Wed Mar 1 12:50:35 PST 2023
#library
BIPOC Mental Health Trends and Disparities

With the Library 2.023: Mental Health and Wellness Conference(1) and the recent LJ article "Working Toward Wellness: Exploring Trauma-Informed Librarianship"(2) (featuring, in part, Oregon libraries' very own fabulous Bryce Kozla) it is important to bring up mental health awareness for our BIPOC colleagues (3)(4) .

Non-BIPOC library staff absolutely need to be aware of the daily and lifetime traumas faced by our BIPOC colleagues, including those experienced in our library workplaces. We need to:

A) Acknowledge white privilege. Don't believe in white privilege? Imagine all of the stuff you go through on a daily basis - all the struggles and joys and boredom - now imagine dealing with everything you deal with while also having to deal with everything from a greater chance of getting a jaywalking ticket(5) to dying more frequently during childbirth(6) to being incarcerated with greater frequency and duration(7) to being murdered while out for a jog(8) or driving(9) or sleeping in your own bed(10) to the extreme generational wealth gap(11). Your white privilege means not having to deal with any of that...ever...much less on a daily basis.

B) Listen to our BIPOC colleagues. Listen without prejudice. Listen and believe despite your lack of experience in the matter. From the LJ article, "In libraries, the main goal is to be anticipatory and move the discussion from 'What is wrong with you?' to 'What do you need?'"

C) Don't treat EDIA as a separate thing. It is not only a committee. It is not only a position in your organization. EDIA has to be fully integrated by everybody everyday in the workplace because that is the only way to combat the systemic injustice our BIPOC colleagues experience every day.

Don't know where to start? Ask the OLA EDIA Committee(12), check out their Antiracism Toolkit(13), or the Western States Center’s Confronting White Nationalism in Libraries Toolkit(14).

By the way, much of this also goes for our LGBTQIA+ colleagues. Imagine not being accepted for who you are. For state and federal legislators to try and pass laws (and at times succeeding) to make who you are illegal(15)? This is the trauma that our LGBTQIA+ colleagues face every day, and they have faced it for their entire lives.

Frankly, it goes for every marginalized group of people who are made to be "other." It isn't us vs them, it is all of us simply allowing people to be who they are.

"Love is an action, never simply a feeling." ― bell hooks

Do something.

---------------

1 - Library 2.023: Mental Health and Wellness

2 - Working Toward Wellness: Exploring Trauma-Informed Librarianship

3 - The Work of Women of Color Academic Librarians in Higher Education: Perspectives on Emotional and Invisible Labor by Tamara Rhodes, Naomi Bishop, & Alanna Aiko Moore

4 - BIPOC Mental Health Trends and Disparities

5 - Analysis Finds Tickets Disproportionately Issued to Black Pedestrians

6 - Working Together to Reduce Black Maternal Mortality

7 - Dissecting racial disparities in Mass. criminal justice system

8 - Ahmaud Arbery: Three US men guilty of murdering black jogger

9 - What we know about the killing of Tyre Nichols

10 - Breonna Taylor: US police charged over shooting death

11 - Here's one reason why America's racial wealth gap persists across generations

12 - OLA EDIA Committee

13 - OLA EDIA Committee Antiracism Toolkit (PDF)

14 - Western States Center’s Confronting White Nationalism in Libraries Toolkit

15 - Mapping Attacks on LGBTQ Rights in U.S. State Legislatures

Thu Mar 2 12:08:54 PST 2023
#library
More on White Privilege

Yesterday I wrote a bit about what white privilege is, but it didn't cover all of what white privilege is. White privilege is not just not experiencing the disadvantages that BIPOC so often face. Peggy McIntosh explains in her article from 1989(1), "As a white person, I realized I had been taught about racism as something which puts others at a disadvantage, but had been taught not to see one of its corollary aspects, white privilege, which puts me at an advantage."

She explains how whiteness is the dominant culture in so many of our institutions and systems and how easily that meant she could navigate those systems, "I see a pattern running through the matrix of white privilege, a pattern of assumptions which were passed on to me as a white person. There was one main piece of cultural turf; it was my own turf, and I was among those who could control the turf. My skin color was an asset for any move I was educated to want to make. I could think of myself as belonging in major ways, and of making social systems work for me. I could freely disparage, fear, neglect, or be oblivious to anything outside of the dominant cultural forms. Being of the main culture, I could also criticize it fairly freely."

