From protests to practice: Confronting systemic racism in LIS

Abstract

The death of George Floyd, at the hands of the Minnesota police on May 25, 2020, sparked a global uproar that many have argued has not occurred since the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. It is unclear why this particular incident elicited such a visceral and widespread response, especially in light of the fact that police brutality towards Blacks in America is not a new phenomenon. This paper examines the national response to Floyd’s death within the contexts of CRT, the history of systemic racism in the United States, and questions how race and inequity issues have been addressed in LIS. The authors provide actionable measures that could go a long way in moving the discipline toward a shift in thinking. However, they find that these efforts need to be sustained, because one-shot events, training sessions, or activities rarely result in any real change. Real progress, they conclude, will require more than new laws. It will also require a seismic societal shift in attitude.

Keywords

Social justice and equity and inclusion and racial justice protests LIS education systemic racism

1. Introduction

The death of George Floyd, at the hands of the Minnesota police on May 25, 2020, sparked a global uproar that many have argued has not occurred since the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s (Countryman, 2020). It is unclear why this particular incident elicited such a visceral and widespread response, especially in light of the fact that police brutality towards Blacks in America is not a new phenomenon (Alexander, 2010; Bell, et al., 2014; Aymer, 2016). In fact, just two months earlier, Breonna Taylor was fatally shot by officers from the Louisville Metro Police Department, who entered her home while she was sleeping in her bed. Taylor’s death was preceded by countless similar incidents that ended with the deaths of Black men and women, including those of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri and Freddie Gray in Baltimore, Maryland. In both of these cases, libraries had a significant role in helping their communities by remaining open and providing safe spaces for users while other public institutions were closed due to the racial uprising.

Nevertheless, it was George Floyd’s death that fueled worldwide protests, incidents of civil unrest, which reinvigorated the Black Lives Matter movement (BLM). Founded by Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi after the acquittal of Trayvon Martin’s murderer in 2013, BLM is an international activist movement that originated in the Black community to protest anti-Black violence (U.S. Department of Justice, 2015; Police Executive Forum, 2016; Black Lives Matter, 2016; Krieger, et al., 2015). Mirroring the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s, the organization has been specifically vocal against police brutality in the United States. They continue to organize “die-ins,” marches, and demonstrations in response to the killings of Black American citizens by the police.

With 67% of the country supporting BLM following Floyd’s death (Pew, 2020), many businesses and commercial entities made changes to show that they stand against racism. Examples of these changes include Merriam-Webster updating its definition of “racism” to more clearly reflect the systematic nature of racism that occurs in everyday life (as advocated by Kennedy Mitchum); the Washington Redskins changing their team name; Quaker changing the name and logo of their Aunt Jemima brand; and Colin Kaepernick, players, coaches and managers from every major sport taking a knee in protest of racial inequity. There have been similar gestures in academia, and although LIS has generally been silent on the issue of race, ALISE and several LIS programs across the country have issued anti-racism statements and now stand in solidarity with the BLM movement. In spite of this shift, the general consensus is that Americans still need to have a conversation on race. This need might even be more pressing for those in academia. However, anyone attempting to do so knows that such conversations are incredibly difficult.

Discussions on race do occur in academia, but some disciplines, such as LIS, have been slow to engage in candid conversations on this difficult topic. This has likely led to failure to mitigate long standing discriminatory practices at the institutional level at many universities. One issue that speaks to the endurance of this particular brand of systemic racism is that it tends to be invisible to those privileged enough to exist outside its scope. As Goldberg (2009) notes, “raceless racism operates in denial, anywhere and any-time” (p. 25). This is especially problematic at predominantly white institutions (PWIs), where many Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) are constantly exposed to racism, which can result in Racial Battle Fatigue (RBF), a phenomenon that creates major obstacles that stifle the ability to thrive in academia (Chancellor, 2019; Smith, 2004).

The interdisciplinary nature of LIS, however, makes it ideal for these types of conversations, whether in the classroom or within the larger scholarly community. In addition, LIS courses, regardless of the topic, are rife with opportunities for these types of discussions. Racism and racially motivated violence are part and parcel of everyday life in America, so those of us who have the privilege to teach or work as information professionals must center this truth in our approach. Not doing so would be a shameful dereliction of duties. These recent acts of violence have not only raised a set of complex and challenging questions about inequality in our society, but they have also compelled LIS professionals to question how might the more difficult issue of systemic racism be reflected in the current LIS discourse? This paper will explore this phenomenon and how LIS professionals can be more proactive.

