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the feminist librarian

the feminist librarian

Category Archives: library life

salary transparency

09 Thursday Jul 2020

Posted by Anna Clutterbuck-Cook in library life

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Last updated 20 July 2022.

Salaries and wages in the non-profit libraries/archives/museums field are — no secret — chronically low. Many staff in the field struggle to cover basic necessities like rent amidst a rising cost of living plus financial obligations like student loan debt and retirement savings — if that’s even something they can think about putting money aside for. (And that’s all without the context of a global pandemic.) Salary transparency is one way to hold employers in our sector accountable. During the annual Society of American Archivists meeting in Austin, Texas last year (2019) an impromptu Archivists Salary Transparency Open Survey was created that, as of this writing, has over 500 entries (if you work in the archives field and feel safe sharing some of your own salary details, please consider adding your job to the list!).

I’ve been writing about aspects of our family’s finances for a number of years now. I’ve shared our household income and taxes, how much we pay in rent, our student loan debt, and the fact that we have financial support from my parents to offset student loan repayments.*** But despite the fact that a worker’s right to speak about their own compensation is legally protected in Massachusetts, I’ve always found it difficult to speak about my specific salary. It feels awkward, socially taboo, and politically charged. However, I’ve come to believe that maintaining an air of secrecy around compensation both shames workers and discourages concrete, fact-based discussion about what we get paid and why.  When workers are encouraged through cultural conditioning not to speak about money matters, we might worry that we’re paid embarrassingly little — is that our fault for not being good negotiators? — or disproportionately more than our colleagues — would they be mad at us if they knew? I have worried about both of these things. In the absence of data — that clears the air and helps us understand the macro and micro conditions that have led to our salaries — shame and intimidation flourish.

So I have decided to practice my values and be transparent about what I make, and the history of what I have made in the library field. The more I practice saying the words, the more normal I hope it will become.

MY SALARY HISTORY in LIBRARIES

When I transitioned from part-time retail and office work to the library field in 2007, I was newly arrived in Boston from the Midwest. The Massachusetts Historical Society hired me as a part-time Library Assistant for the hourly wages of $14.00/hour. At the time, that was the highest hourly wage I had ever earned.

During most of my graduate school career (October 2007 to December 2010) I worked as a part-time employee in various part-time and stipended positions in Boston-area institutions; the hourly work was paid at $10-15/hour. On January 1, 2011 I was promoted to a full-time salaried position of Assistant Reference Librarian at the Massachusetts Historical Society. This was my first professional (MLS required) position in the library field. My starting salary was $34,000/year.

The MHS operates on a fiscal year schedule so our annual raises typically kick in July 1st. Below are the salaries quoted to me in each of my annual salary and benefits statements as well as raises that came with promotions to new positions and salary adjustments that have come in the past two years in thanks to a salary study done by the MHS.

2011: $34,000 (promotion to Assistant Reference Librarian, 1 January 2011)
2011 (b): $35,020 (3% cost of living raise)
2012: $37,120 (6% cost of living raise)
2012 (b): $44,000 (promotion to Reference Librarian, 1 September 2012)
2013: $47,900 (2% cost of living raise + $2k deferred promotional increase)
2014: $48,860 (2% cost of living raise)
2015: $50,080 (2.5% cost of living raise)
2016: $51,080 (2% cost of living raise)
2017: $52,072 (2% cost of living raise) 
2018: $53,665 (3% cost of living raise)
2019: $57,453 (4% salary study adjustment; 3% cost of living raise)*
2020: $59,796 (3.6% salary study adjustment; no cost of living raise)
2021: $62,785 (5% salary study adjustment; no cost of living raise)
2021 (b): $65,775 (promotion to Senior Reference Librarian, 1 July 2021)**
2022: $73,438 (11.65% salary study and cost of living adjustment combined)

In addition to my salary, I currently receive:

  • A 4% match to my 403(b) retirement fund
  • Healthcare coverage, including dental and vision benefits
  • Short- and long-term disability insurance
  • Life insurance
  • Pre-tax monthly transit passes
  • Unlimited paid sick time
  • Twenty days paid vacation time annually
  • Sixteen paid holidays annually

*In 2019 the MHS hired a consultant to do an in-depth industry salary study. Following the salary study, each staff member was told the midpoint “market value” for their position and put on a five year trajectory to bring their salary up to that level (in addition to any promotions and cost-of-living raises). The 2019 midpoint market value for my position was determined to be $65,900. The 2020 midpoint market value for my position was determined to be $67,416. The 2021 midpoint market value for my position was determined to be $68,764. The 2022 midpoint market value for my position was determined to be $81,100. Raises in 2019-2022 were calculated to accelerate me toward that target. 

**On 1 July 2021 I received a promotion to Senior Reference Librarian. This adjusted the midpoint market value for my salary upwards to $76,800 and a salary raise was made accordingly.

***After 120 income-based repayment plan payments, January 2011 through December 2022, my remaining $84,421.35 in student loan debt became eligible for Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) and was cancelled.

Dear Library Journal

10 Wednesday Jun 2020

Posted by Anna Clutterbuck-Cook in library life

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I wrote this email last week Friday and emailed it to Meredith Schwartz, who assumed the position of Library Journal‘s editor-in-chief this past January. I have lightly redacted some references to a specific project we were working on together but left the substantive critique of Library Journal‘s actions around the Library of the Year award intact. 

Updated 2020-06-11 in response to the second message LJ posted. See below the original email.

Dear Meredith,

This isn’t the email I wanted to write this morning. I was hoping to be able to touch base about [project]. Instead, it turns out I need to put my [participation] on pause. I’m sure you know why.

I learned yesterday that the 2020 Gale/LJ Library of the Year award has been given to the Seattle Public Library. As I know you are aware, based on the statement Library Journal issued in response to criticism, the SPL decision to create an unsafe environment for their trans/nonbinary staff and patrons by hosting an anti-trans group in the library this past February makes this award deeply problematic. Even if – as the LJ statement argues – the SPL is taking critique seriously, and working to make institutional change, this award would be (at best) premature.

