Abstract
Keywords
With 86% of academic librarians identifying as white 1 (American Library Association [ALA], 2012), academic librarianship is one of the whitest areas of academe, even whiter than instructional faculty who make up 75% of the professoriate (National Center for Education Statistics [NCES], 2020). Whiteness is further exacerbated as 83% of governing boards and 86% of administrative positions are held by people who identify as white (Betts et al., 2009). Consequently, and as a direct reflection of the wider higher educational landscape, library collections, spaces, cultures, values, and ways of knowing sustain whiteness (Brown et al., 2018; Espinal et al., 2018; Oates, 2020).
While libraries and the professoriate have remained strikingly white, the number of Black faculty is abysmally low, and has remained so even as the number of Black students has increased. From 1976 to 2016, the percentage of Black faculty only increased from 4.4 to 6% (National Center for Education Statistics [NCES], 2018). During the same period, Black students saw a 5% increase in enrollment, from 10 to 15% by 1992, then a slight drop to 14% by 2016 (NCES, 2018; Perna et al., 2006). Today, 43% of Black students who enter higher education enroll at community colleges, and over 50% of enrollments are from Native American and Latino students (American Association of Community Colleges [AACC], 2021). Asian and Pacific Islander students account for 38% of enrollments at 2-year colleges (AACC, 2021). However, the number of Black faculty at community colleges is not in parity with the number of Black students as they are just 7.9% of all community college faculty American Association of Community Colleges [AACC], 2018). Studies show that all students, particularly Black students, benefit from having Black faculty (Fountaine, 2012) and with the large numbers of students of Color enrolled at community colleges, there is a need to have more Black faculty at these institutions (Cross & Carman, 2022).
In academic libraries, just 5.4% of librarians are Black (ALA, 2012). Spurred by the discontent and advocacy of Librarians of Color (LoC), organizations such as the American Library Association (ALA) and the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) responded to the racial and cultural disparities within the profession with diversity initiatives aimed at recruitment. The ALA’s Spectrum Scholarship seeks to recruit underrepresented groups to libraries, while the ACRL’s Diversity Alliance focuses on recruitment of librarians at postsecondary institutions. Still, after years of planning, fundraising, and implementation of diversity initiatives, the goal of the diversification of the profession has not progressed.
One reason is the lack of intentional efforts at retention (Minter & Chamblee-Smith, 2018; Walker, 2015). According to the ALA (2007), 26.6% of Black librarians—in this case all Black library workers—left the profession between the years of 1990 and 2000. The report emphasized that attrition of Black library workers could not “be completely accounted for by retirement” (p. 11). Outside of the support of these predominately white organizations, Black librarians worked tirelessly to address the epistemological, pedagogical, and cultural implications regarding the lack of Black librarians in the profession (Hunt, 2013; Josey, 1970) and their absence from leadership positions in libraries and professional organizations.
Educational and cultural pioneers like Vivian Harsh (Chambliss, 2021) and Dr. E. J. Josey (Chancellor, 2020) were pivotal in the struggle to provide services and resources to Black communities and the Black librarians who served them. Dr. Josey extended his vocation beyond academe in his relentless advocacy for representation of Black librarians in national library associations (Chancellor, 2020) as he understood the race problem influenced the cultural and economic realities of Black communities (Du Bois, 1902). A strong, courageous, and formidable proponent of educational access to Black communities, he pressed the ALA to extend the full benefits of membership to their Black members and colleagues.
Black Librarians in Academic Libraries
In her reflections on surviving and thriving in academic libraries, Oates (2018) reported on the pitfalls that Black librarians, particularly Black women, must avoid to have a successful career in librarianship. As noted in her chapter, much of her success was due to the rarity of having a tenured Black woman as her supervisor, and later, as her mentor. However, even with the support and guidance from a tenured Black woman, it was not enough to navigate the well-designed systems of whiteness and white supremacy in academic libraries (Leung & López-McKnight, 2021). There are simply not enough Black academic librarians to take on the labor that affects our physical, emotional selves as well as our psyches.
Even so, Black academic librarians continue to write about their experiences as practitioners, administrators, and Library and Information Science (LIS) educators. From their scholarship, they report a litany of racial macroaggressions (Oates, 2020), toxic work environments (Cooke, 2019) apathetic library administrators and colleagues (Cooke, 2019; Hill, 2019), isolation (Neely, 2018b), disrespectful students (Irvin, 2019; Oates, 2020), violence (Oates, 2023a), and dehumanizing and demoralizing encounters in their professional workspaces (Irvin, 2019; Neely, 2018a; Oates, 2023a).
Through their stories, libraries are rarely the safe, progressive, and liberating spaces purported by the mostly white profession. Ettarh (2018) defined this conflation as vocational awe where the values, intentions, and structures of the profession are assumed to be intrinsically virtuous. In this way, librarianship is above reproach and does not require introspection from its members. Thus, corrections to systemic issues are concealed under assumption of noble intentions in a sacred vocation (Ettarh, 2018).
However, the stories of Black librarians counter these assertions as to provide a more accurate representation of the practices and values of the profession. As Black academic librarians employ more critical frameworks such as critical race theory, counterstories from practitioners and scholars emerge as to excavate their experiences and of their communities (Gray, 2019), and provide evidence that shows perspectives of libraries that are rarely explored and often overlooked (Oates, 2020). One may easily understand this through the silences of the larger profession and the refusal to engage scholars of Color’s research on whiteness and white supremacy in their roles as practitioners, administrators, and LIS faculty (Espinal et al., 2018). Given whiteness’ predisposition to center itself and its desire to dominate (Gusa, 2010), the failure to acknowledge the scholarship of those who suffer racial animus serves to perpetuate the myth of neutrality.
The domination of spaces, curriculum, collections, and what counts as knowledge is pervasive in academic libraries as it mirrors the promotion of whiteness as default (Bowers et al., 2017; Gusa, 2010). Counterstories allow Black academic librarians to name and define their experiences within academe using language, expressions, and stories to teach, explore, and make sense of their lived experiences (Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995).