2. Background

The killing of Black people in the United States is long entrenched in systemic racism that spans four hundred years of slavery, Jim Crow, segregation, mass incarceration, and police brutality. Today, BIPOC in America is still experiencing these hallmarks of injustice. These are the same discriminatory practices their forefathers experienced in the 19th and 20th centuries, but with one significant difference - technology. With the development of digital technology and the ubiquity of mobile devices, recent incidents of police brutality and murders of unarmed Black citizens have been captured for the entire world to see. The ability to witness, in real time, the racial animus and police brutality that occurs in present day America provides a visual record that has become ingrained in people’s minds and memories, as they are replayed over and over again.

Perhaps it was because we saw the way Floyd died – suffocating to death while the police officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes, impassively. Perhaps it was because we saw him cry out for his mother in his final seconds of life, which triggered that global reaction. Regardless of why, something about this time felt different, but was it different? These deaths not only ignited a national outcry for antiracist policing, but they also prompted scholars to look at America’s history of racism in an effort to understand why this country has not been able to abolish systemic racism. Critical Race Theory (CRT) provides a useful lens for this endeavor. CRT considers the impact of White supremacy on the American psyche (Crenshaw et al., 1995) and can be further extended to shed light on police brutality (Solorzano et al., 2000) by providing a foundation for understanding the historical racialized experiences of BIPOC in America (Aymer, 2016). CRT thus provides an understanding of how present-day racial inequality and oppression relate to the past, and thus illustrates how killings and violence by police are a persistent and inescapable truth for the lived experiences of BlPOC in America.

3. Building on a legacy of organizing

Historically, libraries, archives, and museums have straddled the line between innovation and tradition. For those working in the LIS profession, implementing innovative and non-traditional ideas can feel like “trying to fit round pegs in square holes, or facing the challenge of attempting to create a new room $\ldots$ in a closed system” (Myers, 2001). At this moment in history, these professionals and students, especially those teaching or enrolled in graduate programs, can draw on the legacy of Black organizers, both within and outside of the profession, to better understand and participate in anti-racism work.

Community organizing, as discussed by Canham-Clyne (2001), is the process of “building relationships among community members to bring about desired change.” The principles that govern community organizing are manifest in the everyday reality of community members, beginning with the individual and his/her relationships. As a result, community organizers have a long history of decolonizing knowledge to disrupt inequitable power structures. Like community organizers, information professionals can work to increase the capacity of individuals to gain agency over their own lives.

There are several such activists across LIS, who have used organizing principles to better fulfill this mission. These professionals have used organizing principles to examine and transform racist power imbalances within their organizations. Included in this esteemed group of Black organizers are Dorothy Porter (Bledsoe, 2020), E.J. Josey (Chancellor, 2020), Clara Stanton Jones (DeLoach, 1998), and Harold T. Pinkett (Poole, 2017). For example, before the 1930s, the majority of LIS institutions, such as the Howard University Library, did not collect or classify works by Black authors (Bledsoe, 2020). When Dorothy Porter joined the library staff in 1930, an increasing number of students wanted to study Black history and culture, protesting the lack of related material in the library. To respond to this need, Porter relied on her community-based relationships-not her professional ones-to build Howard University’s Black Studies collection (Bledsoe, 2020). During this time, Porter and her colleagues used their knowledge of the community and information organization principles to create a new classification system to better grant access to this new collection.

Porter and these organizers were only able to create change within LIS institutions by utilizing knowledge and principles from outside LIS institutions. By including materials on organizing principles and these leaders in their curricula, LIS educators can better convey the importance of organizing work to the next generation of LIS professionals.

So often, the professional standard-and myth-of “neutrality,” creates divisions between LIS institutions and their community, separating information professionals from the knowledge of the community they serve. Community organizing produces a different framework of power, which helps to decolonize information and bridge divides between institutions and communities. By investigating where power is concentrated; who has decision making power; who is represented; and what is measured as “success,” information professionals can better understand the way racism and white supremacy culture has been internalized in the culture of the field, and begin taking steps to address it.

