Towards the Slow Library | Jeremy Abbott

Acceleration is essential to the neoliberal capitalist project, a project that has been pulling libraries into its wake for decades, and its accelerative drive has dehumanizing and deleterious implications for library workers. David Harvey emphasizes this desire for speed when describing the incorporation of information technologies into neoliberalism: “These technologies have compressed the rising density of market transactions in both space and time. They have produced a particularly intensive burst of what I have elsewhere called 'time-space compression.’ The greater the geographical range (hence the emphasis on 'globalization') and the shorter the term of market contracts the better.”¹ More succinctly, this is what Karen Nicholson refers to as “fast capitalism.”² I emphasize acceleration rather than the more frequently asserted neoliberal value of efficiency partially because of the rhetorical force it lends to my proposed remedy, but also because I see efficiency and its attendant process of metricity as building blocks of the greater neoliberal project of ever-increasing velocity. “Acceleration” by itself is not a process, but a value that has harnessed efficiency and metricity. I propose attacking those processes by erecting a new value in acceleration's place: slowness. This conception of slowness builds on David James Hudson’s resistance to the white-encoded practicality of the profession, embraces the emphasis on a feminist ethic of care and labor solidarity encouraged by the Great Lakes Feminist Geography Collective’s arguments for slow scholarship, and seeks to travel alongside the careful attention to process and collaboration that Kimberly Christen and Jane Anderson call for with their advocacy for a slow archives movement.³ Going slow provides an opportunity to remedy and hopefully prevent the difference-erasing smoothing that efficiency encourages. It opens up space to imagine alternatives to the neoliberal project, to imagine care-based modes of working, to make space for failure and experimentation. While the underlying financial roots of the neoliberal capitalism may be beyond the ability of libraries to solve,⁴ we can resist speed: we can claim slowness as a virtue.

Metricity is not measurement per se, rather it is an orientation of practice, a fixation on measurement as a means of increasing production. This conception of metricity follows after the “metricity” Martha Nussbaum introduced in her discussion of the “science of measurement.” Nussbaum suggests that the conclusion of that science is that “choices and chosen actions have value not in themselves, but only as instrumental means to the good consequences that they produce….the idea that there is some one value that is the point of rational choice, in every case, to maximise.”⁵ Metricity relies upon constant atomization and increase of measurable attributes to pursue that maximization. Each new split of the basic library process of shelving, for instance, into books per book truck, paperback versus library binding, time per shelf etc. provides another jagged edge in a formerly smooth process for neoliberalism to hook onto and refashion to fit into just-in-time organizational principles or a new performance indicator by which to measure salary or grant funding. Metricity demands norms and means on which to base performance evaluations. Not only does this create more work of measurement for LIS workers, but as increased data collection arrives at a mean, the metricity impulse then seeks to erase difference in the name of efficiency.

One of efficiency’s most damaging fellow travelers is exclusion. Processes of optimization and streamlining inevitably metastasize from analysis of process to analysis of person. This iteration of efficiency, as envisioned within the neoliberal project and ingested willingly or not by libraries, relies on exclusion of undesirable bodies to achieve its ends. An idealized middle-class, white, able-bodied patron and worker becomes the default around which metrics assert themselves. As Amelia Gibson, Kristen Bowen, and Dana Hanson very recently pointed out: “much of the current practice of librarianship and information science...in the U.S. is also embedded with and within neoliberal social and political institutions and norms...that often tie library and information access to selective membership and ‘productive citizenship’..., and marginalize disabled people who are considered ‘unproductive.’”⁶ Neoliberalism engineers its notion of efficiency around the people it values, which tend to be the people that produce the most value for it: “Under neoliberalism, ‘tax paying citizens,’ ‘dues paying members,’ and ‘loyal customers’ all claim rights and privileges denied to non-contributing ‘non-citizens’ or outsiders. This excludes disabled people, people experiencing homelessness, teens, nonresidents, and anyone else who has not sufficiently ‘paid their dues.’”⁷

Slowness, on the other hand, values and even seeks joy in difference. As the scholars of the Great Lakes Feminist Geography Collective argue in their case for a slow scholarship: “Slow scholarship can grapple with intersectional questions of social reproduction, of racialized, ableist, and class hierarchies imagined collectively; it has political potential.”⁸ Slowness has the time to unravel, rather than compound. As Hudson puts it: “It is difficult to undertake the slow, messy practice of unpacking foundational assumptions -- and their material implication in the dispossessive violence of existing social, political, and economic arrangements -- where one’s environment is governed by expectations of efficiency, directness, brevity, speed.”⁹ Slowness provides space to reckon with and welcome in difference, among patrons, workers, and collected materials.