It’s particularly difficult to stomach such an accolade during Pride month, when we remember the queer and trans youth of color who led the Stonewall uprising. You also made the decision to gloss over the February event during a historical moment when trans/nonbinary people in the United States are being targeted by organized, reactionary forces on the political right who feel emboldened by the Trump administration to pursue an aggressive anti-trans legislative and legal agenda (see for example here, here, and here). Context matters. It is also important to remember that trans and nonbinary people are part of the “vulnerable communities” that you argue in your statement SPL has “radically improved” services for. Trans and nonbinary people of color are disproportionately likely to experience homelessness and poverty, for example, and struggle to access trans-competent mental and medical health services. SPL should not be earning gold stars for “radical” improvements in addressing systemic racism while ignoring the experiences and needs of trans people of color in their community.

Your statement frames the backlash about the award as one that revolves around a harmful, imagined binary between “intellectual freedom” on one side and “equity and inclusion” on the other. Such a framing suggests that for libraries to be champions of intellectual freedom – a notion that makes most white, cisgendered, straight, middle-class, able-bodied liberal-identifying Americans feel warm fuzzy feelings – they must, sadly but necessarily, accept the cost of harm done to marginalized people. Freedom, after all, is supposedly an ultimate good. Where does this leave the freedom (intellectual and otherwise) of trans and nonbinary staff and patrons of libraries like the SPL that allow groups that jeopardize trans lives to convene? Where does that leave the freedom of the trans staff member who must welcome individuals who aggressively misgender them, or patrons unable to access the library’s resources because the presence of the anti-trans group makes the library inaccessible to them? True freedom requires equity and inclusion rather than standing in opposition to it. If an institution argues that maintaining the “freedom” of group A requires the continued unsafety or dehumanization of group B, that is a false freedom.

 My relationship with Library Journal since 2013* has been a long and rewarding one. I value my relationships with my editors, and the staff I work with on professional development courses, deeply. They have all helped me do better work as a librarian and as a human being who cares about justice and strives to do better. It is because of these relationships that I am taking the time to write this email at the end of what has been an exhausting week. 

 I sign this letter in hope that LJ will reconsider their decision and, as this open letter ** requests, chooses to donate the $10,000 award to the Seattle-based Gender Justice League.

Sincerely,
Anna

UPDATE: Library Journal has issued a second response to the criticism it is receiving. They continue to refuse to withdraw the award, arguing the racial equity work of the Seattle Public Library outweighs harm done to the trans community. They plan to, separately, donate $10k to the Gender Justice League and outline a series of things like trainings and special issues and forums they plan to host on queer and trans issues as next steps.

Hmmmmmmm.

First, I want to foreground the activism of both LJ staff who called out this problematic award and members of the broader library community who organized a swift response with clear demands. It is never without risk to stand up to your employer and we should remember those who did and continue to support them. And the $10k to the Gender Justice League is a clear win for those who crafted the open letter and identified concrete reparative action. You didn’t get everything you asked for, but this donation surely would not have happened without you. Organized activism works!

Second, I continue to be deeply frustrated by the way LJ is using racial equity as a shield to deflect criticisms about harm to trans people. This erases the embodied experience of trans people of color who were harmed by SPL actions, and for whom racial equity will not be effective in the absence of trans-inclusive practice. It’s also incredibly tacky and transparent to argue that work on behalf of marginalized group X makes you immune from criticism about, or cancels out harm done to, marginalized group Y. White queer folks don’t get a pass on racism because they’re queer; libraries don’t get a pass on trans harm because they do anti-racism work.

Third, a suspicious number of LJ’s promised “actions” rely on the labor of queer and trans people. While trans people are the experts on their own experience it is not their job to fix this situation. All that I can say at this point is anyone approached to provide labor for these action points should make an informed decision about participation, be clear in writing about what they will be responsible for providing (and make sure the intellectual rights remain with you), and ask for an abundant amount of money. This work should be well compensated, full stop. A company that can find $10k to donate in less than a week can pay queer and trans people well for their labor.

*In the email I mistakenly indicated I had been reviewing since 2014.

**I have signed this open letter (signature #1172) and by doing so indicated that if the award is not rescinded, with the award money going to Gender Justice League, by 30 June 2020 I will voluntarily rescind my 2019 Reviewer of the Year award due to “irreconcilable differences in values” (wording suggested by Fobazi M. Ettarh).

#WFHLibrarian: My New Normal

23 Saturday May 2020

Posted by Anna Clutterbuck-Cook in library life

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20200313_104507

Answering email on the couch, with Teazle as my lap assistant (March 2020).

I’ve worked in frontline reader services at an independent research library since October 2007, serving the public both in person and remotely at the Massachusetts Historical Society (Boston, Massachusetts) for nearly thirteen years. On Tuesday, March 10th, 2020 we learned that at the close of business that day the library would close to the public until further notice due to the covid-19 (coronavirus) public health emergency in Boston. By noon on Wednesday, March 11th, all staff had retrieved necessary equipment and personal belongings from the building so that they could transition to fully remote operations.

I haven’t set foot in our building at 1154 Boylston St. for over two months.

As a library worker, I’ve rarely been busier.

Across the nation, as pressure increases for libraries to reopen — and for staff to return to their physical spaces — the call #ProtectLibraryWorkers has grown louder. It has become clear that many people don’t understand that the work that library workers do carries on even when the physical library is closed for the health and safety of library staff and the many communities within which we are embedded as both members and service workers.

I want to be clear that it is morally abhorrent to expect library workers, at any level, to risk death to provide library services in the midst of a pandemic. If the choice is fewer — or no — library services, for a time, in exchange for the health and safety — the lives — of library staff (and of patrons who would enter unsafe conditions if visiting an open library) the correct choice is to protect your people and resume services when it is reasonably safe for everyone to do so. Donna Lanclos and Stacy (@DarkLiterata) break down how the push to reopen libraries without regard for the lives of workers fits into the deeply problematic narrative of vocational awe, and I encourage you to read their threads. The are absolutely right.

That said, the choice being presented is a false one because in most cases* no service is not what happens when the library’s physical doors remain closed to the public while infection rates remain high and a vaccine remains under development. So in light of that, I thought it might be helpful to provide a behind-the-scenes glimpse of what is actually happening in my own research library environment during pandemic times. To that end, between Tuesday, May 26th and Friday, May 29th I’m going to live tweet my work day at the hashtag #WFHLibrarian. At the end of each day, I’ll collate the Tweets and share them in narrative form below. I hope that others will join in as well, since my own experience is specific to my institution and my position within it. Continue reading →

it’s all a bit surreal: 39th birthday + #AWEFund

30 Monday Mar 2020

Posted by Anna Clutterbuck-Cook in library life, life writing

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20200328_131959

So March.