4. Confronting and combating racism through the LIS profession

Current LIS discourse reflects the issue of systemic racism that exists in our nation. LIS professionals often avoid the “R-word” of race, which leads to race being understudied and poorly understood within the profession (Pawley, 2006, p. 151). By avoiding the use of the word “race” and opting to focus upon “multiculturalism” or “diversity,” the library and information profession is limiting the possibilities of discourse about racial problems (Honma, 2005; Mehra & Gray, 2020). While multiculturalism is important to discuss and is discussed within the education of professionals, the acknowledgement and celebration of diversity often does not focus on the topic of race or the oppression that these diverse groups may be facing (Pawley, 2006). While there is discussion of the underprivileged, there must also be discussion of the over-privileged in the LIS research. This discussion may be missing from LIS discourse because, while there has been an increase in the number of racial minorities in the LIS profession, a large majority of LIS professionals, especially those within libraries, are white (Eberhart, 2013; Irvin, 2016). Acknowledging white privilege must be done in order to confront the plight of the underprivileged as well. Without acknowledging their own privilege and advantages, one may not be able to recognize issues that make other people disadvantaged.

Intersectionality must also be taken into account when dealing with oppression of marginalized groups. Crenshaw (1991, 2016) stresses that intersectionality can be seen as a road with multiple intersections and these different intersections create a special set of experiences and needs for each person. Similarly, Adichie (2009) emphasizes that people are made up of multiple stories and identities, and they are not defined by just one of these aspects in their life. Their discussions suggest that people have affiliations with multiple social groups. One may be oppressed as a female but elevated as White; oppressed as a person with disability but elevated as male; and so on. Thus, a person can be oppressed by one aspect of their life but privileged by another. The dynamics of intersectionality are deeply significant, and it is impossible to develop critical social justice literacy without an ability to grapple with their complexities. Therefore, it is of utmost importance to understand, confront, and address the issues of intersectionality and its implications for increasing inclusivity in LIS programs and information organizations.

When confronting racism, companies, institutions, and people often take on the role of performative activism to appear as though they care about racial movements such as Black Lives Matter. In reality, they are “woke-washing,” seeming as if they care but actually using a gesture of solidarity to create profit rather than actually making changes to internal inequities (Dowell & Jackson, 2020). In order to make a difference for diverse persons in the workplace, active change must be made. The same goes for academic institutions and their internal departments. Open dialogue must occur within these institutions and the voices of Black faculty members, as well as other people of color, must not be diminished by their white colleagues. Faculty of color generally experience discouragement or retaliation from their white colleagues in the workplace when addressing their concerns about racism in academia. Engaging their supposed “progressive” white colleagues into discussions about racism tends to turn into discussions where their views are overpowered by white voices who try to change the narrative because they do not feel comfortable discussing racism, deny racism, support colorblind ideologies, or may even make the women feel “too black” for the predominately white institutions that they are working within (Beeman & Melaku, 2020). In order to make academic institutions more inclusive, white colleagues must lift up the voices of their Black colleagues, rather than trying to bury them.

White colleagues should not stay silent if they see inequity in the workplace. While they should not speak for the experiences of people of color, they should advocate for the education and training of those who do not recognize their contributions to racism and continued inequity in the workplace. Eradicating racism cannot be a passing fad that is only popular because of the high-profile police brutality cases that are prevalent in the news. It must become something to permanently speak out against, starting with creating dialogue that will ensure that “our colleagues in academia and beyond will be inspired to speak out – even when the crowds have gone home” (Beeman & Melaku, 2020). Library and information science professionals, especially those that are teaching future professionals, have the opportunity to disseminate information on the toxicity of ignoring the voices of people of color that is prevalent within history. In the past, the American Library Association (ALA) has been reluctant to address the racism and inequity within its own institution (Peterson, 1996). Changing LIS discourse in the workplace and the classroom is the first step to addressing the larger problems of racism within society and the LIS profession.