Finally, Peggy McIntosh lists 26 ways in which she experiences white privilege, then states, "I repeatedly forgot each of the realizations on this list until I wrote it down. For me white privilege has turned out to be an elusive and fugitive subject. The pressure to avoid it is great, for in facing it I must give up the myth of meritocracy. If these things are true, this is not such a free country; one’s life is not what one makes it; many doors open for certain people through no virtues of their own."

You should read her list of 26 items from the article linked below and see how our libraries, and library organizations and associations promote white privilege and white supremacy...and how we benefit from that.

----------------

1 - White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack (PDF)

Fri Mar 3 10:26:41 PST 2023
#library
Even More on White Privilege

Believe in white privilege and systemic racism? Love is doing something. Contact the wonderful people on the OLA EDIA committee(1), contact the groovy folk at the Unpacking Discussion Group(2), grab the nearest white person and start talking, and/or email me and start talking(3). DO NOT talk to your BIPOC friends or colleagues, they have enough without having to explain to another white person - yet again - what's going on. DO listen to your BIPOC friends and colleagues...actually listen...really listen...and learn.

Don't believe in white privilege? Don't believe in systemic racism? Are(4) you(5) really(6) sure(7) about(8) that(9)? There(10) seem(11) to(12) be(13) a(14) lot(15) of(16) indicators(17) in(18) our(19)...ahhh(20)...system(21) that(22) point(23) to(24) huge(25) disparities(26) in(27) almost(28) every(29) aspect(30) of(31) American(32) life(33) that(34) would(35) seem(36) to(37) indicate(38) otherwise(39). Still(40) don't(41) believe(42)? I would really love to hear from you and learn why you (dis)believe what you do?(43) We can even go to personal emails so everything stays nice and confidential.

Three days in a row y'all have put up with me, and I thank you for your patience. I'll be taking the weekend off. It's a three day weekend (woot!) for me. I hope yours is pleasant, and if you're working, I hope your #SaturdayLibrarian/#SundayLibrarian shift goes quickly and quietly.

1 - edicommittee at olaweb.org>

2 - unpacking discussion contact

3 - mbaiocchi at lincolncity.org

4 - Hard Lessons, Hard Time: The School-to-Prison Pipeline

5 - Minorities Who 'Whiten' Job Resumes Get More Interviews

6 - The Economic Cost of Racial Inequality in the U.S.

7 - Women in the Workforce: The Gender Pay Gap Is Greater for Certain Racial and Ethnic Groups and Varies by Education Level

8 - "Family Achievements?": How a College Degree Accumulates Wealth for Whites and Not For Blacks

9 - Systemic Inequality: Displacement, Exclusion, and Segregation How America's Housing System Undermines Wealth Building in Communities of Color

10 - Blacks and Hispanics face extra challenges in getting home loans

11 - How wealth inequality has changed in the U.S. since the Great Recession, by race, ethnicity and income

12 - Asthma and African Americans

13 - Life expectancy in the U.S. increased between 2000-2019, but widespread gaps among racial and ethnic groups exist

14 - American Indian Suicide Rate Increases: Native communities experience higher rates of suicide compared to all other racial and ethnic groups in the U.S.

15 - Racialization as a Barrier to Achieving Health Equity for Native Americans

16 - Employer-Sponsored Coverage Rates for the Nonelderly by Race/Ethnicity

17 - Infant Mortality and African Americans

18 - Exploring Racial Bias in Drivers' Behavior at Pedestrian Crossings

19 - In-Hospital Mortality Disparities Among American Indian and Alaska Native, Black, and White Patients With COVID-19

20 - Examining the Impact of Structural Racism on Food Insecurity: Implications for Addressing Racial/Ethnic Disparities

21 - Racial Inequality in the United States

22 - The Color of Justice: Racial and Ethnic Disparity in State Prisons

23 - Homelessness and Racial Disparities

24 - Black Americans are Systematically Under-Treated for Pain. Why?