March has been a helluva year, hasn’t it?

Today is my 39th birthday and I had hoped — last week — because this is the world we live in now — to launch a fundraising appeal for the Archival Workers Emergency Fund today. The fund isn’t quite there yet, because the AWEF planning committee members care about getting it as close to true north as we possibly can and that’s taken drafting and re-drafting and conversations with the leadership at the Society of American Archivists and then more drafting … We’re close! But it’s not quite open for business yet.

So.

So I would ask that if you would have pulled out your (virtual) wallet today and made a donation to the #AWEFund as a birthday gift to me, you mentally put that pledge aside for when we can gratefully accept that $5, $10, $15, $25 or more to support archival workers for whom this covid-19 (coronavirus) crisis has become a financial crisis.

In the meantime, have a beer or a glass of wine in my name, enjoy the sunshine at a social distance from other beings, have a cupcake, and let’s all pull together for a more just and sustainable tomorrow.

Stay safe, be kind.

Onward.

(one reason why) rwa matters to us all

08 Wednesday Jan 2020

Posted by Anna Clutterbuck-Cook in library life

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I wrote a longer-than-intended Twitter thread about the Romance Writers of America (RWA) implosion tonight — I got a bit ranty — so here it is as a blog post, tidied up only a bit for blog post format.

I have no idea what percent of my timeline is #romance and romance-adjacent and therefore already tuned in to the RWA implosion. But beyond romancelandia, if you are in the nonprofit / membership organization world this situation concerns you.

Detailed timeline (currently being frequently updated):
The Implosion of RWA by Claire Ryan, Author.

A good summary: “Romance Writers of America cancels annual RITA awards contest amid racism controversy,” Entertainment Weekly (6 January 2020).

If you are on the staff of a nonprofit and/or volunteer on a board of a nonprofit, this cascade of events concerns you. Particularly (I believe) the way that efforts toward justice (diversity, inclusion, equity, access reforms via policies and processes) were used against intent. The labor of marginalized members, particularly women of color within RWA, who were fighting to make concrete changes in their national professional organization, was appropriated and used to destroy their work (and directly used to try and silence them).

This isn’t an isolated incident, either in RWA or in the world of nonprofit cultural institutions and organizations, where underrepresented people are fighting to re-center their own stories and voices in the face of the imperialist, white supremacist ableist cisheteropatriarchy. If you work and/or volunteer in any space of this kind — and you care about fighting for a more just future therein — be on the offensive. Think about how your policies and procedures could be weaponized. Think about who is most likely to weaponize them.

Build defenses, contingency plans.

We can’t stop the work.

We absolutely shouldn’t stop the work.

But be ever aware that there are people for whom the change we are fighting for is something they will literally put their entire career (hell, the very existence of RWA as an organization!) on the line to stop our success, our right to be and thrive, its tracks.

Ask who would rather your organization cease to be than become truly anti-oppression in its orientation and practices. And plan to cut them off at the pass.

One key vulnerability in codes of conduct, codes of ethics, statements of diversity and inclusion, and other policy instruments that we often turn to within organizations to work toward justice is that they too often rely on language of non-discrimination. They rely on the very (white) American belief that the solution to inequality is treating everyone equally. To be “colorblind” … to be proud that you couldn’t tell your colleague was queer … to “not notice” a disability.

When policies and procedures require treating everyone “the same” they are VERY VERY EASY to weaponize against those who name discrimination. Because it’s not the quiet white supremacist who broke the rules … it’s the mean black woman who called them names. Drawing attention to inequality, in effect, becomes equated with creating the inequality. IF YOU JUST DIDN’T NOTICE the inequality, you marginalized person making a fuss, everyone would be treated the same BUT NOW I (the person expressing bigoted opinions) am being treated badly.

So you get situations like this:

person expressing bigoted opinion
⬇️
files code of conduct violation complaint
⬇️
against the person who identified the bigotry

So ask yourself, your committee, your organization … what does your policy require you to do in this instance? If your policy is written as a “neutral” document (there are no neutral documents) then likely your policy encourages you to find fault with the person who used Mean Words against the person who had a Bigoted Opinion because, after all, we must be inclusive. Welcoming to everyone. And look, we haven’t been so welcoming to the person with the Bigoted Opinion have we? Clearly, something must be done to address their complaint. 

So.

Think.

And think DAMN hard.

About when push comes to shove who gets to be welcome in your space, who gets to be included, and who pays the price of that welcome by being excluded.

Because someone ALWAYS pays the price. And I, personally, would rather the shitty white supremacist grifters paid the price than the queer black lesbians writing me good kissing books. And I’d like organizational policy documents to back me up on that one.

Ida B. Wells Book Project

07 Friday Jun 2019

Posted by Anna Clutterbuck-Cook in library life, my historian hat

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Cover_Southern_horrors

Ida B. Wells, Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases, book cover, 1892.

Now that I’ve actually signed the contract (ohmygodohmygodohmygod), a bit of news from my historian/writer’s life!

I was recently approached by an editor — someone with whom I’ve previously worked on an encyclopedia of women in American history — and invited to join a group of authors writing biographies for an ABC-CLIO series called Women Making History aimed at a high school and undergraduate audience. After some discussion and negotiation I have accepted the invitation; over the next eighteen months I will be working on a biography of journalist and activist Ida B. Well (1862-1931)! I am grateful to Dr. Peg Lamphier and her co-editor Dr. Rosanne Welch, as well as Dr. Kim Kennedy White at ABC-CLIO, for the opportunity to tackle this new type of history writing-for-hire. I have enjoyed shorter projects of this nature and recently declined a much larger reference book project that — while interesting to me! — seemed well beyond my bandwidth to tackle alongside my other commitments. This biography project feels like a good length, with a tight enough focus, to be a challenge … but not an overwhelming one. I look forward to strengthening my research and history writing muscles over the next year and a half.

The book will be — by series design — a synthesis biography, grounded in the research and analysis of specialist historians, rather than a work based on my own archival research. I have a strong background in 19th and 20th century American history, with an emphasis on gender and sexuality, but I am not an expert on African American history or the life of Ida B. Wells. To complete this project, I will rely on the scholarship of the many historians and activists who have ensured Wells’ life and work are not forgotten, and who have placed her story in rich historical, cultural, and political context.