The education of LIS professionals at the graduate level needs to take on a more hands-on approach when it comes to addressing and identifying the problem of race within the world and the library profession. The primary mission of information organizations is to serve and transform their communities, but this cannot be done if the information professionals within their organizations are not culturally competent or aware of the needs of the diverse community that they are advocating for (Overall, 2009). At the same time, it is important to remember that merely mentioning cultural competence is not enough. The conversation about diversity must move beyond access, collections, and services by addressing the issues of race, privilege, and intersectionality between them. Classes dedicated solely to cultural competence must be offered and professors in other courses must give their students opportunities to go out and work in their community. This will give future informational professionals the opportunity to learn how to work with a diverse community and begin to understand how they can apply their cultural competency lessons from the classroom to the workplace.

5. Convergence or convenience of the racial justice moment: Moving from theatrics to transformation in LIS

Stating the Context: The struggles and battles for racial justice starting from American colonization, to US industrialization, through civil rights efforts and social evolution have not been resolved, respected, and quite frankly appropriately represented. This comment within itself, is not a revelation. Yet, what has been amazingly treated as inconspicuous has not been librarianship too often silence in voicing advocacy for racial justice; it has been its strategic indifference toward substantive racial justice and authentic inclusivity.

Yes, there have been racially conscious watershed moments within librarianship, but they have been too few and too far between. Locating any racially appropriate evolution within librarianship has found such progress consistently multiple generations behind any moment in time of history including the present. Again, with minuscule exceptions and those exceptions were gained through hard fought advocacy and activism by those who were being marginalized or disenfranchised.

If we go back a mere single generation there are LIS scholars, who were addressing the field’s tone deafness regarding social justice; be it Budd (2003) stating the field’s inability to address social action from either a launching point of theory or practice, thus, exhibiting an inability to use its inherent symbolic power to exhibit reasonable social consciousness; or Pawley (1998) pointing out micro-dynamics of hegemony that exist within LIS curriculum along the lines of class; to Wiegand (1999) pointing out, “one gets the impression of a profession trapped in its own discursive formations, where members speak mostly to each other and where connections between power and knowledge that affect issues of race, class, age, and gender, among others, are either invisible or ignored. One also gets the impression of a profession much more interested in process and structure than in people” (p. 24).

Stating the Case: Advancing the context to the current, one of the vehicles that have emerged for addressing the indifference is CRT. Formerly introduced to the disciple in the aughts of this century (Dunbar, 2006), CRT offers over three decades of established legacy and more importantly, a legacy that consists of intellectual rigor, consistent advocacy, and successful activism. In spite of CRT’s villainization by the administration of the 45 ${}^{\text{th}}$ president of the United States (Torbati et al., 2020), Critical Race Theory is just the framework to move LIS from the Theatrics of this racial justice moment to the Transformation available for racial justice within the field.

Too often along the continuum of history, the US has settled for the theatrics of racial justice versus substantive transformation, including the civil rights movement of the 1960s. That said, this current racial justice moment can be one of distinct differences using a tool conceptualized by CRT icon, Professor Derrick Bell, namely Interest Convergence. As laid out by Bell (1980), interest convergence is noted as when the interest of Black people in pursuit of civil rights and justice only advances when those interests converge with the interests of white folks (usually along the lines of white guilt and embarrassment). When there is sustained interest convergence along the lines of racial justice within LIS, then the field at that point will move from the tepidness of racial justice theatrics to racial justice transformation. Thus, LIS is currently and has been historically in a state of Interest Convenience; a level of convenience stubbornly situated within the comfort levels of white people, most predominantly (not exclusively) white women.

Stating the Consciousness: So, what would interest convergence look like in LIS? The answer to that question also addresses the proverbial (in most cases rhetorical) question often asked of BIPOC by white folks attempting to shield themselves from the legacy and responsibility of racial injustice; What can I (we) do? To state succinctly and directly, racial justice within LIS requires white folks to have Courage, Commitment, and Consistency.

To meet any challenge as intense as racial justice requires courage that transcends race. That said, and in alignment with what has been pointed to by others in this text, the courage white folks will be required to muster is not at all the responsibility of the BIPOC community. The intentional self-segregated disposition of the LIS discourse will require white scholars, educators, administrators, and practitioners to sustain a level of courage as Ms. DeLoach puts it, which moves beyond performative actions (or theatrics). The level of courage needed must transpire within the exponentially occurring homogeneous moments of white exclusivity. More succinctly put when white folks are alone with white folks. Until the level courage noted here is achieved then LIS will always be in a perpetual state of Interest Convenience leaving the reality of Interest Convergence stuck at the theory building stage at best, never reaching the full potential of transformation available by using such a powerful CRT instrument to its full advocacy and activism potential.

