generations of anthropologists would never have considered studying whiteness. Anthropology is an academic discipline that originated in the late 1800s in the United States, England, and France to study the cultures of the people who the U.S., England, France, and other European countries were colonizing around the world. For most of its history, anthropology has been carried out by white researchers studying people of the global majority, meaning people who are not white. Near the end of the 20th Century, some anthropologists started to study whiteness as a culture the same way that anthropology had been studying other cultures for so long:
Instead of examining the cultures of people of color as the ‘target’ cultures [to ‘fix’ them], a whiteness study will take the culture of whiteness as its object. […] whiteness [has] its own definition and identifiable set of practices and principles […that] can be embodied by anyone, regardless of color. (Espinal, 2001, p. 146)
But even though whiteness studies have been happening for a few decades, “North American mainstream—white—culture is not accustomed to looking at whiteness or recognizing its very existence. In contemporary every-day speech and written white discourse it is indeed considered impolite and racist to discuss such a concept” (Espinal, 2001, p. 134). But if we refuse to discuss whiteness, it will continue to function in unspoken ways to limit the effectiveness of our library work because “the qualities and traits deemed of high value in the workplace align with those in power” but do not align well with the needs of the rest of us who are trying to work together to reduce oppression (Swade & Bekele, 2023, p. 199).
Though working in a service-oriented job in a library may not seem like a position of power, being associated with a large, respected organization like the library and being seen as someone who can impose punishments for not following library policies does create a power-dynamic between you and library patrons. Understanding that standards of whiteness are also adding to the power-difference between library workers and some patrons can better prepare you to anticipate possible conflicts and recover from them when they happen. We may find ourselves in a difficult situation like the one professor Lin Kaatz Chary (2018) describes confronting after a student alleged that she was racist during a conversation. The allegation itself was investigated and dismissed, but Chary explained that she still had to carefully reflect on how her “excess of pride and unwarranted self-confidence [and] assumptions based on a belief that [she] understood things that [she] didn’t” led her to be “tone-deaf and naïve about how others were seeing [her]” (para. 5).
The difference between what we mean and how we are received is jarring and can make us defensive or timid. But to provide excellent service in the library, we all have to let go of the anxiety to be perfect and the fear that someone will question us (Gordon, 2017). Based on her experience, Chary recommends “we put ourselves in perspective in the larger scope of things, we pick ourselves up, allow ourselves to grieve the pain we caused to ourselves and others, give, ask for, and allow ourselves to receive forgiveness” (para. 14). Through this work, Chary was able to “reaffirm my confidence in what I want myself to be” (para. 15) so that she could go on doing the positive work that she had set out to do. It is only through this type of reflection that we can find
the strength to be vulnerable, the generosity to hear detailed accounts of the worst of us, the courage to own up to our mistakes, the fortitude to pick ourselves up when we fail, […] and the heart and humanity to stay the course. (Gordon, 2017, para. 32)
This is what it will take to come through the challenges of serving communities of which we are not a part and keep contributing our strengths to the library where we work.
After learning about whiteness theory, you may find that you are upholding harmful white cultural norms despite your best intentions and even if the culture of whiteness conflicts with your culture of origin. Naghem Swade, a library worker who was born in Iraq and moved with her family to the US at age 7 explained that her experience of being judged and fighting for acceptance in the US inspired her to become an “active catalyst” for challenging people’s assumptions about cultural oppression but “I still find myself unconsciously playing to the expectations of mainstream society and expecting others to behave within the parameters of those false narratives” (p. 199). And Swade’s colleague, Dani Bekele, who grew up in Ethiopia until he was 16, came to realize through practicing cultural humility that
[t]he same way I yearned for others to understand who I was, I refused to accept others for who they were. Ultimately, coming face to face with the power I gave myself to define who I was, was the same power I had to pass to others to determine who they were. (p. 198)
Whiteness theory can help us to find the roots of the judgements that we use against ourselves and even against the same people with whom we earnestly want to form community. By applying whiteness theory to investigate contradictions or conflicts within our organizations, we will more accurately define the limited worldview that is built into traditional library policies. Having an accurate definition is the necessary first step toward recognizing the solution that is most likely to be effective.