Slowness allows for experiment and failure, which in turn leads to perhaps more meaningful forms of growth than occur under neoliberalism. Neoliberalism’s metric and market trend chasing tendencies encourage libraries to pursue proven “winners” and recently trending technologies. This leads to stultified innovation on the one hand and potential incoherence on the other. The slow library, however, does not chase the patron, it stands ready to be used. As Cathy Eisenhower and Dolsy Smith put it: “it is difficult to make more efficient the work of someone whose job it is...to stand and wait.”¹⁰ When liberated from efficiency, slowness provides time to experiment, as well as the capacity for absorbing and appreciating failure. Invoking Judith Halberstam’s ‘The Queer Art of Failure,’¹¹ the Great Lakes Collective suggests: “What if we were to follow Halberstam’s...lead and celebrate failure and its companion in neoliberal times - slowness - as essential components of good scholarship?”¹² Making space for failure and experimentation in library spaces would open up meaningful, organic avenues of innovation, as well as push back on neoliberalism’s narrow models of success.

Slowness also opens up a space where neoliberalism’s power flows lose their gravity, allowing for the imagining of a more caring world. The Great Lakes Collective, citing Luke Martell, notes that “...the ‘slow’ in slow scholarship is not just about time, but about structures of power and inequality. This means that slow scholarship cannot just be about making individual lives better, but must also be about re-making the university. Our call for slow scholarship is therefore about cultivating caring academic cultures and processes.”¹³ And crucial to building caring processes is careful attention to burden shifting. Concurrent with the neoliberal globalization impulse that Harvey alludes to is an outsourcing impulse, which further incentivizes atomization of work such that segments of a given process can be performed outside the library space by workers in more vulnerable labor markets. Slowness for some cannot come at the expense of acceleration for others. The cultivation of communities of care within library spaces cannot be blinkered to external conditions if slowness is to be meaningful and just.

Slowness may also mean pushing back against patron expectations. Placing holds on library materials via internet catalog search has been growing in popularity among patrons, but what may appear to be a frictionless, convenient, and speedy process for patrons to obtain materials actually requires a great amount of staff energy, labor that is generally invisible. The patron only sees the requested item waiting on a shelf for them when they arrive at the library to retrieve it, not the time spent locating and processing it. This method of interaction transforms workers into extensions of the online catalog, which generally runs on an infrastructure that is controlled by corporations unaffiliated with the library, further decreasing the hold process’s accountability to library workers. Here, as in many incidences of seemingly human-free internet-enabled convenience,¹⁴ reduction of friction for satisfying patron desires means much more invisibilized work for staff, which can easily become labor measured in terms of patron requests filled, rather than staff time demanded. This is not to say that expanding options for patrons to access collections is a bad thing, quite the opposite: the difference that slowness embraces should act to open more doors to patrons, especially those previously shut out of meaningful library access. But increased access cannot come at the cost of dehumanizing and invisibilizing staff labor. Invisibilized labor quickly becomes metricized labor, and this consequential shift merits careful vigilance.

The slow library perhaps seems unrealistic at the moment, as modes of library funding have become increasingly tied to the speedy adoption of new technologies and ever more evidence of “engagement.” But this is part of neoliberalism’s insidiousness: the steady assertion that it is reality, that “there is no alternative,” to painfully invoke Margaret Thatcher’s hopefully not-immortal echoing of Herbert Spencer. This essay does not pretend to be an answer, but hopefully can serve as a beginning. As Jamie A. Lee and Marika Cifor argue: “neoliberalism is a way of thinking, which means we can re-think our way out of it.”¹⁵ Unionization and labor solidarity both within library spaces and outsourced labor spaces can provide a foundation for slowness. Evaluation of the efficacy of programs and services based on criteria that staff actually value would be another, to the extent that evaluation is necessary at all. A shift towards slow libraries itself would have to happen slowly, and would be difficult to initiate in isolation. But that does not mean it is not worth thinking differently. And maybe if we think slowly, we can begin.

 

 

1 David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 4.

2 Karen P. Nicholson, “The McDonaldization of Academic Libraries and the Values of Transformational Change,” College & Research Libraries 76, no. 3 (2015): 329, https://doi.org/doi:10.5860/crl.76.3.328.