Agbim (1994), a Black librarian and former Chief Librarian at LaGuardia Community College (LCC), wrote about her experiences as a library administrator in an urban community college library. She acquired her first professional library position quite easily—immediately after finishing library school—and revealed that her career was “mostly exciting and rewarding” (p. 179). She described her racialized experiences as a foreign-born African woman as subtle racism and included examples of having her intelligence questioned due to her accent, working harder to prove herself, and showing great patience in her actions and responses. Her white colleagues ascribed her with outsider status due to her accent while also situating her as more preferable to deal with than their Black Americans colleagues. In another study, Porter et al. (2018) examined the emotional labor of women of Color librarians at 2-year colleges. From their study, they found that the racialized and gendered environments of community college libraries require additional emotional labor for women of Color. Incidents with disrespectful students, unresponsive communication with teaching faculty, lack of decision-making among workers with lower status, and a perceived lack of authority affected the amount of emotional labor required to maintain the “standard” of their organizations. Emotional labor included managing their emotions despite expectations to increase capacity when they were already overworked, as well as concealing their discomfort of negative encounters with colleagues or library users.
As librarians and LIS educators at 4-year colleges and research universities produce scholarship on the experiences of Black librarians and other people of Color, the experiences of Black, Indigenous, Librarians of Color (BILOC) at public, 2-year colleges are mostly unknown (Oates, 2020). Community college libraries and their workers are mostly unnoticed in the literature on academic libraries (Leeder, 2013; Oates, 2023b) and in the broader context of the higher education system. There is a noticeable gap in critical scholarship on racism as experienced by Black faculty at community colleges.
As faculty of Color contend with institutional cultures that press them to prioritize their professional lives over their personal identities and realities, faculty of Color often experience a “divided self” that sidelines their own values and professional goals (Levin et al., 2013, 2014). The perception by Black faculty that community colleges are imbued with whiteness forecasts a troubled, rocky future for their success and advancement (Levin et al., 2013). The purpose of this study is to investigate the experiences of Black librarians at public, 2-year institutions in the U.S. in order to have a better understanding of how they navigate, cope, and succeed amongst the challenges of academic librarianship. As an issue of faculty and given the dearth of literature on community college libraries and the Black librarians that work in them, this study sought to answer the following question:
What are the experiences of Black librarians at public, 2-year colleges?
Theoretical Frameworks—Critical Race Theory
A theoretical framework that derived from Critical Legal Studies (CLS), Critical Race Theory (CRT) examines racism as part of the American (U.S.) law system with the intention of dismantling racism and other forms of subordination (Matsuda, 1991). Legal scholars Derrick Bell, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Richard Delgado, Lani Ganier, and Charles Lawrence realized that laws neither transformed or prevented social and economic inequities for racially minoritized groups, but mostly served to maintain oppression and marginalization (Taylor, 2016). The disparity between the application of laws and the sustained oppression of Black people showed the resolve and commitment of white supremacy through its systems (Bell, 1992a). The inability to increase the number of Black people in the labor and educational systems through laws like affirmative Action (Bell, 1988) and the extreme differences in the sentencing of Black defendants in the criminal justice system (Crenshaw, 1991) were, and still are, considerations for these legal scholars, which led to them to a critical race theory.
Through a collective identity and collective effort to expose the failures of the legal system, CRT scholars’ individual writings about how U.S. law is applied to Black people and Black defendants showed structures purposely designed to disenfranchise (Taylor, 2016). The tenets of CRT are racism as normal, interest convergence, critique of liberalism, storytelling, whiteness as property, and intersectionality. However, I did not use each tenet of CRT. Instead, I looked at the literature on academic libraries, Black faculty, Black librarians, and community colleges to choose tenets that might yield a better understanding of the experiences of Black community college librarians. I used the following tenets of CRT to guide this study: racism as normal, whiteness as property, and storytelling.
Racism as normal asserts racism as an everyday occurrence. Through racism, white supremacy is seamlessly embedded into global systems that offer domination, power, and wealth to whites (Taylor, 2016). Harris’ (1993) exploration of racial identity and its relation to property led to the creation of a whiteness as property framework. Whiteness as property demonstrated the transformation of whiteness from a racial identity (human) to whiteness as property (state of ownership). Harris described four functions of whiteness as property: rights of disposition, rights of use and enjoyment, reputation and status property, and the absolute right to exclude. From whiteness as property, I used two of the four functions of whiteness: the rights of use and enjoyment, and the absolute right to exclude. Lastly, CRT also promoted the tenet, storytelling, as both pedagogy and as a way of knowing (Bell, 1999). Along with being a method of teaching, storytelling also serves as a method to help one gain understanding, as well as a site of resistance (Solórzano & Yosso, 2016). Stories about and from racially minoritized people may decenter whiteness as they seek to bring marginalized peoples to the center of the story (Morrison, 2017).
Methodological Approach—Critical Race Methodology in Education
As CRT developed throughout the legal profession, scholars in other disciplines found that its analyses of race, racism, and power were adaptable to their specific areas of study. In the educational field, scholars saw clear relationships between the structures (race and property) of racism and how they manifested in schooling, particularly primary through secondary grades (Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995). Scholars studying P-16 agreed that one of the major issues in how racially minoritized students are perceived and treated is that research often approaches their cultures from a deficit perspective (Anzalduá, 1990) perpetuating narratives of a continuous lack by which resources are rejected or underutilized by these populations (Yosso, 2005). These majoritarian stories serve to disparage the cultures and values of people of Color while legitimizing the inherit value and virtuousness of whiteness (Solórzano & Yosso, 2016).
Thus, a critical race methodology (CRM), the analytical tool for this study, was developed to foreground the theoretical framework and methods in the analysis. Informed by CRT, CRM recognized how race and racism intersect with other forms of oppression such as gender, class, immigration status, and sexuality (Solórzano & Yosso, 2016). CRM challenges dominant ideology that purports neutrality, merit, and colorblindness as these assertions produce deficit-informed practices and research on marginalized groups. Experience as a way of knowing is centered in CRM. The lived experiences of people of Color and the various methods they use to convey such experiences are acknowledged as epistemological and pedagogical tools (Solórzano & Yosso, 2016). Lastly, CRM understands that the contexts in which one experiences race and racism requires historical and contemporary analyses from a transdisciplinary approach.
Black Americans’ history with storytelling long precedes the captivity and enslavement of their ancestors (Bell, 1992b). Oral history was often the primary way in which Africans preserved their tribal and familial histories (Banks, 2014), and even today the tradition of storytelling is centered in how Black Americans know, teach, describe, and understand their experiences (Roberts, 2018). Counterstories are important for oppressed people as they illuminate the experiences of those who are rarely invited to tell their stories (Solórzano & Yosso, 2016).