Library workers in the University of Buffalo’s Equity & Social Justice Advisory Group have compiled a list of recommended resources about whiteness and librarianship where you can find more research and examples.
Targeted Universalism
Libraries are created to provide a universally valuable benefit to their community. The level of services available are generally not officially increased or decreased based on a patron’s personal characteristics, like age, race, income, education-level, employment status, citizenship status, etc. But we know that universal benefits do not actually benefit everyone universally since people who already have things, like education or transportation, are more able to get the benefits of a universal service like the library than are people without (powell, Cagampang Heller & Bundalli, 2011). Watch this video, Targeted Universalism by the Othering & Belonging Institute, which will give you an idea of how supplementing a universal benefit with meaningful supports or design improvements can make a library truly universally beneficial by addressing the barriers that keep some people from fully benefiting. Note that the video uses Latinx students’ bilingualism as an example of a possible factor in their lower math test scores. Since the video does not clearly explain how the decision-makers in this example came to that conclusion, it can make it seem like bilingualism is an inherent barrier to learning, which it is not, or that all Latinx students are English learners, which is also not the case in most communities in California. So please note those limitations of the video and consider how you would have worked to understand the factors that contribute to the school’s failure in the example in the video to prepare Latinx students as well as it prepares other students to successfully complete math exams.
The five steps for carrying out targeted universalism are:
- Define a universal goal. This is something you want everyone to achieve or have access to. For example, everyone should be able to set up an email address so that they can apply for jobs.
- Measure or observe what percentage of the total population achieves the goal. This could include proxy measures, like what percentage of the community have high speed internet at home so that they can easily set up their email.
- Disaggregate the data to see whether and how different segments of the population are meeting the goal at different rates. For our example of setting up an email address, you might be able to predict and therefore check to see if recent immigrants, people recently released from prison, older adults, adults who did not yet finish high school, and so forth, are more likely to not have an email address than the overall community that the library serves.
- Come to understand how policies, procedures, economic structures, and institutionalized racism and other biases are creating the barriers that make it more likely that some segments of the population will be able to achieve the universal goal than others. This may include:
- reading about how other libraries have found solutions.
- surveying community members in targeted segments to find out what they need.
- using what you know about institutional and systemic biases to analyze the causes.
- Use what you learn about the causes of the barriers to either eliminate them or to provide supports. This way you can reduce the effects of barriers for the individuals or groups in your community they hurt the most. Library workers can create targeted messages about how they provide the tools and training that people need to create an email address. They can promote that message not just directly to the community but also through local organizations that are working to empower those same individuals or groups. For this reason, one of the responsibilities of library workers in Access Services is to know about the local organizations through which we can promote the targeted universal benefits our libraries offer.
Library workers’ efforts to make assistive technologies available to people with impairments that interfere with computer-use is another great example of targeted universalism. Library computers are a universal benefit, but for people with low vision or some physical limitations, just having access to a computer is not enough because the interface does not work well for them. Assistive technologies can make it possible for people with some disabilities to use computers and they include screen-reader software, resolution enlargement, Braille translator software and Braille embossers (Assistive Technology, 2015).
Rocky Herrera, an hourly library tech at Palomar College who I interviewed for this textbook, described his experience coming to a new awareness of the value of assistive technology in the library. He explained,
We get questions [from patrons] about DRC [Disability Resource Center] stuff, like accessibility. [For example,] certain programs won’t be installed on a computer and I learned a lot about that because—I don’t need that assistance but—it’s really interesting to know that they have Braille keyboards for the blind or different color settings. That’s all news to me. I didn’t know people actually needed all this because I just don’t think about it. […] I feel like I’m a pretty technology savvy person, but when it comes to accessibility, I never had to put it in my life. So learning about that is always new. […] And I think it’s great because we have a blind student who comes in this semester and you could tell that it helps him a lot to have that technology on the computer. And some of the DRC students fought for that technology to be on computers and I think that’s really great.
Rocky also described learning from patrons how the assistive technology works, because he has not been trained by the library director or by the campus information technology staff:
I feel like it’s a two-way street: we’ll teach students about certain things and we are always learning some new stuff about what they need. It makes it feel like we’re not always telling people how to do stuff. We’re learning at the same time. And that’s a big part of why I like working in libraries, because I feel like I’m learning something constantly because of all the different kind of people who come in.