3 Kimberly Christen and Jane Anderson, “Toward Slow Archives,” Archival Science 19, no. 2 (June 1, 2019): 87–116, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10502-019-09307-x.

4 But I absolutely refuse not to try.

5 Martha C. Nussbaum, Love’s Knowledge: Essays on Philosophy and Literature (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 56. Nussbaum’s full conception is characteristically insightful, though it stretches outside of the work of this paper: “We can break the ‘science of measurement’ down into four distinct constituent claims. First, we have the claim that in each situation of choice there is some one value, varying only in quantity, that is common to all the alternatives, and that the rational chooser weighs the alternatives using this single standard. Let us call this claim Metricity. Next, there is the claim of Singleness: that is, that in all situations of choice there is one and the same metric. Third is a claim about the end of rational choice: that choices and chosen actions have value not in themselves, but only as instrumental means to the good consequences that they produce. We call this Consequentialism. If we combine Consequentialism with Metricity, we have the idea of maximization: that the point of rational choice is to produce the greatest amount of the single value at work in each case. Combining both of these with Singleness, we have the idea that there is some one value that is the point of rational choice, in every case, to maximise.”

6 Amelia Gibson, Kristen Bowen, and Dana Hanson, “We Need to Talk About How We Talk About Disability: A Critical Quasi-Systematic Review,” In the Library with the Lead Pipe, February 24, 2021, http://inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2021/disability/.

7 Amelia Gibson, Kristen Bowen, and Dana Hanson, “We Need to Talk About How We Talk About Disability.”

8 Alison Mountz, Anne Bonds, Becky Mansfield, Jenna Loyd, Jennifer Hyndman, Margaret Walton-Roberts, Ranu Basu, Risa Whitson, Roberta Hawkins, Trina Hamilton, and Winifred Curran, “For Slow Scholarship: A Feminist Politics of Resistance through Collective Action in the Neoliberal University,” ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies 14, no. 4 (August 18, 2015): 1249, https://acme-journal.org/index.php/acme/article/view/1058.

9 David James Hudson, “The Whiteness of Practicality,” in Topographies of Whiteness Mapping Whiteness in Library and Information Science, ed. Gina Schlesselman-Tarango (Sacramento: Library Juice Press, 2017), 212, https://litwinbooks.com/books/topographies-of-whiteness/. Hudson’s chapter is also a masterclass on the joys and freedom to be found in footnote citation. See footnote three, wherein Hudson lavishes 112 words on a description of a joke from ‘The Simpsons’ about Johnny Unitas.

10 Cathy Eisenhower and Dolsy Smith, “The Library as ‘Stuck Place’: Critical Pedagogy in the Corporate University,” in Critical Library Instruction: Theories and Methods, ed. Maria T Accardi, Emily Drabinski, and Alana Kumbier (Duluth, Minn.: Library Juice Press, 2010), 305–18.

11 Judith Halberstam, The Queer Art of Failure (Durham: Duke University Press, 2011).

12 Alison Mountz et al., “For Slow Scholarship,” 1244.

13 Alison Mountz et al., “For Slow Scholarship,” 1238.

14 See Sarah T. Roberts, Behind the Screen: Content Moderation in the Shadows of Social Media (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019).

15 Jamie A. Lee and Marika Cifor, “Evidences, Implications, and Critical Interrogations of Neoliberalism in Information Studies: An Introduction,” Journal of Critical Library and Information Studies 2, no. 1 (2019): 4-5, https://doi.org/10.24242/jclis.v2i1.122.

The Asexual Librarian | Lisa Kahn

 

Oh, It’s a Wonderful Life (1946). A classic American Christmas film. Remember that scene in the alternate reality in which Jimmy Stewart’s character discovers that without him being born, his wife Mary becomes (drum-roll please) … A Librarian!!! [1] Not only that, but a spinster librarian wearing tan makeup, glasses, and homely clothing. The shame of it all (read: sarcasm).

Yet this trope of the spinster librarian is common. The LIS field, as we know, is historically highly feminized, white, and, in the media at least, often desexualized. While desexualization is completely different from asexuality, I will be using this image of LIS work as perceived feminine and asexual to discuss how concepts like sexuality and competitive power are not fundamental aspects of existence. Additionally, the terminology of the metaphor I will be using will be in binary terms such as “feminine” and “masculine”; these binary views do not reflect my perspectives, rather they support and contribute to the problematic image and relationship I am attempting to critique and detangle.