Given the gap in knowledge of the experiences of Black academic librarians and the 2-year colleges they work in, I investigated how they experience and make meaning of their lives as community college librarians. Thus, I used CRM’s composite counterstory (CCS) to reconstruct the stories of the narrators. The participants of the study are referred to as narrators as they are the main architects of the construction of their experiences. CCS is a type of counterstory in which the data are creatively organized and reconstructed through a composite counterstory.
Solórzano and Yosso (2016) described composite stories as data that detail the “racialized, sexualized, and classed experiences of people of color” (p. 134). Composite characters are used to represent the narrators’ experiences and to place them within social, historical, and political contexts which helps to highlight the data and may include interviews, poetry, music, speeches, and other forms of expression (Solórzano & Yosso, 2016). This study’s focus on Black librarians, based on the dearth of research on their experiences in community college libraries, will provide a strong basis for understanding the experiences of these educators.
Methods
With just 5.4% of Black librarians working in academic libraries (ALA, 2012) I understood that recruitment might be a challenge. The restriction to Black librarians at community colleges would further complicate my desire to investigate their experiences as they are often isolated and marginalized even within the profession (Oates, 2023b). However, I hoped this would somehow influence their decision to want to share their life in libraries.
I used purposeful sampling as I wanted to recruit narrators who could provide rich descriptions about their lived experiences (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). Purposeful sampling was appropriate and advantageous to the study as it complimented the small sample size and allowed me to direct my efforts toward the intended demographic of the study (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). The criteria for participation in this study were 1) narrators must identify as Black or African American, 2) be a credentialed librarian who works or worked in a public, 2-year college, and 3) work or have worked at least fifteen hours per week as a professional librarian at a community college. I specified the requirement for 15 hours as I wanted to only track those librarians who spent a considerable amount of time in their libraries. I recruited the narrators using several tools.
First, I searched the African American Library Directors (AALD) database to identify possible narrators and limited my search to librarians who worked at community colleges. I sent individuals recruitment emails to each potential narrator. Additionally, emails were also sent to librarians who are in my professional network who I knew either currently worked at a community college or worked at a community college in the past. While direct emails consisted of the largest part of the recruitment process, I also used library listservs for recruitment.
I posted the call for participation on the Association for College & Research Libraries (ACRL), Black Caucus of the American Library Association (BCALA), and community college library listservs. Lastly, I posted the recruitment flyer on my personal Twitter account using hashtags: #Blacklibrarians, #communitycollege, #academiclibraries, and #BCALA. The Center for the Study of Community Colleges (CSCC) and the Association for the Study of Higher education were tagged in retweets by other educators in my network. At the end of recruitment, four narrators agreed to tell their stories about their experiences in community college libraries.
Overview of the narrators
Four self-identified Black American librarians consented to participant in this study. The number of years of experience as a professional librarian ranged from 3 to 9 years. All but one had faculty status at the community colleges where they were employed. Two of the three who had faculty status acted as supervisors to paraprofessionals, whereas the other did not supervise any staff or faculty. Two of the four librarians worked exclusively as academic librarians during their professional careers, with one working exclusively at academic libraries both as a student and a librarian.
For all four librarians, more than half of their experiences as professional librarians were in community college libraries. Interestingly, each librarian worked in a public or academic library as an undergraduate and attributes their experiences as student-workers as an influence in their consideration of librarianship as a career. Three of the four librarians are from the southern region of the United States with educational backgrounds in public, state schools (primary through post-secondary) and one is from the northeast region with an educational background in private schools (through high school) and public institutions for college.
Data collection
In keeping with the emphasis on storytelling as pedagogical and epistemological tools, interviews were the primary method for data collection. Interviews provide narrators a way to make meaning of their experiences through conversation (Seidman, 2013) as they center the individual “without denigrating the possibility of community and collaboration” (p. 13). As a Black librarian who worked in a community college library, I stood alongside the narrators as a co-narrator, as a witness to the stories that are often unheard and as a form of resistance (Solórzano & Yosso, 2016). I conducted two, semi-structured interviews for 90 minutes; however, each interview exceeded 90 minutes as I encouraged the narrators to elaborate as much as needed for each question. The interviews were recorded via Zoom and an audio recorder (as a backup) in case of technological issues. After each interview, the audio recording was uploaded to, Rev, an online transcription service for transcription.
A two-sentence technique aided in the semi-structured interviews as I was able to refer to the questions in the interview protocol, not necessarily in the order they were listed, but sometimes based on the interest of the narrators and/or how they answered the previous question. With the two-sentence technique, questions (second sentence) are preceded by statements (first sentence) which include the rationale for the questions (Kim, 2016). This aided a more conversational, relational type of inquiry where the narrators were able to reflect on the context of the question, thus producing more detailed memories of their experiences (Kim, 2016). Some questions for the narrators were to: recall their tenure and promotion experiences, describe a time in which they felt ignored or erased, describe their hiring experience, give an example when they felt attacked or unsafe. During the interviews, I took notes as the narrators shared their stories. At the conclusion of each interview, I sent an interview summary for narrators to review as I wanted to make sure that I captured the essence of our conversation, their stories, and descriptions correctly.
Data analysis
Analytic memos were helpful in the process as I included my observations and perceptions of the interviews, thoughts about my own experiences (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016), and how my willingness to share my experiences influenced our rapport and subsequent conversation.
A profile, based on the memos, observations, and the interview data was created for each narrator as I wanted to ensure that their voice was distinct and representative of the data. CRT is embedded as a theory and method in CRM (Solórzano & Yosso, 2016); thus, I created a provisional coding list based on the theoretical framework and extant literature on academic librarians of Color. Then, using the transcripts of two of the narrators, I analyzed the text using the provisional codes while adding new codes when necessary. This preliminary analysis showed how well the theory informed the data.
Next, I conducted a thematic analysis of all the transcripts. According to Kim (2016), with thematic analysis “the emphasis is on ‘the told’, the events or the content of the narratives” (p. 212). This is important to remember as the text alone could point to different meaning (Vaismoradi et al., 2016); however, my process of creating summaries, profiles, and analytic memos provided clear context in which the stories were constructed. As themes emerged, I consulted the analytic memos to see the connection of stories.
