Toward Dismantling Whiteness: Hiring and Collection Development

University of Rhode Island Libraries Diversity Initiatives Series, May 17, 2018.

Transcript

1. Toward Dismantling Whiteness: Hiring and Collection Development URI Libraries – May 17, 2018 Angela Galvan | @panoptigoth | asgalvan.com
2. Hello. I’m Angela. • Responding to and Reimagining Resilience in Academic Libraries. Journal of New Librarianship. 10.21173/newlibs/4/1 • "Contemporary Mourning and Digital Estates." Personal Digital Archiving for Librarians, Archivists and Information Professionals, edited by Brianna Marshall. American Library Association, 2017. • Soliciting Performance, Hiding Bias: Whiteness in Librarianship. In the Library with the Lead Pipe. 3 June 2015.
3. What do we mean by ‘whiteness’? • A “location of structural advantage.” (Frankenberg, 1997) • “Beliefs, values, behaviors, habits and attitudes, which result in the unequal distribution of power and privilege.” (http://www.ucalgary.ca/cared/whiteness) • An ever-shifting category of being. • Less about your skin color and more about the benefits you receive conforming to those behaviors, values, and gestures.
4. What do we mean by ‘whiteness’? • Middle class ‘scripting’ • More experience managing bureaucracy • Applying for jobs (procedural) • Interviewing for jobs (behavioral) • Assumptions about working time • Structural assumptions about your future and associated preparation
5. How does this work in libraries? • “Whiteness is relational. ‘White’ only exists in relation/opposition to other categories/locations in the racial hierarchy produced by whiteness. In defining ‘others,' whiteness defines itself.” (http://www.ucalgary.ca/cared/whiteness) • Long history of problematic issues in how information is organized. • Problems with bias in discovery systems. • Systems are built by people, so our systems are infused with bias.
6. How does this work for library leaders? • Diversity is a one time policy or problem to be solved. • Offloads work to library staff from historically underrepresented groups. • Devalues labor—service ‘doesn’t count’ for tenure/professional dossier. • Lack of diversity is driven by problems outside our control.
9. Arriving as Delivered • “If you’re the child of moneyed and educated parents, your native language lab was a dining table attended by parents with graduate degrees, and you went to schools full of comparably situated kids that left the schools of the other 90 if not 95 percent in the dust, and your sophisticated and financially enabled parents moved heaven and earth the moment you seemed to falter on the path to elite education, are you really so special for having arrived as delivered?” • Brian Mikulak, University of San Francisco Law School, • http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2018/05/a-retiring-lrw-professors- parting-letter-to-his-scholarly-colleagues.html
10. Processing Whiteness • Several internalized –isms. • Difficult work. • “But my family doesn’t have money.” • “We didn’t own slaves.”
11. Hidden Rules of Job Searches • Searches cost candidates: • Travel $ • Credit card interest • Performative gestures in wardrobe/appearance • Implied time and energy to perform for multi-day interview • Job talks should measure more than a candidate’s ability to do job talks well. • How much of a candidate’s evaluation rests on replicating whiteness?
12. Think / Share • What skills in your job did you need to have immediately to function? What could you learn at work?
13. Candidate Interviews • If diversity is a genuine core value: • we can infuse this into questions. • we will make accommodations in the interview process.
14. Candidate Interviews • “…One cannot be considered to have subject-matter expertise if one cannot position their field within a sociopolitical context.” (Sensoy and DiAngelo, 2017)
15. Hiring Decisions • “…If we cannot demonstrate that we have this commitment through our actions and their outcomes in good conscience we should stop making the claim that we are campus communities that promote diversity, respect, and inclusion.” (Sensoy and DiAngelo, 2017) • If historically underrepresented people are consistently in your applicant pool but never get offers, that’s a problem.
16. Consumption of Identities • “Grit” becomes resilience. • Libraries do this often in our marketing. • Who is served by such narratives?
17. We Can Do Better • Don’t punish ambition and enthusiasm. • We can cultivate people or we can drive them away. • Staff aren’t ordered from a menu. • Stop hiring for 1:1 experience. • What kinds of roles do historically underrepresented patrons and staff play in our narratives?
18. Discovery and Approval Plans • What entities shape how your collection develops? • Who is in the approval chain? • What happens in your discovery layer if patrons search for identity? • Are any of these platforms accessible?
19. Feelings Are Hard • It’s not the job of historically underrepresented colleagues to make you feel better about unpacking your –isms. Growth requires discomfort. It’s painful but not nearly as difficult as dealing with structures of whiteness all day, or being asked if you’re “the diversity hire." • Talk to other white people.
20. You will make mistakes. Again. Don’t explain your intent. Apologize, and move on. Genuine allyship is continuous learning.
21. Thank you! • Feelings? My inbox is open: galvan.as@gmail.com. • Talk text and slides at: asgalvan.com
22. Additional Resources • Sensoy, Ö., & DiAngelo, Robin. (2017). “We Are All for Diversity, but...”: How Faculty Hiring Committees Reproduce Whiteness and Practical Suggestions for How They Can Change. Harvard Educational Review, 87(4), 557-580. • Schonfeld, R. C., & Sweeney, L. (2017, August 30). Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity: Members of the Association of Research Libraries: Employee Demographics and Director Perspectives. https://doi.org/10.18665/sr.304524 • Bennett, Brit. (2014, December 17). I Don’t Know What To Do With Good White People. Jezebel. http://jezebel.com/i-dont-know-what- to-do-with-good-white-people-1671201391
23. Additional Resources • Matthew Reidsma, “Algorithmic Bias in Library Discovery Systems,” Matthew Reidsma (blog), March 11, 2016, https://matthew.reidsrow.com/articles/173 • Noble, S. U. (2012). Missed connections: What search engines say about women. Bitch Magazine, 54, 36-41. https://safiyaunoble.com/research-writing/ • April Hathcock’s recommended reading list: https://aprilhathcock.wordpress.com/recommended-reading/ • Sadler, B., & Bourg, C. (2015). Feminism and the future of library discovery. https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/107929