Rocky also reflected on how students themselves have had to advocate for the assistive technology they need because “people who don’t have those needs wouldn’t even think about them.” And though the library and the college may have let students down by not anticipating their needs, Rocky pointed out that now that he has learned about the assistive technology,
if a student comes in with those needs, we know exactly where to have them go instead of [saying], ‘Oh, I don’t know. Let me find out,’ we know now where to lead them to, which is very helpful and it makes us seem more professional and […] they actually feel supported, which I think helps.
Rocky’s example is a reminder that targeted universalism requires us to hear and believe what people tell us about how they would like to be supported to reach their goals. And we also need to learn from our patrons how they will be affected by changes in libraries. Changes that we may think are neutral and that we assume will offer the same universal benefits may, instead, create new problems. Here is a powerful quote from a student at Castleton University in Vermont where the university leaders are considering eliminating the physical library and only maintaining a digital library, “The physical library is not a privilege, it’s my right. My disabilities cannot be accommodated digitally. Eye strain, difficulty tracking lines, blue light effects on ocular health, struggles to focus. These are not problems a screen can help with” (Rathke, 2023, para. 7-8) but, by implication, they are barriers that a well-designed library can help the student to overcome so that they can achieve the universal goal of successful degree completion.
Anti-Racism & Structural Analysis
Anti-racism is actively countering racist assumptions and includes understanding that inequities are created by social structures and the decisions made by the people with power rather than believing inequities to be the natural result of group differences. We know that people are not inherently less healthy, long-living, educated and wealthy because of their racial background, so the persistent correlations between a group’s race and the statistics of their wellbeing are evidence that systemic and interpersonal racism are the causes of the inequitable outcomes. For some library workers, their life experiences already make them aware of and skilled at recognizing racial inequity and racism. Other library workers who are not yet aware of ongoing systemic racism will need to develop their ability to recognize it and their motivation to work against it. In your own development as a transformative library worker (Morales & Williams, 2021), you are likely to become aware of the causes and effects of structural inequities in one of two ways:
- you may notice inequities and then be able to trace them back to the structural racism and other structural barriers that likely caused them
- you may first become aware of structural racism and other structural barriers and then start to understand how they are causing inequities that you had not previously noticed.
Although race is not a biological category but rather a social construction, “the assignment of value and meaning [that we give racial categories] have concrete ramifications on people’s lives” (powell, Cagampang Heller, Bundalli, 2011, p. 5). So, although race is not real in a biological sense, the effects of racism are real. Librarian Amy Sonnie, a member of the Government Alliance on Race & Equity (2018), reminds library workers that
While race-neutral approaches to library services may seem fair, colorblind or race-neutral practices often reproduce racial disparity, resulting in unfair access and outcomes. The fact that a person’s race remains a principal determinant of health, safety, education and opportunity in the 21st century, should compel libraries to focus on race and its impact on our work. (p. 6)
Some people might argue that the Civil Rights Movement and Civil Rights Laws that passed in the 20th century have weakened racism and white supremacy in the United States, but a concept called interest convergence by Derrick Bell (1980) gives us a powerful tool for analyzing why some civil rights gains have been made, while other civil rights are not protected at all. For example, libraries are no longer segregated by race as they were before, but, as you will read at the end of this chapter, library boards’ decisions about library funding are still shaped by racial inequities. Bell (1980) explains interest convergence this way: “the interest of blacks in achieving racial equality will be accommodated only when it converges with the interests of whites” (p. 523). The legal and social gains made during the Civil Rights Movement of the 20th century were only the ones that white lawmakers agreed were good for their own interests because they strengthened the United States against the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War, they created new business opportunities for some whites, they secured political power for some white politicians, and so forth. This does not diminish the accomplishments of civil rights leaders but highlights the fact that many social structures still exist to limit justice and civil rights, even in libraries.