Vaismoradi et al. (2016) recommended four phases of theme development: initialization, construction, rectification, and finalization. Reading the transcription, coding, and memos were part of the initialization stage and aided in my immersion of the data and understanding recurring ideas (Vaismoradi et al., 2016). The construction phase was comprised of me looking across and within the data to identify similarities and compare how frequent certain codes were found in the data, while the rectification process focused on relating the themes to literature (Vaismoradi et al., 2016). Lastly, the finalization stage encompasses the composite counterstory in which the themes and their connections to each other were developed through a story line. (Vaismoradi et al., 2016).
Positionality
I come to this study as a passionate advocate for racial diversity in academic libraries. For sixteen years I have worked in various academic libraries in the southwest, southern, and northeast regions of the United States. From Library Resident to the Director of the Library, I have worked in various institutional types spanning community colleges to research universities (research intensive). The roles and responsibilities of my positions changed with every new job title; however, one area that have remained consistent is the astonishing levels of hostility and dysfunction that is tolerated—and sometimes supported in academic libraries. Apart from one institution, which thankfully only had occasional organizational issues, I noticed that libraries operate very differently than how they portray themselves.
As a child growing up in a rural, southern town, I had many positive experiences at our public library. The same could be said for the school media center, too. I really enjoyed the library spaces and felt welcomed. However, my experiences as a library worker appeared to be just the opposite from my childhood memories. Whereas the white librarians at my public library and school library were helpful and welcoming, I perceive the culture (whiteness) of academic libraries to be pretentious. Where are all the nice librarians who declared themselves as defenders of privacy (Patriot Act) and front-line warriors to access? As a librarian, I had not experienced this level of security and unity of thought. Instead, I experienced and witnessed toxicity, aggression, and others’ dysfunctional behaviors.
My thoughts about access led me to questions about why there are so few Black librarians. As an alumna of the only Library Science program at a Historically Black College and University (HBCU), I saw Black librarians who worked as practitioners and administrators. What about this pipeline issue I keep hearing about? Why was I the only Black librarian my students and some faculty ever met? Why has our profession failed to retain Black library workers despite efforts from national library organizations? Through my own experiences, I had some suspicions as to the attrition of Black library workers; however, as someone new to community colleges libraries, I felt that I did not know enough about the sector and its workers to understand how my experiences might be explained. Thus, I embarked upon this study. I, too, am a Black librarian at a public, 2-year college.
Trustworthiness
Given my proximity to the topic under investigation, I engaged several techniques and practices of trustworthiness. One important aspect of the research process was establishing trust and rapport with the narrators. Kim (2016) wrote there should be balance of trust and rapport between the interview and interviewers. Rapport is viewed not only as a means to create a relational understanding but as “as a means to generate data of a high quality” (Goudy & Potter, 1975 as cited in Kim, 2016, p. 162).
Due to the low number of Black academic librarians, I was especially concerned about making sure that the narrators felt confident about the confidentiality of their identities in the text. My intention was to ensure that I used every tool available to conceal their identities and protect their stories. The narrators were encouraged to choose pseudonyms (in the online form) when they expressed interest in participating in the study. Their chosen pseudonym was used in subsequent communications (interviews, emails, interview summaries, transcripts, etc.). I conducted both interviews via Zoom videoconferencing software. As expected and encouraged, each narrator chose off-campus locations for their interviews as they wanted to be able to speak openly about their experiences.
Member checking was crucial to this study as I wanted to accurately represent the feelings, memories, and context of their stories (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). I followed Sandelowski’s (2008) recommendation of using member checking during and after data collection to get a more accurate understanding of the context of the data. Member checking gave the narrators a chance to correct or affirm my interpretations of their stories. After each interview, I wrote analytic memos of my thoughts on the interview, stories, and my own reflections of library work and environments. The memos were helpful in creating the interview summaries for each narrator for their review and to check for accuracy.
Reading Composite Counter-Story and Setting the Scene
The four themes were reconstructed in the Composite Counter-Story (CCS) through three composite characters. A composite character may represent the story of one or more narrators (Cook & Dixson, 2013). As with other CCS, the reconstructed narrative is developed through the transcripts, interview summaries, narrator profiles, analytic memos, member checking, and other data (Cook & Dixson, 2013; Solórzano & Yosso, 2016). Although the location and context in which the narrators are placed are fictionalized, they are influenced by data collected through their stories and profiles. In reading the CCS, consider what Solórzano and Yosso (2016) wrote: Counterstorytelling is different from fictional storytelling. We are not developing imaginary character that engage in fictional scenarios. Instead, the “composite” characters we develop are grounded in real-life experiences and actual empirical data and are contextualized in social situations that are also grounded in real life, not fiction. (p. 136)
The story begins as Monalisa, Melody, and Robert prepare for a symposium in which they are the panelists. Monalisa balances her world through a combination of yoga and Jesus. She is both fierce and kind, but no one can accuse her of being of two minds. Her goal is to choose peace, when at all possible, but not at the expense of her integrity and pride. Melody left community college libraries and does not have any interest in ever returning. She is strategic in her career choices and desires to be a leader in the profession. She took a position as an administrator in a university library so that she can have some authority in changing the culture of academic libraries.
Robert is almost used to the surprised reactions he gets when students and faculty realize he is a librarian. It’s not an everyday occurrence that one meets a Black, man librarian. He is reserved and has a good sense of humor. Although he really enjoys his job, there was a time when he thought he would leave the profession. Through his conversations with Monalisa and Melody, he has just begun to reflect on his experiences in libraries. As you read the counterstory, listen for the tenets (racism as normal, whiteness as property, storytelling) and how they narrators make meaning of their stories. Additionally, listen to the stories to understand how testimony teaches and inspires the hearers (Solorzano, 1998), and disrupts the narratives meant to demean and destroy (Solórzano & Yosso, 2016).
Where Hearts and Minds Meet: A Counterstory
Melody looked at her watch as she navigated the narrow sidewalk. Where were all these people headed? She picked up her pace but not before hopping over a puddle and a sizable crack in the concrete. Her kitten heels would not have survived the water or the impact, so she opted for a graceful hop over what would have been an epic disaster. As she walked into the doors of the Melantrope Hotel, she looked for the signage for the meeting rooms. At the same time, Robert and Monalisa called out to her. “Hey, Melody! The room is over here.” Relieved that she wouldn’t have to search for the room, Melody waved and joined them as they walked down the hallway.