25 - Extreme Racial Disparities Persist in Marijuana Arrests

26 - Predominantly black school districts receive far less financial funding than white school districts (PDF)

27 - Black-White Disparity in Student Loan Debt More Than Triples After Graduation

28 - Delving Further into the Funding Gap Between White and Black Researchers

29 - The racial wealth gap: How African-Americans have been shortchanged out of the materials to build wealth

30 - The Top 10 Percent of White Families Own Almost Everything

31 - Black unemployment rate is consistently twice that of whites

32 - Racial Wealth Snapshot: Native Americans

33 - Missing and Murdered Indigenous People Crisis

34 - Understanding Disparities and Discrimination Faced by Asian and NHOPI People

35 - Demographic Differences in Sentencing

36 - U.S. Homeownership Rate Experiences Largest Annual Increase on Record, Though Black Homeownership Remains Lower Than a Decade Ago, NAR Analysis Finds

37 - The Stanford Open Policing Project

38 - Health Disparities Among Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders

39 - Black Americans Less Likely to Feel Safe in Their Community

40 - Violence Against American Indian and Alaska Native Women and Men: An NIJ-funded study shows that American Indian and Alaska Native women and men suffer violence at alarmingly high rates

41 - LAPD searches blacks and Latinos more. But they're less likely to have contraband than whites

42 - The US’s jaywalking laws target people of colour. They should be abolished

Sat Mar 4 09:04:24 PST 2023
#library
Sorry...

...for the little white lie. I won't be taking the weekend off, although it is a wonderful example of my privilege that I have that choice. Our BIPOC colleagues do not have that choice...no weekends off for them.

If you have the choice to neither think nor deal with racism, you have white privilege.

March fourth!(1) (I really wanted to go with May the fourth be with you...alas, my timing was 2 months off.)

Happy Saturday, all.

1 - March Fourth

Sun Mar 5 12:15:13 PST 2023
#library
On the fifth day of white privilege...

...this old white guy said to me...

Five days talking about white privilege. Five! Why? 1) When we acknowledge our white privilege we realize systemic oppression is real. 2) When we realize systemic oppression is real we're able to do something about it. 3) I'm an old white guy and it's what I'm familiar with.

Let's...ahhh...just set aside #3 aside, shall we?

Libraries are white spaces.(1) What happens when we don't acknowledge that libraries are white spaces? What happens when we don't acknowledge our white privilege?

A very tragically common example of the failure of libraries at the national level: April Hathcock's abuse at and by ALA.(2)

A more recent example of failure at the local level: What is happening to the OLA President.(3)

Step 1 for white people? Believe. We have all the proof of systemic racism at every level, so when we hear it from our colleagues, be like Ted Lasso and Believe! I work at the same library Star works at, and without a doubt Star is one of the most amazing and tenacious librarians I know, and I've witnessed her experiencing so much racism in the seven years I've had the great privilege to work with her.

That's why we need to acknowledge our white privilege. When we acknowledge it...talk about it...do something about it...we begin to help make our BIPOC colleagues' lives better.

And that's why white people have to talk with each other about it - keep it in the front of our brains, at the top of our consciousness - because it's so easy for us to not see it...and it's so easy for us to ignore it...and it's so easy for us to contribute to systemic and individual racism.

So talk! Communicate! Email! Text! Semaphore! Be like Margaret and show encouragement.(4) Be like Anna and share what what you learn and try to inspire others.(5) Be like Holly and share how you learn.(6)

-------------

1 - The White Space(PDF)

2 - ALAMW: What Happened, and What Should Happen Next

3 - Message from OLA Executive Officers

4 - [Libs-Or] More on White Privilege

5 - [Libs-Or] More on White Privilege

6 - [Libs-Or] Even More on White Privilege

Mon Mar 6 07:02:39 PST 2023
#library
Then there's this...

There are yet other reasons for us to acknowledge our white privilege.

BIPOC are fucking dying.(1)

BIPOC are fucking hurting.(2)

Don't take my word for it. Take the word of your colleagues, "Black people and African Americans, including library patrons and workers, are living under the weight of constant violence and other forms of discrimination and oppression."(2) "BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) library workers regularly experience racism in the workplace from patrons, colleagues, and/or managers."(2)

----------------

1 - Green Library Exhibit supporting the Black Lives Matter movement

2 - OLA Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Antiracism Committee Statement Calling for Meaningful Support for BIPOC Library Workers

Tue Mar 7 11:53:20 PST 2023
#library
Racial Trauma Revisited

On top of the anecdotal evidence of racial trauma from our BIPOC colleagues yesterday(1) - aren't we all just taught how important narratives are in libraries these days(2) - some(3) of(4) us(5) might(6) need(7) to(8) see(9) something(10) a(11) bit(12) more(13) formal(14), so(15) here(16) you(17) go(18).