As a white historian approached to write a book about a black intellectual and activist, I took some time to consider under what terms it would be appropriate to accept this job. As with all of my other work-adjacent projects, I confirmed with the series editors that the authors working on this series are not all white — making sure the project met my inclusion rider prerequisite. It does. Now that I have accepted the project, I want to commit publicly to two additional anti-racist actions:

  1. First, I commit to practicing citational justice, ensuring that the majority of works cited in the book are by scholars of color, and particularly by black women. This also means I will place a priority on purchasing works by black women as I build my research library for the manuscript. If you are interested in the intersection of social justice and citational practice, check out the Cite Black Women Collective, whose five guiding principles inform this commitment. Also this post, “Making Feminist Points” by Sarah Ahmed, and this piece on “The Politics of Citation” by Kecia Ali.
  2. Second, in the interest of transparency about the financial benefits of this project: I have agreed to an advance of $850.00 and 8% royalties. I will be donating one third of the advance ($285) and 50% of any subsequent royalties (hey, a girl can dream!) to the African American Intellectual History Society (AAIHS) to support the work of scholars whose research and writing make work-for-hire writing projects like this possible.

My goal through these actions is to materially redistribute the financial benefits of the work I will be doing in a way that directly supports scholarship by and about black women. I’m making these commitments public not for cookies but because transparency is an important part of accountability. I also believe it’s important to break the white silence around how we benefit from structural racism, and have matter-of-fact discussions about ways to actively resist white supremacy in our daily lives.

I look forward to digging into the scholarship around Wells’ life, and to creating a new pathway into that scholarship through a biography that will be put in the hands of young people. If all goes well, the book will be out in 2021. In the meantime, if you are interested in learning more about Ida B. Wells, I would encourage you to start where I have begun my own reading: borrow a copy of Paula J. Giddings biography Ida: A Sword Among the Lions (Amistad, 2008) from your nearest library.

 

Queer Lives, Queer Loves: Library Journal Presentation

10 Friday May 2019

Posted by Anna Clutterbuck-Cook in library life

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This past Tuesday, 7 May 2019, I gave a presentation to students in a Library Journal professional development course “Evaluating, Auditing, and Diversifying Your Collections.” I was asked to present on the topic of tropes and stereotypes of LGBTQ+ people in media. Below are images of my PowerPoint slides and some of the key talking points of my (unscripted) presentation. A number of people on Twitter requested access to the talk so this is my attempt to make the content available in a more permanent, open access format.

Queer Lives, Queer Loves_ Moving from Tropes and Stereotypes toward LGBTQ+ Representation

A text-only version of the slide deck (PDF) may be downloaded here.
A full-color, image slide deck (PDF) may be downloaded here.

Queer Lives, Queer Loves_ Moving from Tropes and Stereotypes toward LGBTQ+ Representation (2)

I began by situating myself in relation to this topic as someone who is privileged in some ways while marginalized in others. I also have training and scholarly interests relevant to this work. I also acknowledged this was the first time I had presented on this particular set of ideas and welcomed feedback from the course participants (I welcome feedback from readers here as well!)

Queer Lives, Queer Loves_ Moving from Tropes and Stereotypes toward LGBTQ+ Representation (3)

I took a moment to talk about my decision to use the word “queer” as an umbrella term for people who are non-normative in the areas of sex, gender, and sexuality. It was important to me that students understand that inclusive collection development in this area means not just materials on gay and lesbian vs. straight people but a diverse web of identities. I explained that a person who is queer may fit in one or more of these non-normative communities — for example, a person may be trans AND bisexual AND kinky. Or nonbinary AND aromantic AND practice BDSM.

Queer Lives, Queer Loves_ Moving from Tropes and Stereotypes toward LGBTQ+ Representation (4)

I put my key takeaway in slide four: A collection that predominently represents the lives and stories of white, gay men is not a truly inclusive collection of queer fiction or nonfiction. It is important for libraries that are interested in building a robust collection of queer media to think about internal diversity as well. Think critically and intersectionally about who is (and is not) being represented and whose needs are (and are not) being met by your resources. What gaps do you need to fill? Are there resources to fill those gaps?

We also had an in-class poll to learn what % of student in the course considered themselves queer in some way. The results were about 15% queer / 85% not queer which actually surprised me (I had — clearly lazily! — assumed LGBTQ+ people might be over-represented in a course of this kind. I was speaking to a straighter audience than I had anticipated.)

Queer Lives, Queer Loves_ Moving from Tropes and Stereotypes toward LGBTQ+ Representation (5)

I touched briefly on sexually explicit media because access to SEM in libraries is controversial and regulated — and those regulations disproportionately impact queer people’s access to information and stories by and about queer people. Queer content is often classified as more sexually explicit by default (for example, queer romance getting classified as erotica in content systems even if it is not as explicit as the straight romance that would be classified in the same way). This impacts the visibility of queer content continually, and library staff need to be aware of this dynamic as they assist their users. 

Queer Lives, Queer Loves_ Moving from Tropes and Stereotypes toward LGBTQ+ Representation (6)

The discourse of “own voices” is one that many participants in this course come into the class supporting. I think it is a good tool in the toolbox of collection development, since it asks people selecting resources to think critically about who has the power to tell stories — who is being paid to publish a book, create a documentary, conduct research within a marginalized community. However, I also wanted our students to understand that “own voices” is not always a simple check-box category — particularly when we begin to think of multiple, overlapping communities of marginalization. My favored definition of “own voices” is the one shown here, from Blue Crow Publishing. But even using that group-level test of ownership, not all works fit neatly in or out.

Queer Lives, Queer Loves_ Moving from Tropes and Stereotypes toward LGBTQ+ Representation (7)

Using the Blue Crow Publishing definition above, paired with “queer” as the group identity, many of these examples are “own voices” (I count examples 1, 2, 3, 4, and possibly 5 and 7 as well). The students were polled on these examples and only examples 1 and 3 were voted most definitively as “own voices”.

It’s complicated.

Queer Lives, Queer Loves_ Moving from Tropes and Stereotypes toward LGBTQ+ Representation (8)

We moved on to tropes and stereotypes. My central point in this part of the presentation was to explain how stories about queer experience, from the late-nineteenth century through to the early twenty-first century, have been shaped by cultural and legal regimes that required stories about queer people to end tragically. Depicting queer life as inherently criminal, closeted, sick, sad, and dead functioned to keep queer people marginalized and straight people aware of the importance of not deviating from heteronormative life scripts. Nonfiction and fiction alike treated queerness as a way of life to avoid and fear.