“It’s so good to see y’all. I wasn’t sure if I was going to get here in time as the last session was so good, I had to pull myself away,” said Melody. Monalisa gave her a nod of agreement as she, too, enjoyed many of the sessions at the conference. As she pulled the door open, Monalisa said, “I am so glad to be here—I almost didn’t come.” Robert saw the look on Monalisa’s face, but more importantly, he noticed her tone, and based on what he heard, he knew there was a story. “Please don’t tell me they pulled the same foolishness that your last supervisor did?” asked Melody.
“No, my new supervisor took it to another level, into the next stratosphere,” said Monalisa. “Umm, what did I miss?” asked Robert. As they sat down at the table and pulled out their laptops, Monalisa filled Robert in on the happenings of her last place of employment.
“Remember that I told you I recently accepted new a position at You Tried Community College? What Melody mentioned was a situation I experienced when I worked at Kold College. I requested time off so that I could attend a conference. I specifically requested the time to be counted as professional development because it was work related. My supervisor approved my request as professional development because I paid out of my own pocket. She didn’t want me to go but she probably figured it wouldn’t look good if she refused the only Black person in the department to attend the conference. She never provided me financial support for my conference expenses. While my white colleagues received departmental funds to attend conferences—even for conferences that were outside of their primary research or subject area, I had to use my already meager salary to pay for my professional development. I wasn’t going to let her unwillingness to support me weight on me. Instead, I just paid out of pocket.”
Robert had a puzzled look on his face as he calculated the total of his conference registration, travel, and hotel for the current conference. His department approved to pay for all his expenses, but if they hadn’t, he would not have considered participating. “I’m sorry that happened to you,” said Robert. “Oh, I haven’t finished the story,” said Monalisa. “Some time after I attended the conference, I saw my leave statement from HR and found that the days that I requested as professional leave were used as vacation days.” “Wait a minute,” said Robert. “Umm hmm,” hummed Melody. “That is exactly what I said when I saw the statement,” said Monalisa. “I immediately contacted HR and they told me that my supervisor only approved my leave as vacation and that I would need to submit a report for every session I attended and connect the sessions to my job duties.”
“And how did you respond?” asked Melody. “I didn’t go back and forth with them. I’d rather just get a new job. And that’s what I did! I learned a great lesson though. If I don’t see it in writing and I don’t see somebody’s signature, with a dollar amount on it—it never happened. You will never catch me out here slipping again and I don’t like to play these games. I don’t have time for all of this. Like, no, I grew up in the hood and I don’t do all this nonsense.”
“Wow, that’s wild,” said Robert. “I’m afraid to know what happened with your new position.” “Let’s just say, the hits keep coming,” said Monalisa. “Given my history with supervisors who refuse to acknowledge my work and my requests for professional development, I decided to apply for a grant. In a department meeting, my director told the library staff she did not have money in the budget for professional development. Since I am not used to monies being available to me, I applied for and was awarded a grant.
That’s to be commended, right?” “I’m guessing the answer is no,” replied Robert. “You’re right again, Robert! Not only did she not congratulate me for securing external funding, but she actually reprimanded me for not ‘telling’ her that I would apply for the grant. She lectured me as if I was a child who had done something without her blessing. It was like an out of body experience! Then, she revealed the real reason for her tirade. The travel grant I was awarded would allow me to attend a conference that one of my colleagues, who is white, usually attended. My director was upset that she would have to explain, to my colleague, why I could attend the conference and she couldn’t.”
Silence permeated the space between them. “This is too much,” said Robert. “And to make matters worse,” continued Monalisa, “my white colleague summoned me before I went to the conference and lectured me on whom I could and could not talk to while at the conference.” Robert’s mouth was open, and Melody was shaking her head. “The grant covered that conference, and I used the rest of the monies for this conference. That’s the reason I’m here, and to tell you the truth, I wasn’t sure if I would be approved to come here, even with the grant. The tension in the department is thick and neither of them talk to me anymore. Not even hello.”
“It’s going to be difficult to manage your current workplace, Monalisa, as it isn’t possible to do your job and not communicate with your director or supervisor,” said Melody. “It’s working so far,” responded Monalisa. “It’s not ideal but I prefer to be left alone to do what they hired me to do.” Melody understood Monalisa’s reaction and empathized with her. “I’d rather they ignore me,” said Monalisa. “In this way, I can avoid constantly being labeled the angry Black woman.”
“Add aggressive to that list,” said Melody. “I had never been called aggressive before my job at the community college; however, my director would always claim that I was so aggressive. Anything I said to her, I was being aggressive. I was being disrespectful. She truly disliked me, but it didn’t stop her from taking credit for my work.” Monalisa was rearranging the avocado on her sandwich when she heard Melody say that her supervisor at the community college took credit for her work. “That’s a major red flag,” said Robert.
“It was so common it almost, and I emphasize almost, became a running joke,” responded Melody. “She applied for a job at the [name] and asked me to proofread her resume. So, when she came in to bring me her resume, she was like, oh, and I used your stuff on there. So, I look at her resume, and everything I had done in the five, six years that I was at the community college, was listed on her resume as an accomplishment. Every grant I wrote. Every module I created, every class, all of that was me—but it was on her resume. She felt no way about saying, ‘Oh, I used your stuff on there’. . . “Wanted me to proofread my own stuff!” Melody laughed out loud, then continued. “Then there was the time she told me to write a grant four days before it was due and expected me to get it done. And it got done! But I had four days to write that, a week tops; and when it came time, me and [name] we’re at that library 11:30 at night finishing that grant; and I left it on her desk and I said, all you have to do a sign this and submit it—cause I was off on Fridays.” Robert sighed.
“She called me, hunted me down on Friday because she couldn’t even figure out how to submit the thing; and I had to go back on my day off. I remember her calling me—I was at the mall. She had sent me an email and I was like; well, you just have to do this part. Everything else is done—just submit it. This woman, this library director, that’s taken credit for this whole thing could not even submit that grant. And I mean, we talking basics now—logging into something, signing it, and submitting it. She couldn’t get that part done. She didn’t have to input anything. And again, when the notification comes for that grant, guess who’s sending it out all over the place. She was like, we got this grant, we did this; we worked really hard on this. And I’m thinking, we?! Even give [coworker] some credit because me and [name] were there at 11:30 at night trying to make sure numbers are right.” How did you survive?” asked Robert.