As an asexual person, I can’t help but see sex (the verb, not the noun) as often being a masculine expression of power and control [2]. The classic representation of toxic male greed and coercive sexual power is the lewd American businessman, imposing his power through sexual harassment of any woman in the office (Mad Men, Wolf of Wall Street, etc). The inverse of this character, the sexually-withholding woman, perceived either as innocent and virtuous, or vindictive and self-righteous, is still an object to be conquered, and therefore the woman is still seen as being in the weaker position [3].

I’d like to explore this problematic association of sex and power in the world of LIS. In this world, LIS work and workers who represent public, equitable access to knowledge resources, are perceived as feminine and asexual, in contrast to the masculinized and allosexual world of private business, consumerism and capitalism. This post, through the lens of specifically asexual queer theory, will discuss the position of LIS work in a capitalist neoliberal society, and how an asexual perspective applied to queer theory can help envision a different relationship of systemic power. Asexuality, as defined by the Asexual Visibility and Education Network (AVEN), can be defined as “a person who does not experience sexual attraction” [4]. It gets more complicated from there, as asexuality essentially contributes a whole other axis of understanding one’s existence. I will not be defining or discussing further what asexuality means, as there are plenty of resources for self-education on the matter online [5].

While queer theorist literature is beautiful and powerfully influential in liberating the self from restrictive societal and personal oppressions, they are frequently built upon the assumption that “sexuality is presumed to be natural and normal to the detriment of various forms of asexual and nonsexual lives, relationships, and identities” [6]. For example, Sharon Marcus states that “Queerness also refers to the multiple ways that sexual practice, sexual fantasy, and sexual identity fail to line up consistently. That definition expresses an important insight about the complexity of sexuality, but it also describes a state experienced by everyone” [7]. Within my metaphor of sex paralleling masculine capitalist power, Marcus’ vision of sexuality within queer theory suggests that competitive power is inherent and fundamental to human society.

While competitive power (read: allosexuality) is perhaps by far a more common understanding of existence, it is not the only way of understanding the world. Contemporary American society largely still believes in the pervasive myth of capitalistic success under neoliberalism, and therefore in the power of business, wealth and power (read: masculine, allosexual). Conversely, socialist institutions such as libraries and community archives, have seen progressively decreased funding and therefore can be perceived as weaker (read: feminine, asexual) in our profit-driven societal understandings of power. Asexuality threatens capitalism, as it undermines the feminine role of making babies to perpetuate a population of capitalist consumers. LIS threatens private businesses, as LIS work tries to promote equity and accessibility, notions incongruent with neoliberal capitalism.

This metaphor can also be applied within the LIS field (read: queer community) itself. It is commonly discussed in asexual community forums that asexual people are often pushed from queer spaces, being seen as not queer enough, but I cannot emphasize enough how queer our existence is [8]. In my metaphor, the exclusion of alternate imaginations of society that are not capitalistic can be seen in LIS workers who may consider themselves democratic or progressive, yet are unwilling to commit to radical inclusivity. Drabinski, Roberto, and Olson all acknowledge the power of old structures in Western knowledge organization, such as how “in LC’s terms, LGBT people are permanently othered, and purely sexual beings” [9]. This tension of holding onto old power structures within the LIS field reflects ace-exclusionist queer community members' unwillingness to acknowledge a destabilization of an assumed norm of existence (asexuality may be far from the norm at only 1% of the population, but that’s still millions of people who exist in this way).

This exclusionism and unwillingness to relinquish and acknowledge other types of societal structures (relationships) also manifests itself within the LIS field in the split in LIS workers’ desire to attach themselves to capitalistic, neoliberal structures. For example, the LIS world is still extremely white, entrenched in “neutrality” politics, and not fully on the overthrow-neoliberalism train. Asexuality, like other sub-umbrellas of the queer community, problematizes the idea of any normative or default way of existence by uncoupling sexuality from being alive [10]. Sex, like masculinity, is not bad or inherently abusive, but the assumption that sex (or masculinity / capitalist power as the controlling entity) is the default of existence because of its prevalence, is self-defeating of any movement toward accessibility and inclusion, whether in the queer community, the LIS field, or society writ large. There is so much that can be said about what asexuality can contribute to queer studies, and it’s unfortunate that there is so little inclusivity of it in queer theory canon, especially in LIS queer theory (I found one article) [11]. I hope that my brief thought experiment here can contribute to much more extensive and inclusive discourse in the future.