Queer Lives, Queer Loves_ Moving from Tropes and Stereotypes toward LGBTQ+ Representation (9)

This resulted in a media landscape in which people are taught to believe that queer survival and queer joy are ahistorical and inauthentic representation of queer experience. I quoted a letter-writer to the  Romance Writers Association magazine who complained that queer historicals mis-represent LGBTQ+ people: “Give the [queer] characters their dignity … teach what life was like for noncisgendered people … the obstacles were life-threatening.” The expectation that a queer life is inevitably a sad and dangerous one (except maybe in the very recent past and present) works to deny the validity of stories that deviate from a cisheteronormative script designed to police and marginalize queer people.

Queer Lives, Queer Loves_ Moving from Tropes and Stereotypes toward LGBTQ+ Representation (10)

In a landscape of narratives in which this cycle of marginalization — where cultural narratives systematically render queer joy unimaginable — continues, it’s critically important to understand how those cultural narratives bias the public against the queer historical imaginary and queer history. Evidence of queer life in the past is systematically held to a higher (impossibly higher) standard of proof than evidence of a straight past, which is presumed to be reality.

Queer Lives, Queer Loves_ Moving from Tropes and Stereotypes toward LGBTQ+ Representation (11)

I invited the students to consider this passage from a queer romance novel where two queer people, a trans man and his nonbinary lover, discuss this double standered for queer historical interpretation and what would happen if people turned the question around and in the place of presumed cisgender and heterosexual identity historians worked from a place of “assumed homosexuality [and] threw cisgender out the window?” What might history and historical practice look like then?

 

Queer Lives, Queer Loves_ Moving from Tropes and Stereotypes toward LGBTQ+ Representation (12)
Queer Lives, Queer Loves_ Moving from Tropes and Stereotypes toward LGBTQ+ Representation (13)

In the final series of slides, I planned to present on my process as a reviewer of queer content, posing a series of questions that I ask fiction and nonfiction works and offering some illustrative examples of works I think do relatively poorly or relatively well on matters of queer representation.

 

Queer Lives, Queer Loves_ Moving from Tropes and Stereotypes toward LGBTQ+ Representation (15)
Queer Lives, Queer Loves_ Moving from Tropes and Stereotypes toward LGBTQ+ Representation (16)

Because I ran out of time in the 30 minute presentation timeslot (my own fault!) I was unable to discuss these examples in live time, but did put together a document with a slightly expanded list of critical questions to ask and six examples (three problematic, three solid).

Queer Lives, Queer Loves_ Moving from Tropes and Stereotypes toward LGBTQ+ Representation (14)

You can access the PDF handout I created for the five slides above here.
You can access the PDF of the “further resources” I created here.

Queer Lives, Queer Loves_ Moving from Tropes and Stereotypes toward LGBTQ+ Representation (17)

 

student debt: the thread

13 Wednesday Mar 2019

Posted by Anna Clutterbuck-Cook in library life, life writing

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A lightly edited Twitter thread I wrote today prompted by this Tweet that crossed my timeline: 

Seriously: Akers is suggesting that people who plan to pursue a path to Public Service Loan Forgiveness will overborrow on loans to “support their lifestyles!” Not a reality based statement. #RealCollege

— Dr. Sara Goldrick-Rab (@saragoldrickrab) March 13, 2019

I mostly don’t read or talk about student loans and the PSLF program because it’s a shortcut to panicked paralysis but today let me share my story about debt, grad school, and public service.

My family circumstances made it possible for me to graduate with my B.A. only $5k in debt. I went to a school where my father worked on staff, so I got tuition remission and I lived at home to keep expenses down. So I began the grad school search and application process not very deep in a hole. Between graduating college (May 2005) and beginning grad school (August 2007) I worked at part-time jobs that paid hourly wages of between $7.50-$10.00/hour. I had been working part-time for a decade or more at that point and in that context a $10.00 wage seemed grand! One of my jobs even gave me the option to open a 401(k) to which I began to slowly contribute. I had low expenses because I didn’t have kids, wasn’t maintaining a house or a car, and I was able to live with my parents. I started paying down that $5k of student debt. I put some savings away for a computer to get me through grad school and a cushion to get me through a cross-country move.  I was able to arrange a transfer with one of my part-time jobs (Barnes & Noble) from West Michigan to Boston so that I arrived with a job waiting (even if it only paid $9/hour). Most people don’t have the family support and resources to do this kind of planning when they’re making below living wage.

I was warned by faculty mentors and career services people at my undergrad, when applying for grad school, that student loans were likely inevitable. I was looking at M.A./M.L.S. programs and was told the funding goes primarily to PhD students. I didn’t want to enter a PhD program. But I did need an advanced degree if I wanted to pursue work in the library science field, and I wanted to continue my history scholarship as well both because I loved historical research and writing and also because it would help me on the job market. I chose a private school (Simmons College, now Simmons University) for my grad program for personal and pedagogical rather financial reasons. I wanted to get out of Michigan for a while, and the program offered an integrated archives-history track with small cohorts that sounded like a good fit.

In retrospect I didn’t have much experience cost comparing. I had never shopped for an undergrad college — I had gone where tuition was free, because that seemed like an offer I’d be foolish to refuse. So I was naive. But I had also grown up in a context that predisposed me to pick based on the program first, and cost second. I had been encouraged by all of the adults in my life to evaluate learning experiences first on the basis of whether they supported the personal goal of making a meaningful life and contributing to the collective good and then, second — after deciding whether the learning on offer was a good match — think about whether it was practically feasible. I actually still believe that is a valuable approach. But it is an approach that exists uncomfortably alongside the skyrocketing expense of higher education. “Is this practically feasible?” is a different starting place from, “What is the smartest financial decision?”

When I got the financial aid package there was some merit based scholarship money … and a projected ~$60k in student loans for the four years of the program. Scary numbers I had no basis for evaluating. (Another reminder that I was a white, middle class young adult who was a third generation college graduate with PhDs in my extended family. Many people go through this with way less cultural competency in the higher education marketplace. And I was still struggling to interpret my options.) So. I get the aid package and am at sea trying to evaluate it. My father has a colleague who does financial advising and he offers to go over the numbers with me for free (again, something most people do not have in their lives). I put together a spreadsheet of projected income and expenses. The financial advisor is impressed I can spreadsheet! He looks over my numbers and the takeaways from our conversation are these:

  • Educational debt is an investment. While I’m not being encouraged to sign for loans willy-nilly, the loans on offer are all government loans with non-predatory interest rates and flexible options for repayment based on circumstances. Taking out loans to pursue professional training is not considered a poor financial strategy.
  • The first year of grad school will likely be most expensive, as I transition to a new city, look for work, look for an apartment, find roommates to cost-share with, etc. I can borrow a bit more in year one and likely bring borrowing down in subsequent years as my expenses go down and my earning goes up.
  • The best practice was not to take out more in loans than I could expect to earn as an annual salary once I had completed my degree. If I kept that equation in mind, it would help keep my monthly payments after graduation to something my earning power could realistically absorb.