Anti-racism includes the ability to recognize the organizational structures, policies, and standards that create racist outcomes even when the people involved in the systems do not personally seek racist outcomes. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva (2003) famously calls this phenomenon “racism without racists.” Equity trainers john powell, Connie Cagampang Heller, and Fayza Bundalli (2011) offer a useful definition of systemic racism: “historical legacies, individuals, institutions, and structures work interactively as a system to distribute advantages and disadvantages along racial lines” (p. 6). Analyzing systemic racism allows us to see the “underlying and often hidden structures that shape biases [and] create disparate outcomes even in the absence of racist actors or racist intentions” and that shape interactions between individuals, for example between library workers and patrons or between librarians and library techs (p. 5). One reason that underlying racist structures hide in plain sight is because they are multi-dimensional, a set of interconnected barriers that when considered individually may seem like they are not powerful enough to be the cause of the different life outcomes of people of different races, but when they are understood together become a clear and powerful system (powell, Cagampang Heller, & Bundalli, 2011).
Powell, Cagampang Heller, and Bundalli use the image of a bird cage to explain the power of the system of interconnected barriers: “By examining one bar of the cage, we cannot explain why the bird cannot fly” (p. 12). But when we study the way that the cage bars are “arranged in specific ways that reinforce each other” we easily understand why the bird cannot fly away even if it senses that its environment is not healthy and it would flee the area if it were not caged (powell, Cagampang Heller & Bundalli, 2011, p. 12). It is only after we become aware of the interconnected barriers that contribute to systemic racism that we can tackle the “challenge to identify the most effective ways to change or interrupt the processes that create inequity” (powell, Cagampang Heller, & Bundalli, 2011, p. 6).
For examples of how recognizing systemic racism and analyzing the levels at which racialization is happening, read Systems Thinking and Race. If you are reading this book in print, use the URL in the References to access the report by powell, Cagampang Heller and Bundalli.
Anti-racism also means actively changing our own biases and actions, based on critically reflecting on the results of our actions. Library workers who are not white may have an easier time recognizing racism and may be less prone to racist assumptions because of their own experiences. But we are all shaped by the systemic racism of the organizations within which we learn and work, so we all need to work to disrupt the racist and biased reasoning behind many of the library practices that we take for granted. When we recognize whose voices are currently drowned out or systematically ignored in our ongoing discussions about how to improve libraries, we can seek them out to inform our analysis, decisions, and actions. To understand and counter the effects of racism and related biases, library workers need “a commitment to justice-focused efforts and to forward and center the experiences and knowledge of BIPOC [Black, Indigenous, and People of Color] as valued and essential” (Leung & López-McKnight, 2021, p. 319). This is an optional video for you to watch called Allegories on Race and Racism (Note: video auto-plays) by Dr. Camara Jones (2014) in which the doctor offers four metaphors to help explain how racism functions and the differences among interpersonal, internalized, and structural racism.
The Inequitable Effects of Library Performance Standards
In the following example of a library board making decisions about library-branch funding, we will apply the concepts of inclusion-diversity-equity-accessibility, whiteness theory, targeted universalism, and anti-racism and structural analysis to illustrate the consequences of traditional policies versus the power of transformative policies.
Library governing bodies, including boards of directors, city councils, and school site councils, decide how much money each library in a system gets or how much money a library in an organization gets. The people responsible for making those decisions often wish to use criteria that they think are objective to help them make a complex and potentially controversial decision. Library boards use supposedly universal performance standards to decide whether a library should continue receiving funding or have its funding cut. This introduces white cultural assumptions about what counts as evidence into the decision-making process and can result in highly valued libraries being evaluated poorly and facing budget cuts.
Library director Isabel Espinal describes the ways that library governing bodies often equate low circulation rates (meaning fewer materials being checked out) with the assumption that the community does not value the library. But Espinal points out that although “[t]he introduction and use of circulation statistics are attempts to standardize the management of library service, to use a ‘neutral’ measure by which libraries can be compared” in fact, “using the ethnographic lens from whiteness studies reveals that this practice is not neutral” (Espinal, 2001, p. 142). Circulation data do not offer the neutral measurement of library value that library boards are looking for because labor and financial differences—which are closely associated with racial and cultural categories because of systemic racism—are factors that affect how a community consumes books and other media. For example, some neighborhoods are filled with people who have more free time to read 2-3 books and watch a few movies each week while other neighborhoods are filled with people who work multiple jobs to make rent or mortgage payments, leaving them without much time to read best-sellers and watch DVDs. For these reasons, comparing circulation data from one library with circulation data from another library to determine which has better social return on investment is not neutral but actually introduces a bias, called whiteness, into the decisions about which libraries should continue to receive funding and stay open. And it ignores the history of racism that we have to face when analyzing data and making decisions.