While the history of librarianship and LIS discourse does not reflect evidence of sustained authentic racial justice; let’s offer the benefit of the doubt and assert that the current moment of racial justice theatrics actually last more than a year and moves to a substantively transformative point…then what?

With palpable courage in place then actual transformative work can commence. That is when commitment becomes a realistic component of the process, namely in a commitment of allocated resources at such a level of impact that it reflects racial justice as an unmistakable priority. Again, it must be noted that rhetoric is not the same as resources. In turn, committed resources are not only the tangible existence of line items within budgets; it also includes intentional strategies of inclusivity at the level of power sharing and power brokering within every conceivable point and level of LIS profession and education. Moreover, it will require white folks to invest their precious social capital significantly and consciously within the racial justice transformation portfolio.

As the saying goes…but wait, there is more! The reality of commitments in any area of life is that commitments are only as valuable as they are consistent. Too often priorities shift and commitment, in turn, regresses. Again, let us imagine that LIS as a field clears the hurdles of courage and commitment, then the challenges become white fatigue and white fragility (DeAngelo, 2011, 2018). As the Anglo-Christian good book states, let us not be weary in doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we faint not. Too often in endeavors of Equity, Inclusion, and Diversity be they in LIS, more broadly in academia, or out in the greater American business community lack the desire to stay the course. Most often sustained consistency devolves towards a regression to mean. Again, this points to the need for our white colleagues to relentlessly build up their endurance to meet the daily and unrelenting challenges within a racial justice vision in order to fulfill it.

In short, the level of theatrics within the latest opportunity for racial justice has consisted of an intensely high level of performative acts. Yet, we know that is not actual transformation. Put another way, being a movie star is quite different from having an ownership stake in a movie studio. As stated by others in this piece, racial justice in LIS is a longitudinal endeavor requiring white folks to sustain interest convergence and join those living life within the racial injustice realities of a BIPOC existence; and in turn, taking on transformation with courage, commitment, and consistency!

6. Actionable measures

Within five months of George Floyd’s death the protests died down, but the trauma has continued for many people of color, who call America home. In fact, of the 142 African Americans killed by police from January through September 2020 (Statista, 2020), 59 were killed in the three months following Floyd’s death (Cohen, 2020). This means that in the midst of pandemic lockdowns, and while the world was protesting Floyd’s death, the police killed 59 Black Americans. As difficult as it might be for some to comprehend, it seems that George Floyd’s death, and the protests that followed, had virtually no impact on the overall number of police killings. Fatal Force, The Washington Post database of all fatal shootings by police since 2015, reports that the rate of police killings have remained stable over the past five years, at approximately 1000 per year (October 2020). In an effort to understand why this number has remained stable, they point to probability theory, which “holds that the quantity of rare events in huge populations tends to remain stable absent major societal changes, such as a fundamental shift in police culture or extreme restrictions on gun ownership” (Fatal Force, 2020, para.4). So, in the absence of this type of seismic societal shift, what was “different this time,” as so many had observed?

According to Mapping Police Violence, a research collaborative that collects comprehensive data on police killings across the country, a total of 839 people has died at the hands of the police from January through October 5, 2020. Of these, 175 were Black, 120 were Hispanic or Latino, 11 were Asian, 7 were Native American, and 313 were White. The race of the remaining 213 individuals is unknown. These numbers do show, as we all know by now, that Black Americans are killed at a much higher rate than White Americans. More specifically, White Americans comprise 60.1 percent of the population (US Census, 2019); they represent 55 percent of all people killed by police (Fatal Force, 2020). Black Americans account for 13.4 percent of the population (US Census, 2019); they represent 24 percent of all people killed by police (Fatal Force, 2020). So far in 2020, Mapping Police Violence reports that this number is 4 percent higher at 28 percent. Sadly, this indicates that, while the overall rate of police killings has remained steady, the rate at which the police kill Black Americans has increased in 2020.