I took his advice, bit the bullet, and decided to accept the offer of admittance. It was scary, but I felt I had done my due diligence and no one had raised red flags so I pressed forward. And his advice, as far as it went, was pretty decent. I’m glad I stuck to federal loans, and during graduate school I was able to reduce the amount I accepted in loans each year. I worked multiple jobs (that paid $12 and even $14/hour!), accepted stipended teaching and research assistantships, and shared a 500sqft apartment and living expenses with another graduate student (reader, I married her). Living in Boston is fucking expensive. In my hometown, the apartment that I had shared with a roommate in college cost $500/month. We each paid $250. I knew Boston would be expensive but there’s a difference between knowing on paper a major metropolitan area is more expensive than your hometown and writing a rent check for $1250 every month (today that rent check is $1900). But Boston was where my graduate program was, and it is/was where my job (and my wife’s job) opportunities were — and still are. There was no way, during graduate school, we could pay living expenses working jobs that paid $12-$14/hour, even with both of us working. So loans were a necessity part of making ends meet while we were balancing school, work, and life.

As I have written about before, the reality of taking on so much debt — I had never even had to pay interest on my credit card balance, which I paid in full every month! — was physically toxic to my system. I was so frightened of, and humiliated by, the fact of having student loan debt I woke up nauseated every day for the better part of that first year. I felt like I should have been clever enough to find a different way. It felt like irresponsibility to incur debt at all.

While I was in graduate school, the 2008 financial crash happened. NO ONE was hiring. We all felt lucky not to be let go (if we weren’t let go). It was around this time that one of my colleagues made me aware of the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program. This was before anyone, anywhere had been making payments for the necessary ten years to apply for forgiveness. The criteria seemed opaque but we puzzled through the fine print and concluded our non-profit cultural institution was likely a qualifying employer. THANK GOD there might be light at the end of the tunnel. A safety net by which the chronically low-paying jobs in our field (libraries, archives, and museums) were recognized as a public good and the financial burden we were all carrying in order to do that service work might be lifted.

Notice I say “might.” We were all wary of the PSLF program because it seemed too public-spirited to be true in the age of government austerity. It was way too uncertain a possiblity, way too far in the future, to make any major decision life based upon a “might.” Certainly not as we were watching colleagues be let go, watching the job ads slow to a trickle, watching the housing crisis unfold nationwide.

Just as I was going on the full-time, post-grad school job market in earnest, I was offered a promotion to full-time at my current workplace. The starting salary was $34k/year. So while my student loans (approaching $60k by graduation) met the guideline for not exceeding the “typical” Boston salary in the library sector ($62k) the job — full time! with benefits! in a shitty economy! — on offer was only half that. So the realities of the  situation were this: I could accept a full-time job with colleagues I felt good working with, doing work I felt good about, in a shitty job market and enroll in an income-based student loan repayment plan OR I could keep looking for a job, perhaps even in other sectors I wasn’t trained for, that would allow me to pay off my student loans in the “standard” ten years. Don’t forget that I had/have a partner who also has student loan debt we are jointly responsible for, who was simultaneously making these same calculations around accepting contingent, part-time work or … remaining on the brutal job market.

Remember that my wife and I both work in an entire industry — non-profit, cultural heritage work — where staff are chronically underpaid, especially in relation to our training and the financial investment they were encouraged to put into that education, and all told (and tell eachother) we should be grateful for work we love. Are we foolish to accept and repeat this story? Maybe. But the story is told around us and dictates the conditions of our work in material ways not entirely in our individual control. When an entire sector is organized around the economy of workers expected to be grateful and do more with less, if we push back individually the headwind is strong. We are negotiating on very uneven terms with employers who know they can ask for more, with less, because everyone does.

So. Have I somehow been encouraged to maintain my “lifestyle” of working at a non-profit cultural heritage institution that is in basic alignment with my values because of the possibility that someday, maybe, the federal government would forgive my student loan debt? The structural forces that shaped my graduate school path and the debt that followed from that are — no offense to the federal government — much larger than the vague possibility of potentially qualifying for a debt forgiveness program could have much impact on. The ship of student loan debt, and the job market we graduated into, had sailed long before the PSLF became a thing that might apply to us a decade in the future.

Ideally — ideally — I would argue that a) the costs of education should be socialized so students aren’t taking on astronomical amounts of personal debt to equip themselves for their jobs and b) the wages paid to entry-level workers in any industry — but perhaps particularly the non-profit / public service worlds — should align with the expenses incurred to train plus the money required to be financially secure. Until that happens, the PSLF program is hardly precipitating the problem of overwhelming student debt. It’s a stop-gap measure to make sure those serving the public for low wages don’t sink beneath the weight of educational debt or evacuate the field entirely because it becomes financially unsustainable. I think it is an entirely appropriate role for government to encourage workers to accept and remain in jobs that service the collective well-being of humanity and to step in and provide a safety net that offsets the financial risk we are currently asked to shoulder.

I have been on income-based repayment for my ~$60k + interest student loan debt since August 2011. I’ve had my employer certified as PSLF-eligible. I’m not holding my breath but I have no other choice because we cannot pay rent and pay standard monthly payments on our debt. This is a systemic problem that requires a systemic solution, and PSLF is one piece of the front line, emergency-response puzzle.

Republicans want 100% of the financial risk of EVERYTHING to be on the individual (student, employee, retiree, sick person, etc. … ). In contrast, I believe — not just because I am one of those touched by the potential of PSLF — that it is a good moral and utilitarian use of government to mitigate the financial burden of education and training in our present reality. If you agree with me, let your representative and senators know! The PSLF is worth fighting for, for all of us, as the first step in reshaping how we fund higher education in the United States. And I’ll be writing my representative Ayanna Pressley, and my senators Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey, this week to tell them so.