Espinal shares the following example to illustrate how quickly this mistaken assumption about the meaning of relatively low circulation rates without considering any other context can undermine a library’s future:
I had read in the local newspaper and heard from librarians and politicians that the major reason for wanting to close down the library [I had just been hired to manage] was low usage and that the low usage was demonstrated in the library’s low circulation figures vis-à-vis the other branch in the system and other branch libraries in Connecticut. One day, in a meeting of library managers, I criticized the use of circulation statistics as a way to judge how well my library was doing. I talked about how my previous job of managing a library in an almost all-white, middle-class neighborhood in a nearby town showed me that circulation numbers were culturally and socially relative, not a universal or neutral measure. I said that from my experiences in the two branches I might have a person from one neighborhood who checks out ten books per week, whereas in the other neighborhood a person might check out one book per week; yet, in both cases, as a librarian, I could feel equally successful. A white male manager in the meeting took issue with my comparison. Insisting that what I was proposing was pure nonsense and illogical, he said, ‘Don’t tell me that one equals ten. One does not equal ten!’ Others in the room either defended his point of view or were silent. I felt discredited, as if I were negating the ‘truth’ of the statistics. But I know I was experiencing the rigidity of a white perspective; there was no room for discussion of who makes these rules (white people), whose standards are used (white standards), and whose interests are served by those rules and standards (the interests of whites and whiteness). Yet, from my own experience of having worked in these two neighborhoods that were culturally very different, I saw that the circulation numbers were not a product of how well I was doing or how effective I was in my job as a library manager. Nor can these numbers alone be relied on to give a complete analysis of the library’s effectiveness. (Espinal, 2001, p. 142-143)
What Espinal experienced was not unique to her community. In fact, “[l]ack of funding in public library budgets for libraries in non-white communities has prompted communities of color to start their own libraries using outside sources of funding. Such is the case with the César Chávez Library in Oakland, California” (Espinal, 2001, p. 144). This is a good reminder that if we do not adapt libraries to the communities we serve and find meaningful ways to recognize their value, we will be left behind while communities move forward to achieve goals that they realize traditional libraries are not willing to fight for.
Conclusion: Understanding Cultural Wealth
University of California, Santa Barbara professor, Tara Yosso (2005), has created a model of community cultural wealth that can be useful for putting the ideals of IDEA, targeted universalism, and anti-racism into practice in your library work. Yosso’s model upends the “deficit view [that] Communities of Color [are] places full of cultural poverty disadvantages” and details six forms of cultural capital that a racist, xenophobic, and classist view of community often denies:
- Aspirational capital creates resiliency (p. 77).
- Linguistic capital creates the ability to communicate across cultures (p. 78-79).
- Family capital creates a commitment to community wellbeing (p. 79).
- Social capital creates networks of mutual support (p. 79).
- Navigational capital creates the ability to work through social institutions that were “not created with [them] in mind” (p. 80).
- Resistant capital creates the drive to “transform […] oppressive structures” (p. 81).
Yosso’s definition of cultural capital helps us to recognize the resources that we can build on in the library’s community to empower patrons and each other to reach our goals (Quiñonez, Nataraj, & Olivas, 2021, p. 247).
Libraries exist within political, economic, and cultural structures that maintain inequity, exclusivity, inaccessibility, homogeneity, and injustice, and the work of striving for equity, diversity, inclusion, and accessibility, is never finished. Social worker, Melissa Hall Sommer (2017) calls us to action:
We have begun work that we know has no end. This endeavor [to increase equity] will require continued growth, discovery, and at times discomfort as we challenge our policies, procedures, and practices […] We are resolved to challenging beliefs and modeling the way. (para. 11)
I hope that in the libraries where you will work, you will hear people talk about using an “equity lens” to analyze the effects of how the library’s services, spaces, and collections are designed. More importantly, I hope you will see the results of the equity-focused analysis used by library leaders to make meaningful, transformative changes. Good intentions are not enough. The effects of our work, not the correctness of our word-choices, are the meaningful measure of success.