The data collected by the Mapping Police Violence collaborative reveals several other notable trends that have been less widely discussed. When it comes to the odds of being killed by the police, the collaborative reports that where you live in America matters. If you are Black and live in Oklahoma, you are six times more likely to be killed by police than if you live in Georgia. In eight of the country’s largest cities (from 2013–2019), the police killed Black men at a higher rate than the national murder rate in 2018 (with Reno, Oklahoma City, and Santa Ana leading in the number of deaths). Also concerning is the fact that these statistics had no correlation to the rate of violent crimes committed in these cities. The collaborative finds that “it is not about crime; levels of violent crime in US cities do not determine rates of police violence” (Mapping Police Violence, 2020, sec.6). This then begs the question, what is it about?

Concluding that “There is no excuse for police violence,” the collaborative points to the fact that between 2013 and 2016 there were zero people killed by police in Buffalo NY versus 13 in Orlando FL – despite the lower violent crime rate in Orlando, as their comparison below shows (Mapping Police Violence, 2020).

2013–2016	Buffalo NY	Orlando FL
Population	258,959	255,483
Percentage of BIPOC	50%	42%
Violent Crime Rate	12 per 1000	9 per 1000
People Killed by Police	0	13

Another major point of contention for people of color has been the lack of accountability – the police officers involved in these killings have rarely been held culpable. Of all police killings in the country between 2013 and 2020, less than 1 percent resulted in charges against the officers involved (Mapping Police Violence, 2020). The fact is that police officers in America are provided numerous safeguards that offer protections from both public and departmental accountability (McCorkel, 2020). In other words, this is built into the system.

In its report entitled “African Americans, Police Use of Force, and Human Rights in the United States,” the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights emphasizes that:

$\ldots$ due diligence in preventing police violence against African Americans must take a transformative approach. That is, actions to prevent police violence or remedies or reparations for police violence that have the effect of maintaining or reestablishing the same structural context of violence and discrimination are not acceptable. Rather, reparations must aim to address and redress the underlying situation of inequality and the ongoing context of racial discrimination. (2018, p. 14)

As it was with previous protests, this issue was at the heart of the George Floyd protests; hence the calls to “defund the police.” In the end, something was different. It was the people who had changed; that is, the way they responded was different. People in America, all races, stood up and acknowledged that racism was real – and made it known that the killing of Black people by the police was unacceptable. And then, the rest of the world stood in solidarity.

Here in America, the pressure from the protests resulted in several state and local legislatures pushing for reforms that are intended to increase police transparency and accountability. Organizations made an effort to show their support of antiracism, #blackouttuesday, and BLM in various ways. For universities, this most likely meant publishing statements that acknowledged and rejected systemic racism on their campuses, as well as their support for BLM. LIS departments and schools followed suit, with several organizing events that facilitated conversations on race. LIS faculty have since produced a number of relevant articles, edited special topics issues, and hosted webinars on racism. While these efforts are positive and necessary for moving the country toward becoming an antiracist society, many of these eventually lose momentum or end prematurely. For example, support for BLM, while still going strong among Black Americans, but this has declined in the larger population, with 55% of American now expressing some support for the movement (Thomas and Horowitz, 2020). This is down 12% from the swell in support observed during the protests.

Care must also be taken to ensure that efforts against systemic racism have the desired outcome. In other words, they should help, and they should definitely not cause harm. As Meredith Farkas (2019) points out, “libraries sometimes have policies or practices that, while well intentioned, disproportionately affect certain segments of their service population. This issue touches all institutions and not surprisingly affects LIS education as well” (para.1). Citing the fact that LIS programs usually require unpaid internships or practicums, Farkas (2019) explains that this often presents a challenge for working students, since gaining this experience comes at a cost. She avers that this negatively impacts students lacking generational wealth, which can undermine diversity efforts.

For those in LIS, the issues and actionable measures that have been discussed here could go a long way in moving the discipline toward a shift in thinking. However, these efforts need to be sustained; one-shot events, training sessions, or activities rarely result in any real change. The type of transformative change recommended by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (2018) requires sustained effort, on a variety of fronts, as noted previously. And, while improved transparency and accountability are desired legislative outcomes, the fact is that real progress will require more than new laws. It will also require a seismic societal shift in attitude.

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