Book Review: Algorithms of Oppression

23 Wednesday Jan 2019

Posted by Anna Clutterbuck-Cook in book reviews, library life

≈ Leave a comment

Since we’re talking about the racism built into algorithms this morning, I thought I could share this review I wrote for the NEA Newsletter (January 2019). The published review had to be revised down to 500 words; this is the extended version. 

34762552Noble, Safiya Umoja. Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism (New York University Press, 2018).

In this accessible and deeply-researched volume, critical information studies scholar Safiya Noble (University of California, Los Angeles; co-editor of The Intersectional Internet) uses the Google search engine as case study to document and theorize the ways in which racism and sexism are embedded within the structures of information harvest and delivery by for-profit companies on the World Wide Web. Noble considers the mechanisms through which results are delivered to those who use Google search, foregrounds the power relationships that shape the nature and hierarchy of those results, and challenges readers to denaturalize the process of “Googling it” when we have a question in need of a ready and reliable answer. As a sociologist and a critical library and information science scholar, Noble weaves together a librarian’s understanding of how cataloging, classification, and research tools operate with a critical Black feminist understanding of the interlocking systems of oppression from within which these technological systems of information organization and retrieval were designed. Often assumed by both developers and the general public to be value-neutral, the typically invisible (and often proprietary) algorithms by which human beings create and access content online are inescapably shaped by these logics of oppression — logics often deemed normal, normative and therefore “neutral” to those who benefit from them, even when they are anything but.

To make her case that we are living with a hegemonic culture of “algorithmic oppression” (4), Noble walks readers through a series of examples that follow out from a catalytic moment early in her graduate school career. She describes in chapter one putting the search string “black girls” into Google search in an effort to find activities for a group of preteen girls only to be inundated with a list of racist and hypersexualized results:

The best information, as listed by rank in the search results, was certainly not the best for me, or for the children I love. For whom, then, was this the best information and who decides? What were the profit and other motives driving this information to the top of the results? How had the notion of neutrality in information ranking and retrieval … remained so unexamined and without public critique? (18)

This first chapter walks readers through the basic concepts of algorithmic search and what can (and cannot) be gleaned about Google’s development of PageRank, its proprietary algorithmic product, from early concept documents. Based on the idea, borrowed from academia, that the most influential literature is also the most often cited, PageRank began with the assumption that a link to a web page was analogous to a citation, and that the web pages with the most links were therefore the most influential and therefore best (itself an assumption about power and authority that must be critically examined). While the algorithm itself may be proprietary, the fact that we cannot analyze the mechanism of Google search at the code level does not prevent us from observing — as Noble does — that Google’s algorithms produce search results that are anything but impartial. Not only does PageRank encourage searchers to engage with advertiser content — advertisers are, after all, Google’s primary clients — but also reproduce and amplify harmful beliefs.

Chapter two delves into specific examples of such searches, and casts a skeptical glance at the efforts of Google executives to distance their company from these harms. Searches including the word “Jew,” for example, produce a high proportion of anti-Semitic content (42); image searches for “doctor” return pictures of mostly white men, while image searches for “unprofessional hairstyles for work” produce pictures of black women (83). Whether or not Google software developers set out to create an algorithm that generates and amplifies the misogynoir[1] of our culture is beside the point. “Intent is not particularly important,” Noble reminds us (90). Whether or not a white person means to be racist (or a developer means to practice misogyny) is a question that may be unanswerable. Rather, as critical information workers and consumers, we must ask — regardless of intent — who is harmed by the images and ideas circulated through Google search interactions.

Having considered the technological processes and biased, arguably harmful results of the Google search product, Noble moves on in chapters three and four to consider other ways in which Google’s dominance in our online lives operates to further marginalize the already marginalized. As in the offline world, without purposeful and ongoing efforts to combat structural oppression in online spaces, inequality persists. Chapter three explores how the Internet, as a space governed by commercial interests rather than as a noncommercial public good, can cultivate and exacerbate harmful and false ideas. When the goal is to generate clicks for advertisers, there is little incentive for search products to “intercede in the framing of the question itself,” and challenge the searcher to critically examine their own desires or beliefs (116). Chapter four raises questions of data privacy and the right to be forgotten by an Internet that never forgets, particularly as increased visibility may deepen the vulnerability of already-vulnerable populations.[2]

algoirthms thread snipAfter reading the book and turning in my review, I had some further thoughts about the way sexually-explicit materials were handled within the text. A thread sharing those thoughts may be found on my Twitter timeline here. 

The final two chapters of Algorithms, along with a brief epilogue that considers the harrowing challenge of our current political moment, turn from the structural problem of algorithmic oppression toward potential solutions. One key intervention is to increase critical awareness of our digital ecosystem’s biases, a project that librarians and other information workers could be particularly well-positioned to undertake. Noble also champions a “public search engine alternative” to the current commercial options (152), a government-funded check on Google’s troubling power within and over almost every aspect of our interconnected lives and livelihoods. Even if that remedy seems politically unrealistic in the near future, it may be a public works project worth fighting for.

By focusing on the ubiquitous tool of Google search, Algorithms gives those just beginning to think critically about our Internet-centric information ecosystem concrete and replicable examples of algorithmic oppression in action. For those already steeped in the rapidly-growing literature of critical librarian and information studies, Algorithms will be a valuable addition to our corpus of texts that blend theory and practice, both documenting the problematic nature of where we are and the possibility of where we might arrive in future if we fight, collectively, to make it so.


[1] “Misogynoir” is a term coined by Moya Bailey to describe the particular misogyny that Black women experience, a misogyny inextricable from the racism they experience under white supremacy. See Moya Bailey, “They Aren’t Talking About Me,” Crunk Feminist Collective, 14 March 2010. http://www.crunkfeministcollective.com/2010/03/14/they-arent-talking-about-me/.

[2] The “right to be forgotten” is also a concept generating renewed interest in archives and cultural heritage study and practice; see for example Ashley Nicole Vavra, “The Right to Be Forgotten: An Archival Perspective.” The American Archivist vol. 81, no. 1 (Spring/Summer 2018): 100-111. https://doi.org/10.17723/0360-9081-81.1.100.

Engaging in Critical Librarianship

06 Wednesday Jun 2018

Posted by Anna Clutterbuck-Cook in library life

≈ Leave a comment

I was invited to participate on a panel at the Tufts University Libraries staff development day, 6 June 2018, on the theme of critical librarianship. Before opening the panel to a more discursive question and answer period, each of the panelists — myself, Stacy Collins, and Liz Phipps-Soeiro — were asked to briefly speak about our own practices of critical librarianship. These were my remarks.