References
Aabø, S., & Audunson, R. (2012). Use of library space and the library as place. Library & Information Science Research, 34(2), 138–149. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lisr.2011.06.002
Accessibility in libraries: A landscape report. (2022). American Libraries. https://www.ala.org/tools/sites/ala.org.tools/files/content/220928-ppo-ltc-access-landscape-review.pdf
Ahmed, S. (2012). On being included: Racism and diversity in institutional life. Duke University Press.
Alice. (2020, June 30). My experiences as a woman of color at the reference desk. Hack Library School. https://hacklibraryschool.com/2020/06/30/my-experience-as-a-woman-of-color-at-the-reference-desk/
American Library Association Council. (2017, July 5). Equity, diversity, inclusion: An interpretation of the library bill of rights. ALA Advocacy, Legislation & Issues. https://www.ala.org/advocacy/intfreedom/librarybill/interpretations/EDI
Assistive Technology: What You Need to Know Library. (2015, September 21). American Library Association. Document ID: 9ab48572-8954-1964-ed5a-8875365fdf4a. Retrieved May 4, 2023, from http://www.ala.org/asgcla/resources/tipsheets/assistive-technologies
Association of Specialized and Cooperative Library Agencies (ASCLA). (2001). Library services for people with disabilities policy. https://www.ala.org/ascla/asclaissues/libraryservices
Banerji, S. (2005, September 6). Who do you think you are? Diverse: Issues In Higher Education. https://www.diverseeducation.com/home/article/15080992/who-do-you-think-you-are
Banks, R. R., & Ford, R. T. (2011). Does unconscious bias matter? Poverty & Race, 20(5), 1–2. http://www.prrac.org/newsletters/sepoct2011.pdf
Behavior policy. (2022). Sherwood Public Library. https://www.sherwoodoregon.gov/sites/default/files/fileattachments/Library/page/279/spl_behavior_policy_approved_2022.09.pdf
Bell, D. A. (1980). Brown v. Board of education and the interest-convergence dilemma. Harvard Law Review, 93(3), 518–533. https://doi.org/10.2307/1340546
Bonilla-Silva, E. (2021). Racism without racists (6th ed.). Rowman & Littlefield.
Brook, F., Ellenwood, D., & Lazzaro, A. E. (2015, fall). In pursuit of antiracist social justice: Denaturalizing whiteness in the academic library. Library Trends, 64(2), 246-284. https://doi.org/101353/lib.2015.0048
California Civil Rights Initiative. (2008). In W. A. Darity, Jr. (Ed.), International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (2nd ed., Vol. 1, pp. 416-417). Macmillan Reference USA. https://link-gale-com.ezproxy.palomar.edu/apps/doc/CX3045300264/GVRL?u=cclc_palomar&sid=bookmark-GVRL&xid=cc6ef6fe
Chary, L. K. (2018, October 23). We’re all problematic – Here’s how to work through the issues we perpetuate. The Body is Not an Apology. https://thebodyisnotanapology.com/magazine/were-all-problematic-how-to-work-through-the-issues-we-perpetuate/
Cline, N, & López-McKnight. (2023). Beyond late fees: Eliminating access barriers for everyone. In S. R. Kostelecky, L. Townsend, & D. A. Hurley (Eds.), Hopeful visions, practical actions: Cultural humility in library work (pp. 125–136). ALA.