“Well, she tried her best to get rid of me, and she would have if not for the Black Vice President. She filed so many false allegations against me, and when it was time to prove that I was the problem, she never could produce any evidence. But she could produce tears, the weaponizing of the white woman’s tears.”
Robert let out a long sigh. “Now I’m triggered, Melody. I don’t think I’ll ever forget when I first experienced white woman’s tears,” said Robert. Monalisa shot him a questioning look before she continued. “Nobody really wanted to deal with her outbursts and things like that. She really tried to paint me out like I was after her job, and you know, I was fresh out of library school.” “That doesn’t make any sense,” said Robert. “It would be unheard of for a young, Black woman to get an administrator position in an academic library straight out of library school. It wouldn’t matter how many years she would have worked in libraries either.” “Absolutely,” replied Melody.
“If you are a Black woman, it doesn’t seem to matter how qualified you are or your title. There will be drama,” said Monalisa. “I became the proxy for abuse for two Black women in executive-level positions. The library director reported to one of them, and the other Black woman supervised the Black woman who supervised the library director. I guess she felt trapped as the only person she could complain about her supervisor was with another Black woman. Instead of communicating with either of them, she unleashed her wrath and dissatisfaction on the Black staff in the library. “Oh, please no,” said Melody.
“Oh, yes,” said Monalisa. “Our meetings became like a reality television show. The director and a group of white librarians, turned our meetings into gripe sessions, filled with gossip about the private lives of the two Black administrators. Do you know how it was for me mentally, and for my colleagues, to sit and hear everything from them talking about their nails, to shoes, to clothes, to questioning their credentials, to them being stupid and incompetent, and of course, they wondered how two, Black women get those positions? After the director died, they blamed the two Black administrators for her death. I mean it was just like, the cussing started with—those bitches! They killed her!
And so, there’s the library staff, other people of Color, and I will never forget. They were looking at me like, what’s this about? I was like, [name], we’re going to try to get out of here alive. I hate to say, it’s almost like they done lynched these women. And this mob here, I mean, they were in tears. It was visceral. I think that if they could have pummeled either one of them [Black women administrators] they would have. Um, but it just, it changed the whole dynamic.”
Robert was visually shaken by Monalisa’s testimony. He understood that people often didn’t control their emotions, but he just couldn’t understand why people were allowed to create such volatile environments. Who could feel safe in such a situation? He looked over at Melody who seemed far away in thought. His mind went back to a time before he submitted his tenure portfolio for tenure review. “Are you okay, Robert?” asked Melody. She saw him glance over at her as Monalisa finished her story, but her mind was occupied by all the memories from her stint at the community college.
“I’m as good as I can be,” answered Robert. “Monalisa’s story brought to mind my very painful tenure and promotion process. It reminded me how hopeless I felt after a disruptive and chaotic event with one of my colleagues. I felt shell-shocked and my nerves were rattled. Listening to y’all, I know that it wasn’t this one event that made me feel this way, but an accumulation of events, or dare I say assaults, that results in my intense response. In this instance where I was discussing my presentation for my tenure process, my colleague was so disruptive that me and the director had to leave my desk and retreat to another area to finish our conversation. I had put up with a lot up until that point, even going as far as buying noise-cancelling headphones to counter the gossip and noise that permeated our shared workspace. This time was different as my director was there and witnessed what I would call an intentional effort to interfere with our meeting. It was one of those situations that they told me that I needed to adjust; I need to “learn her” for myself. During those few months, there were days where I just did not know if I wanted to come in. It was getting to that point, cause like I said, I do like peace and quiet. Uh, and I wanted to throw my . . . [voice trailed off]. I wake up some mornings, looking up, thinking, you know, do I really want to go through this BS? Is it really worth going through all this for the opportunity to continue working at this institution?”
“Your experience could have been the inspiration for the chorus of, The Message 2 by Grandmaster Flash and The Furious Five,” said Melody (Fletcher et al., 1982). “I’d say more like, Bitch, Don’t Kill My Vibe, by Kendrick Lamar,” laughed Robert (Duckworth et al., 2012). It was a depressing time in my life but sharing my story with you, and the fact that you believe me is cathartic. So far, participating in the symposium has been a blessing.”
“Are you saying that you like us?” asked Monalisa. “Well, I wouldn’t go that far,” joked Robert. Melody yelped and clapped her hands at Robert’s quick comeback. “In all seriousness,” said Robert, “I admire all that y’all have been through and the fact that you are still able to talk about it without breaking down. As a Black man, I’ve had my share of instances where students and faculty expressed unbelief that I was a librarian. Once, students were so unconvinced that I was a librarian they looked up my LinkedIn profile for confirmation. Right in front of me! And like, Melody, I experienced how white women use tears to shift the power dynamics in their favor. Yet I can see the differences in how Black women are perceived and treated.”
“Thank you for acknowledging that, Robert,” said Monalisa. “I went to help a student one day and as I’m walking over, his whole face drops. So, I pull the chair up, you know, to try to be a little closer to him. And he was like, I don’t need your help. Then he asked me, what happened to [name], who was a white librarian that I had replaced. And I said, well, [name] no longer works here. And he was like, well, I don’t want your help. And I was like why don’t you want my help? He was like, I don’t deal with niggers. And I was like, what?! I got up and I was just like, wow, really?!
I doubt he would have been so direct with a Black man. In fact, one of my colleagues, a Black man, was spared the poor treatment I endured. Students wouldn’t even approach him if he appeared to be busy, but they didn’t have a problem searching for me or other Black women when we were helping other library users. I’ve dealt with sexism. We’ve dealt with that as females in the library when I was in [state]. Where the males make comments about us as women and call us biddies.”
Melody rolled her eyes as Monalisa ended her story. Just hearing about Monalisa’s colleagues exhausted her. She finally spoke after tossing her pen on the table. “You know, this symposium is going to change how people think about their workplaces. For too long, Black librarians at community colleges have suffered in silence, sometimes a result of them not writing about their experiences; but I also see this symposium as a call to transform our realities by reaching out and working with external partners. After listening to your stories, it is even more apparent how badly we need to form communities of practice. Thank you for starting the conversation, Monalisa. We have this room for another 30 minutes before our reservation ends. Let’s get started!”
Discussion
The narrators made meaning of their lived experiences through language, expressions, and vivid descriptions of their work environments. Four themes were found within and across the narrator’s stories: retaliation, derailment, violence (particularly epistemic violence), and gendered racism. The themes represent how the narrators understand the cultures and organizations in which they work as retaliatory, unsettling, violent, and antagonistic toward their race and gender. The themes also point to the behaviors and practices of library workers, specifically those who are professional librarians and/or library administrators.