I decided to use my brief presentation time here today, before we move into a more conversational mode, to share three questions with you that I use to frame and reflect on the practice critical librarianship at my workplace and in the field more broadly. I want to note here, at the top of our discussion, that I received no formal training in critical theory when I was pursuing my MLS degree at Simmons College, between 2007 and 2011; last night, when I was preparing my remarks, I did a quick search and found that the #critlib Twitter chats go back to 2014, and the DERAIL Forum at Simmons — a student-led forum for “critical discussions of the intersections between social justice issues and our roles as students and information professionals” — began in 2016. Five years after I finished my graduate education.

As someone who entered the field of librarianship because I was seeking a way to put my leftist politics into practice, I am really excited that these discussions are happening — and often happening in ways that are accessible to library workers who are no longer students themselves (on Twitter, at professional conferences, in forums like this). While I love to read and think about critical theory, I want to underscore that you don’t have to be a theory nerd to think and act critically in library spaces. And I hope that these three questions, which I have found helpful in clarifying my role and responsibilities to work for social justice on the job, help you think about what you can do in your own work space to make our practices more inclusive.

Question One: What are my core values?

A key insight of critical theory is that power is distributed unequally in every area of our lives. Critical theory especially highlights the way that systems and structures — cataloging standards, workplace hierarchies, the physical organization of space — presented as objective, neutral, and natural that may appear “neutral” (in part because powerful people present them as such) in fact actively work to produce and reproduce power and privilege whether or not they are ultimately good for human flourishing.

Many of us became librarians because we are passionate about access to information — particularly access that is made available on an equal basis to everyone in the community (however defined) that the library serves. The hard lesson that critical theory teaches us is that the practice of librarianship is not inherently the practice of social justice. We learn that libraries, too, are sites of oppression. Of colonialism, of racism, of anti-gay, anti-Muslim, anti-fat, ableist, and sexist attitudes and exclusionary practices. And we learn that sometimes these harmful attitudes and actions are not incidental to librarianship but are, in fact, foundational to the history of our field and woven tightly (perhaps inextricably, in some cases) into our daily work.

This is why my first question — for myself, and for all of you — is: “What are my core values?” Current best practices, organizational mission statements, codes of ethics established by professional bodies — these may be useful, but they should not be your only way of holding yourself accountable for socially just practice. Instead, I encourage you to identify (or create) communities of accountability outside of your workplace, perhaps even outside of your field. In the months following the 2016 election, for example, it became clear to me that speaking out against GOP policies required more than the language of professional ethics and best practices. Identify those people and spaces that help you hold on to your deepest sense of justice and joy, and check in with those people, spend time in those spaces, purposefully reflect on how your daily work can better reflect those values you hold dear.

Question Two: Who is missing from this table?

The second question I encourage you to ask — and ask often — is “Who is missing from this table?” Who is missing from your conversations about policy, about access, about inclusion? When you post a job opening, who is applying for those positions, and who is invited for interviews? If those people all come from very similar backgrounds and all fit a very similar profile: Are they all (or almost all) white? Are they all from middle-class backgrounds? Are they all able-bodied?

Particularly when it comes to questions of power and agency in our institutions, getting into the habit of noticing who is and isn’t at the table when decisions are being made, when resources are being allocated, is a crucial step in taking action for change. Think critically about who serves (and who is asked to serve) on committees. Who has the financial resources to participate in professional development. Whose needs are framed as central in your workplace and whose comfort is considered as a postscript in event planning? And task yourself with documenting the exclusions you notice, and speaking up. To take one example, the Massachusetts Historical Society recently established a lactation space for staff and researchers, and when an email went out to staff announcing this the email referred to the space as a “Mother’s Room.” Not all parents who provide milk for their children identify as mothers, or as women — so I asked the facilities staff to consider more inclusive language for any signs or information text on our website.  In another case, a staff member noticed that our registration form offered no gender-neutral alternative to Mr. and Ms. — a careless oversight that was easily remedied once he brought it to our attention. While sometimes true ideological differences exist, and need to be dealt with, in many cases change can be made with minimal fuss institutionally and make a HUGE difference in how welcome staff and patrons feel.

Question Three: Where, and how do I have agency?

Once you start thinking about the (mal)distribution of power in your library, and once you start noticing who’s being excluded, and how, it’s time to think about where and how you have agency to make change. All of us carry complex identities that mean we have institutional and social power in some contexts and may be marginalized in others. It’s important to do the work of discerning where you, specifically, can bring insight to bear and where you have the power to act. When it comes to social privilege, for example, I am a white woman, I am able-bodied, I hold advanced degrees, English is my first language, I have birthright citizenship. Institutionally, I have the advantage of ten years’ tenure, a supervisor who supports me, and I’m salaried with benefits. On the other hand, I am queer and a woman; I’m not a department head, and in many cases am not at the table when institutional policy discussions take place. I am young compared to many of my senior colleagues. But that doesn’t mean I lack agency. In the comedy world, they talk about jokes that “punch up” rather than “punch down”: Jokes that punch down — fat “jokes” or rape “jokes,” for example — reinforce existing prejudice and police already-marginalized people further. Jokes that “punch up” work in the opposite way, naming and ridiculing those policing practices in a way that exposes their violence and hopefully helps turn the cultural tide. In a similar way, I have come to think about practicing critical librarianship “from the middle” of an institution as an exercise in sheltering down and amplifying up. Assess where you are in your organization, who your allies are, and who among those allies has more structural power and who has less. It’s your job to amplify the voices of those with less structural power. Remember those people not at the table? If you are at the table, do everything you can to bring those people to the table. And if they can’t be there in person, bring their concerns forward yourself. And in the other direction, identify the harmful ways power is being used against the vulnerable in your workplace — and do what you can to mitigate those harms, even if you are not in a position to unilaterally change policies or practices.

Critical race theorists assert (and here I am quoting from Richard Delgado’s Critical Race Theory: An Introduction) that society should “ ‘Look to the bottom’ in judging new laws [and] if they would not relieve the distress of the poorest group — or worse, if they compound it — we should reject them.” I argue that the practice of critical librarianship is the continual process of checking in with our most vulnerable, our most marginalized community members and challenging ourselves and our organizations to make their experiences, perspectives, and needs central to our policies and practices.

 

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