Crist, E. A., & Clark/Keefe, K. (2022, July). A critical phenomenology or whiteness in academic libraries. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 48(4), 1-11. https://doi-org.ezproxy.palomar.edu/10.1016/j.acalib.2022.102557
Equity & Social Justice Advisory Group. (2023). Whiteness and Librarianship. University of Buffalo Libraries. https://research.lib.buffalo.edu/esjag-reading/whiteness-librarianship
Espinal, I. (2001). A new vocabulary for inclusive librarianship: Applying whiteness theory to our profession. In L. Castillo-Speed (Ed.), The Power of Language/El poder de la palabra (pp. 131-149). Libraries Unlimited. https://works.bepress.com/isabel_espinal/5/
Fiarman, S. E. (2016). Unconscious bias: When good intentions aren’t enough. Educational Leadership, 74(3), 10–15. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1119211
FitzGerald, C., Martin, A., Berner, D., & Hurst, S. (2019). Interventions designed to reduce implicit prejudices and implicit stereotypes in real world contexts: A systematic review. BMC Psychology, 7(1), 29. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40359-019-0299-7
Gilderbloom, J. I., & Squires, G. D. (2011). Speculators, not CRA, behind foreclosures in black neighborhoods. Poverty & Race, 20(5), 5-6. http://www.prrac.org/newsletters/sepoct2011.pdf
Gordon, A. (2017, October 17). The false safety of ‘listening & learning.’ Medium. https://medium.com/@thefatshadow/the-false-safety-of-listening-learning-100bed9b7f45
Grant-Thomas, A. (2011). Implicit bias, racial inequality, and our multivariate world. Poverty & Race, 20(5), 9-12. http://www.prrac.org/newsletters/sepoct2011.pdf
Greenwald, A. (2020, June 10). Making people aware of their implicit biases doesn’t usually change minds. But here’s what does work [Interview]. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/making-people-aware-of-their-implicit-biases-doesnt-usually-change-minds-but-heres-what-does-work
Houting, J. (2019, November 1). Why everything you know about autism is wrong | TEDxMacquarieUniversity. https://www.ted.com/talks/jac_den_houting_why_everything_you_know_about_autism_is_wrong
Hurley, D. A., Kostelecky, S. R. & Townsend, L. (2019). Cultural humility in libraries. Reference Services Review, 47(4), 544–555. https://doi.org/10.1108/RSR-06-2019-0042 Note: Full text of pre-print available here.
Igarashi, T., Koizumi, M., & Widdersheim, M. M. (2023). Overcoming social divisions with the public library. Journal of Documentation, 79(1), 52-65. https://doi.org/1-/11-8/JD-12-2021-0244
Johnson, E. D. M., & Kazmer, M. M. (2011). Library hospitality: Some preliminary considerations. The Library Quarterly, 81(4), 383-403. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/661655
Jones, C. (2014, July 10). Allegories on race and racism. TEDxEmory. https://youtu.be/GNhcY6fTyBM (Note: video auto-plays)
Kranich, N. (2007, May 29). Equality and equity of access: What’s the difference? [Document ID: 171d92ef-f316-3134-8945-31eb0cbc8d39]. Advocacy, Legislation & Issues. https://www.ala.org/advocacy/intfreedom/equalityequity
Kumbier, A., & Starkey, J. (2016). Access is not problem solving: Disability justice and libraries. Library Trends, 64(3), 468–491. https://doi.org/10.1353/lib.2016.0004
Kẏra. (2014, December 10). How to uphold white supremacy by focusing on diversity and inclusion: Liberalism’s inherent racism. Model View Culture. https://modelviewculture.com/pieces/how-to-uphold-white-supremacy-by-focusing-on-diversity-and-inclusion
Lebrecht, J. & Newnham, N. (2020). Crip camp. Netflix. (The full-length film is available for free here.)
Leung, S. Y. & López-McKnight, J. R. (2021). Conclusion: Afterwor(l)ding toward imaginative dimensions. In S. Y. Leung & J. R. López-McKnight (Eds.), Knowledge justice: Disrupting library and information studies through critical race theory (pp. 317-334). The MIT Press. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/11969.001.0001
McHugh, N. A., & Davidson, L. J. (2020, July 24). Epistemic responsibility and implicit bias. PEA Soup. Archived version retrieved May 17, 2023 from https://web.archive.org/web/20210506070735/https://peasoup.princeton.edu/2020/07/epistemic-responsibility-and-implicit-bias-mchugh-and-davidson/
Montoya & Polkinghorne. (2023). Getting past ‘approachability’: What cultural humility brings to library and information education. In S. R. Kostelecky, L. Townsend, & D. A. Hurley (Eds.), Hopeful visions, practical actions: Cultural humility in library work (pp. 35-48). ALA.