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[1] “It’s a Wonderful Life - Mary The Old Maid (1946),” YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SLDMMGzkyI. 

[2]  I am very aware that is not all that it is, and it is very much a source of empowerment and goodness for people of all/no genders (but roll with my association for the time being, I have my own issues).

[3]  The caricatures for this metaphor were inspired by Maura Seale and Rafia Mirza’s article "Empty Presence: Library Labor, Prestige, and the MLS,” Library Trends 68, no. 2 (2019): 252-268. doi:10.1353/lib.2019.0038.

[4]  The Asexual Visibility & Education Network. https://www.asexuality.org/

[5]  See sites such as asexuality.org, asexualityarchive.com, https://medium.com/@herbixarre/acephobia-allosexuality-and-what-it-means-to-be-queer-cc5b5329bfdd.

[6]  Ela Przybylo, Asexual Erotics, pp.1. https://library.oapen.org/viewer/web/viewer.html?file=/bitstream/handle/20.500.12657/24390/1005725.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

[7]  Sharon Marcus, “Queer Theory for Everyone: A Review Essay,” Signs 31 (1) (2005): 196.

[8]  To give one example, coming out as asexual tends to involve a lot of incredible invasive and inappropriate questions. Most assume it is suddenly okay for them to explain for you why you feel different (“You’re probably repressing some trauma,” “you just have to find the right person,” “you’re making that up for attention,” “how do you know if you’ve never tried it,” “is it a mental disorder? let's put you in therapy”, “it’s a phase,” “have you tried it with yourself?”, “are you an amoeba?”), rather than trusting that you know what you feel or do not feel.

[9]  K.R. Roberto, “Inflexible Bodies: Metadata for Transgender Identities,” Journal of Information Ethics 20 (20) (2011): 58.

[10]  Ashley O’Mara. “Coda: Asexual Awareness Week and the Future of Queer Theory.” Metathesis. https://egosu.wordpress.com/2014/10/31/coda-asexual-awareness-week-and-the-future-of-queer-theory/

[11]   Brian M. Watson, “‘There was Sex but no Sexuality*:’ Critical Cataloging and the Classification of Asexuality in LCSH,” Cataloging & Classification Quarterly 58, no 6 (2020): 547-565. DOI: 10.1080/01639374.2020.1796876

Playing Whiteness in LIS | Antonio Buyard

      I am no stranger to the parental advice burdening Black youth with the responsibility of being “twice as good” as white students, or code-switching in order to be successful. Often, navigating whiteness, in both academia and the workplace, means sacrificing our authentic self-expression as it relates to race, gender and sexuality in hopes that playing whiteness effectively distances us enough from the realities of our marginalized identities. It hurts to agree with Derrick Bell’s assessment that “Black people will never gain full equality in this country,” and to perpetually witness our “empowerment” in white-dominated spaces continue to serve the interests of white supremacy. [1] “You play the game and give the white world what it wants just to get through the door. Then, once you’re inside, you blast that door wide open for others to follow you.” [2] I have played whiteness as a survival tactic my whole life — I’ve played it so well that I’ve managed to end up in a field that is predominantly white. As I read April Hathcock discuss her participation in this game and reflect on “Lifting as We Climb,” I wonder at what point do we retire the charade? 

     Using this idea of “Lifting as We Climb” as a point of departure, I call into question the effectiveness of playing white, a strategy that echoes “Racial Realism,” in its attempt to dismantle whiteness from within and argue the continued reliance on the “master’s tools” reinforces the same apparatus of whiteness it seeks to tear down.[2] This ideology requires us to accept a perpetual status of subordination as the foundation to prevent social and political self-sabotage rather than encouraging the oppressed to liberate themselves from white supremacy. Playing whiteness to trojan horse our people’s way into the LIS profession must recognize that the diversification of the field alone will not lay the foundation for material change. We must use Critical Race Theory (CRT) to further disrupt white hegemony and its indoctrination of “objectivity, neutrality, meritocracy and color-blindness” so that we no longer need to surrender our identities to find our place in libraries and archives.