Theoretical Framework: Racism as Normal
In the counterstory, we find the narrators listening and bearing witness to each other’s stories. They shared accounts of their experiences about their lives in libraries and how they make meaning of their experiences working at 2-year colleges. Retaliation was prevalent throughout the stories of the narrators, particularly for Monalisa as she navigated several situations of white backlash. With the tenet of racism as normal, her experiences show how embedded racism is in the everyday language, behavior, and practices of her colleagues, supervisors, and library users. While more coded language was initially used by her colleagues when talking about racially minoritized people or topics, their language became more aggressive and demeaning over time. Gendered profanity about two, Black women administrators was used during a department meeting to disparage them and to accuse them of murdering the former director.
The director’s leadership encouraged this type of bullying, described by Leiding (2010) as mobbing, as she often misused her subordinates to echo her insecurities and fears about her supervisors. Her meetings, which were more like gossip and gripe sessions, nurtured a culture of hostility, mistrust, and angst. Monalisa and the other Black staff members felt very vulnerable and unsafe in the library. Alabi’s (2015) study on racial microaggressions showed that racially minoritized people reported more instances of racial microaggressions than their white peers. These microaggressions were also carried out by a white, man student who used a racial epithet against Monalisa. Retaliation is a reliable tool used through whiteness as it “allows whites to assert superiority over those who are not white” (Gusa, 2010, p. 468).
Gendered racism was a part of each narrator’s experience. While Black women often experience many racialized and gendered encounters, Black men also experience gendered racism (Smith et al., 2020). Robert’s quiet nature did not spare him from racialized and gendered encounters. His students discounted his knowledge and legitimacy based on his body and skin color. Even though the course instructor introduced Robert as a librarian to his students, they did not believe him and looked for further proof that Robert was a librarian. Smith et al. (2020) wrote: these implicit biases can range from the trivial and comical to the viciously criminal. Rarely are African American boys and men seen in the same way that they see themselves and their loved ones know them. . .we are seen and treated as criminals. Out of place. Ignorant. Violent. Lazy. (p. 85)
To acknowledge that Black men also experience gendered racism does not negate the prevalence it factors into Black women’s personal and professional experiences. In Monalisa’s and Melody’s counternarratives, accusations of being angry and aggressive were leveled against them as evidence of them being unprofessional, unstable, and dangerous. Their attempts to defend themselves against harmful allegations gave their supervisors and colleagues ammunition to use racialized and gendered stereotypes to silence their stories and righteous anger. Studies show how these labels often occur after a microaggression (Oates, 2023a) to make the offended person seem overly sensitive (Sue et al., 2008). The actions by the perpetrators rely on narratives that Black women are inherently confrontational (Reynolds-Dobbs et al., 2008), and since they are recycled as truth, Black women, even as victims are left to replay the experiences. Racelighting, as described by Harris and Wood (2021), works in favor of the perpetrator as people of Color question their interpretation of their lived experiences and ponder a reality in which they are too sensitive.
The narrators also told stories of psychological and verbal abuse as well as epistemic violence. Melody’s counternarratives demonstrated how whiteness allows racism to go unchecked and how it is seamlessly embedded into normal, everyday experiences. Her stories illuminated epistemic violence and psychological abuse. Epistemic violence occurred when her director took credit for work and special projects. As a protective measure to keep from being fired, Melody engaged in testimonial quieting (Dotson, 2011) where she did not speak out against her director’s offense. Testimonial quieting happens when one’s way of knowing or capacity as a knower is disregarded and silenced (Dotson, 2011). Based on the historical and social positioning of Black women in the U.S., Black women regularly navigate epistemic violence (Collins, 1991) through testimonial quieting because of people who refuse to “communicatively reciprocate in a linguistic exchange due to pernicious ignorance in the form of false, negative stereotyping” (Dotson, 2011, p. 243).
As reported by Fredericks (2009), people who are victims of epistemic violence are often expected to be part of their own marginalization. Melody’s decision to not openly go against her supervisor was an act of self-preservation. While she was sure that she had plenty of evidence, she felt that whiteness would shield her supervisor from any meaningful and real consequences as it had so many times before. Thus, she sought an end to the violence through resigning from her position. Robert, too, experienced testimonial quieting through his students’ refusal to believe that he was a librarian and qualified to teach the session.
Monalisa’s experience with violence was demonstrated through her supervisor and colleagues’ refusal to interact with her. She reported how they would not even acknowledge her presence or engage with her. While she was not interested in having personal conversations with them because of their maltreatment, she was committed to the work of the library. Eventually, she realized that she was being excluded from being part of decision-making and leadership in the library. Racism as normal and whiteness as property’s right to exclude shows how the departmental culture permitted leaders and professionals (in her department) to effectively isolate Monalisa and thwart professional opportunities (projects, initiatives, etc.) that could advance her career. Thus, she sought relationships forged from her external networks to overcome challenges in her workplace.
Theoretical Framework: Whiteness as Property
Derailment was found throughout the stories of the narrators. Obstruction was shown through Robert’s counternarrative about his tenure and promotion process, the refusal to support Monalisa’s professional development, and the reprimand from her director for securing external funding. The two functions of whiteness as property (the right to use and enjoyment; the absolute right to exclude) help illuminate how the narrators were impacted by their colleagues and supervisors’ actions. Tenure and promotion processes heavily influence the retention of Librarians of Color in academic libraries (Griffin, 2013). Freedman and Vreven (2016) wrote that “among ethnic minority librarians, Asians and Black Americans experience more negative behaviors in academic libraries of higher education at a time in their careers when reappointment, promotion, and tenure processes start during a librarian’s fourth through seventh years of employment” (p. 741). Robert was challenged by his situation and even thought of quitting his job to escape the disruptive environment. His director’s lack of action to address the organizational culture contributed to his feelings of hopelessness.
In Monalisa’s stories we saw her director’s refusal to offer financial support, underhanded tactics in reporting her conference attendance as vacation time, and lack of support when she was awarded external funding as ways to stifle her advancement. Professional development is crucial for many librarians of Color as it enlarges their professional networks, provides opportunities with educators from different sectors and disciplines, and expands their view of themselves beyond the confines of the profession (Oates, 2018). Without these experiences, many Black librarians find themselves isolated in their work (Neely, 2018b), constrained in leadership positions where one’s authority is contested (Epps, 2008), and left without options for meaningful mentorship (Iuliano et al., 2013).