Morales, M. E., & Williams, S. (2021). Moving toward transformative librarianship: Naming and identifying epistemic supremacy. In S. Y. Leung & J. R. López-McKnight (Eds.), Knowledge justice: Disrupting library and information studies through critical race theory (pp. 73–93). The MIT Press. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/11969.001.0001
National Museum of African American History and Culture. (2021). Whiteness. Talking about race. https://nmaahc.si.edu/learn/talking-about-race/topics/whiteness
Oliver, M. (1990). The individual and social models of disability. Joint Workshop of the Living Options Group and the Research Unit of the Royal College of Physicians on People with Established Locomotor Disabilities in Hospitals. London. http://disability-studies-leeds-uk/files/library/Oliver-in-soc-dis.pdf
Othering & Belonging Institute. (n.d.). Targeted universalism. Retrieved May 4, 2023, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgGcftWpwUQ
Paterson, E. (2011). Litigating implicit bias. Poverty & Race, 20(5), 7-9. http://www.prrac.org/newsletters/sepoct2011.pdf
Patin, B. (2021, June 7). Unexpected and overlooked: Understanding epistemicide in information science. Canadian Association of Information Science/l’Association Canadienne des sciences de l’information. University of Alberta, June 7-10, 2021. https://www.cais2021.ca/talk/1.patin/#:~:text=Epistemicide%20is%20the%20killing%2C%20silencing,of%20particular%20ways%20of%20knowing.
Piepzna-Samarasinha, L. L. (2018). Care work: Dreaming disability justice. Arsenal Pulp Press.
powell, j., & Godsil, R. (2011). Implicit bias insights as preconditions to structural change. Poverty & Race, 20(5), 3-4, 6. http://www.prrac.org/newsletters/sepoct2011.pdf
powell, j. a., Cagampang Heller, C., & Bundalli, F. (2011, June). Systems thinking and race: Workshop summary. https://belonging.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/TCE_Star_WP_Training%20material%20Final%20Flint.pdf
Quiñonez, T., Nataraj, L. & Olivas, A. (2021). The praxis of relation, validation, and motivation: Articulating LIS collegiality through a CRT lens. In S. Y. Leung & J. R. López-McKnight (Eds.), Knowledge justice: Disrupting library and information studies through critical race theory (pp. 241-261). The MIT Press. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/11969.001.0001
Rathke, L. (2023, February 21). College students object to all-digital library, sports shift. AP News. https://apnews.com/article/vermont-state-government-education-5af3554ac1079d508e399ea43444cc9e
Reframing Autism (2023). Autism Essentials [course]. https://reframing-autism-s-school.teachable.com/p/autism-essentials
Reis-Dennis, S., & Yao, V. (2021). ‘I love women’: An explicit explanation of implicit bias test results. Synthese, 5-6. https://philpapers.org/archive/SAMI_W-3.pdf
Smith, C. (2023, June). Building diverse collections: Options to review print and digital holdings through an inclusive lens. American Libraries.
Sommer, M. H. (2017, October 17). Embracing an equity lens in the organization and community. Standford Social Innovation Review. https://ssir.org/articles/entry/embracing_an_equity_lens_in_the_organization_and_community
Sonnie, A. (2018, April 5). Advancing racial equity in public libraries: Case studies from the field. Government Alliance on Race & Equity. https://www.racialequityalliance.org/resources/advancing-racial-equity-in-public-libraries-case-studies-from-the-field/
Swade, N., & Bekele, D. (2023). Cultural humility: A journey to radical self-love. In S. R. Kostelecky, L. Townsend, & D. A. Hurley (Eds.), Hopeful visions, practical actions: Cultural humility in library work (pp. 189-203). ALA.
Take a test. (n.d.). Retrieved May 17, 2023, from https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/takeatest.html
Tangney, J.P. (2000), Humility: Theoretical perspectives, empirical findings and directions for future research. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 19(1), 70–82.
Wolfers, J. (2017, October 6). Pinpointing racial discrimination by government officials. The New York Times. https://login.ezproxy.palomar.edu/login?auth=shibboleth&url=https://www-proquest-com.ezproxy.palomar.edu/blogs-podcasts-websites/pinpointing-racial-discrimination-government/docview/1947546498/se-2?accountid=35685
Yosso, T. J. (2005). Whose culture has capital? A critical race theory discussion of community cultural wealth. Race, Ethnicity, and Education, 8(1), 69-91. https://doi.org/10.1080/1361332052000341006