     It’s important to stress that playing whiteness is not the core focus of Hathcock’s article, I am highlighting this point to discuss what I find problematic about this reconstruction of identity catering to whiteness. This is a difficult argument to levy as the refusal to act in accordance with whiteness can cost one their job, home, or promotion. [4] The isolation she speaks to, as a result of the lack of diversity in the profession, also resonates with me as one of three Black students in my cohort. A critical reframing of diversity initiatives is long overdue, and I agree that effective mentorship programs can alleviate the anxieties surrounding the whiteness of our profession. But how many handfuls of applicants from underrepresented communities are needed before we begin to divest from whiteness. This gradual approach to change buys whiteness more time to reify its power in new ways.

     When we consider the reasons why whiteness is so pervasive in LIS laid out by Chapman-Smith, the “rampant dropout rates among minorities, lack of early engagement with archives or other historical sources, and an educational system that places the bulk of minorities at a disadvantage,” I hope that it’s clear that validating whiteness should be low on our priority list. [5] I think often of “Mothering While Brown in White Spaces, Or, When I Took My Son to Octavia Butler’s Exhibit,” where Cecilia Caballero recounts being forced out of an exhibit, almost immediately, by staff while white women and their children enjoyed a space designed for them. [6] The irony is not lost on me – whiteness will continue to exert its dominance even in an exhibit dedicated to the woman who gave us Parable of the Sower. In the comment section of “White Librarianship in Blackface,” user, nina de jesus, makes clear the limitations for marginalized people in the field. “I did all the right things. I got a prestigious scholarship… published an article in this very journal. I’ve been attending conferences, given talks and such. And yet, I am still stuck in the same part-time position I got when I graduated three years ago.” [7] I ask again, how do we possibly change from within for the sake of others when we ourselves are reminded of how the system recognizes us?

     There are several, more effective, ways to dismantle whiteness within LIS. One, is with the establishment of community-based archives and programs – organizations for us – can empower marginalized communities, cultivate identity construction, and help communicate the value of archives to those who may not be aware of our field. Another is through counternarratives that challenge power. Dunbar uses the example of the ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archive in Los Angeles in his discussion of counterstories as a means to “construct alternative realities to those constructed through social institutions of dominant culture,” and serves as a great example of how these two processes are intertwined. [8]

     Bell boldly claims equality is a fallacy and that any step forward is an inevitable step backward for Black people. Perhaps, Bell should redefine what it means to be equal. When asked to define freedom, justice and equality for the Black man, Malcom X stated, “Equality has nothing to do with whites. We don’t want to be equal with the white man, he’s not the criteria or yardstick by which equality is measured.” [9] He goes on to say equality is the opportunity for us to develop our dormant potential, find independence and establish our own society. As I stated earlier, I agree that we will never achieve equality in this country; the United States is so deeply entrenched in white supremacy that I cannot fathom reforming or performing our way out of it. As I continue to work to dismantle whiteness instilled in me, I urge us to invest in our own identities and communities and learn to recognize appeals to whiteness are tools of the oppressor to reinforce the status quo.

[1] Derrick A Bell, The Derrick Bell Reader (New York: NYU Press, 2005): 74.

[2] April Hathcock, “White Librarianship in Blackface: Diversity Initiatives in LIS,” October 2015, http://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2015/lis-diversity/.

[3] Audre Lorde, “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House,” in Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches by Audre Lorde (Berkeley, CA: Crossing Press, 1984), 112.

[4]Derrick A Bell, The Derrick Bell Reader (New York: NYU Press, 2005), 75. 

[5] Mario H. Ramirez, “Being Presumed Not to Be:  A Critique of Whiteness as an Archival Imperative,” The American Archivist 78 (Fall/Winter 2015), 250.

[6] Cecilia Caballero, “Mothering While Brown in White Spaces, Or, When I Took My Son to Octavia Butler’s Exhibit,” Chicana M(other)work. https://www.chicanamotherwork.com/single-post/2017/08/23/mothering-while-brown-in-white-spaces-or-when-i-took-my-son-to-octavia-butler-s-exhibit.

[7] nina de jesus, “White Librarianship in Blackface: Diversity Initiatives in LIS,” October 7, 2015, http://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2015/lis-diversity/.

[8] Anthony Dunbar, “Introducing Critical Race Theory to Archival Discourse: Getting the Conversation Started,” Archival Science 6 (2006), 115.

[9] reelblack, “Malcolm X - Interview At Berkeley (1963),” YouTube video, 40:57, June 11, 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZMrti8QcPA.
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