Through the lens of whiteness as property, derailment is also evident in how Robert’s supervisor responded to an incident she agreed was disruptive. Instead of a plan of action to address the behaviors, she instructed Robert to accept and endure a colleague who he constantly felt disrespected by. Whiteness was not available to Robert as he is phenotypically Black, and due to his marginalization, he is excluded from the privileges and protections of whiteness (Harris, 1993). Whiteness as property also ensured that Monalisa could not enjoy the reward of her efforts from the grant she won for conference attendance. The right to use and enjoyment is generally reserved for white people; however, Monalisa defied the social order by receiving an award in which her colleague could not enjoy, nor was she qualified to receive (Harris, 1993). According to Monalisa, applying for the grant unknowingly challenged the status of whiteness as befitting of privilege and authority.
Implications for Practice and Research
This study provided a glimpse into the experiences of Black librarians at public, 2-year colleges. Considering the findings, I have several recommendations that require action from campus and library administrators, national library organizations, higher education scholars, and community college librarians. First, campus and library leaders must concentrate their efforts to transform campus and library environments.
The themes of retaliation, derailment, gendered racism, and violence reflect the institutional cultures, values, and practices as much as the departments. Whether through positions like Chief Diversity Officers or Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Offices, community colleges must conduct audits of human resources (HR) policies (promotion, performance evaluations, grievance, and trainings), hiring processes, job descriptions, and responsibilities. Crenshaw (2020) recommended intersectional audits to address the real issues of power and how it influences the experiences of racially minoritized people. Intersectional audits may help with the process of dismantling structural barriers (Matandela, 2017) for Black faculty and librarians in their efforts for justice and dignity.
While priorities of the institution are important in broadcasting its values, library administrators should not wait for the institution to transform the cultures, practices, and processes of the library. Library administrators should provide trainings to their staff on microaggressions, bullying, and other harmful and unproductive behaviors. They should do the work to educate themselves on the experiences of Black faculty and staff. If they do not possess the knowledge and skills to transform the organizational culture, they should hire professionals external to the organization to aid them with the process.
The labor of leading these tasks and initiatives must not be passed to librarians of Color. Monies and human resources are essential parts of the process and are clear indicators of administrators’ commitment to more equitable environments. Strategic plans for remediation should include actionable items such as outputs, outcomes, and time periods for which the items will be completed and evaluated (Bryson, 2011).
National library organizations like the Association of College and Research Libraries and the Association of Research Libraries need to shift their focus on retention of librarians of Color. Many of the pedagogical standards, best practices, and frameworks for information literacy emanate from these professional organizations. Given the legitimacy of these organizations within the profession, their recommendations coupled with practices could be the models for retention they have long talked about. It requires intentional planning and implementation including the scholarship of racially minoritized librarians as evidence of the salient issues that cause attrition of professional LoC.
Practices like well-designed residency programs may provide entry into academic libraries for LoC (Velez et al., 2021); however, these programs must not exist as revolving doors for “diversity hires.” It is not acceptable to hire one LoC in an overwhelmingly white profession and expect positive transformation. Cohort models (2–4 hires) could work for medium to large community colleges or those within a large system (Velez et al., 2021). Organizations committed to racial diversification of the faculty must incorporate the library into their efforts and provide the lines available for faculty hires.
While academic librarianship is a specific discipline, it is part of the higher educational landscape and its challenges must be addressed by faculty and educators outside of librarianship. Librarians often hold faculty status (Gilman, 2008), and even in cases where they do not, they are generally part of academic affairs. Faculty issues must be broadened to librarianship. Advocacy will be needed to engage in thoughtful solutions. Additionally, issues of affordability, access, student success, pedagogy, and research are impacted by these topics. This work could be formally incorporated into centers or organizations whose research focus is community colleges.
My last recommendation addresses the issues of professional isolation, advancement, and scholarship on community college libraries. I encourage community college librarians to form communities of practice and research. Through the stories of the narrators and my experience as an administrator in a community college library, the need for external networks to counter the attrition of LoC is pressing. Whether funding for professional development is intentionally withheld or due to budget shortfalls, LoC need academic partners (librarians, faculty, and other educators). Publication in non-library journals and presentations at non-library conferences will widen community college librarians’ audience and possibly provide strong proponents of community college libraries.
Limitations and Future Research
One of the findings of this study was gendered racism. Given the composition of librarianship and that women are 83% of the profession (ALA, 2012), the study would have benefitted from a framework that examined the gendered experiences of librarianship. While tenets of racism as normal and whiteness as property provide an analysis of race, racism, power, and the functions of whiteness, a critical Black feminist conceptual framework would have provided a more comprehensive analysis of the racial and gendered nature of participants’ experiences in community college libraries. Collins’ (1986) Black feminist thought and Crenshaw’s (1991) concept of intersectionality are frameworks that should be considered in future studies, as well as tenets such as a critique of liberalism.
Future research should include quantitative studies that provide a more general understanding of Black librarianship at community colleges. Currently, there are few resources that show how many Black librarians work in community college libraries, their titles, and the capacities in which they serve. Researchers should investigate the experiences of Black librarians at 2-year colleges designated as Minority-Serving Institutions (MSIs); a focus on their experiences at 2-year Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) would be interesting. One cannot assume that racism and gendered racism would not be present at these institutions. Lastly, a study of Black library directors could help understand their experiences as leaders in community college libraries.
Conclusion
My investigation of the experiences of Black librarians at public, 2-year college found that community college libraries are not very different from 4-year colleges and universities in how Black librarians experience academic librarianship. Like their four-year colleagues, the lived experiences of Black librarians at 2-year colleges show the many challenges related to organizational cultures that support—either directly or indirectly— hostile, dysfunctional, and highly racialized and gendered violence against their Black library workers. The stories of the narrators point to structures intent on maintaining power over their bodies, psyche, work, and trajectory of their careers as educators. Additionally, their stories show how they persist, resist, and name the forces of white supremacy, even when they are depleted of energy and in need of care. Through these stories, I charge educators of conscious to bear witness to the harm against their educational partners with hopes that they transform their campuses so that Black librarians can truly find community and justice where their hearts and minds meet.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