---------------

1 - OLA Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Antiracism Committee Statement Calling for Meaningful Support for BIPOC Library Workers

2 - Narrative Budgets: Telling the Story of Your Library’s Value and Values

3 - How unjust police killings damage the mental health of Black Americans.

4 - Anti-Black Violence Is Associated with Poor Mental Health for Black Americans

5 - Police killings and their spillover effects on the mental health of black Americans: a population-based, quasi-experimental study

6 - Highly public anti-Black violence is associated with poor mental health days for Black Americans

7 - Stop AAPI Hate Mental Health Report

8 - Anger and sadness soared following George Floyd’s death, particularly among Black Americans, Stanford psychologists find

9 - Coping with Racial Trauma

10 - 'It Just Stays With You': The Corrosive Health Effects Of Decades Of Anti-Asian Violence

11 - The Effects of Racial Trauma on Mental Health: Deaths Captured on TV and Media

12 - Measuring the Biological Embedding of Racial Trauma Among Black Americans Utilizing the RDoC Approach

13 - Healing Ethno-Racial Trauma in Black Communities

14 - Legacy of Trauma: Context of the African American Existence

15 - Racial Trauma and Resilience in African American Adults

16 - Healing Ethno-Racial Trauma in Latinx Immigrant Communities: Cultivating Hope, Resistance, and Action

17 - Why race matters when it comes to mental health

18 - Healing ethno-racial trauma in Latinx immigrant communities: Cultivating hope, resistance, and action

Wed Mar 8 09:54:50 PST 2023
#library
When do we want it?

It's been eight days of posting about systemic racism now. 8! A couple of years ago, had somebody else done this, I would have been, "Don't you think you're taking this a bit far? Maybe slow down a bit? Calm down. We'll get there."

Wrong. We have to make the effort now. Why? The longer white people wait, the more death and pain there is.

There's an extremely pertinent quote by James Baldwin, "I was born here more than 60 years ago. I'm not going to live another 60 years. You always told me that it's going to take time. It’s taken my father’s time, my mother’s time, my uncle’s time, my brothers’ and my sisters’ time, my nieces and my nephew's time. How much time do you want for your progress?"(1)

There's also many relevant quotes from Dr. King in his Letter from Birmingham Jail(2):

First, I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate...who paternalistically feels that he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by the myth of time; and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a "more convenient season."

"For years now I have heard the word 'wait.' It rings in the ear of every Negro with a piercing familiarity. This 'wait' has almost always meant 'never' ... We must come to see with the distinguished jurist of yesterday that 'justice too long delayed is justice denied.' We have waited for more than three hundred and forty years for our God-given and constitutional rights ... I guess it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say 'wait."

"Frankly, I have never yet engaged in a direct-action movement that was 'well timed' according to the timetable of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation."

"When you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never knowing what to expect next, and plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of 'nobodyness' -- then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over and men are no longer willing to be plunged into an abyss of injustice where they experience the bleakness of corroding despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience.

"I had also hoped that the white moderate would reject the myth of time. I received a letter this morning from a white brother in Texas which said, 'All Christians know that the colored people will receive equal rights eventually, but is it possible that you are in too great of a religious hurry? It has taken Christianity almost 2000 years to accomplish what it has. The teachings of Christ take time to come to earth.' All that is said here grows out of a tragic misconception of time. It is the strangely irrational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills. Actually, time is neutral. It can be used either destructively or constructively. I am coming to feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than the people of good will. "

---------

1 - James Baldwin, James Baldwin: The Price of the Ticket,

2 - Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail

Thu Mar 9 11:06:37 PST 2023
#library
The Greatest Barrier to Ending Racism

You and I are the greatest barrier to ending racism. Not members of the KKK. Not members of the Proud Boys. You and me...just average everyday white folk.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. knew it.(1) Reni Eddo-Lodge knows it(2)...like, painfully knows it.(3) Rachel Cargle knows it.(4) James Baldwin knew it.(5)(6) Ta-Nehisi Coates knows it.(7) Leonard Pitts knows it.(8) Lorraine Hansberry knew it.(9) Sam Reason knows it.(10) Maya Angelou knew it.(11) Cristina Garc¨ªa knows it.(12) Roxane Gay knows it.(13)

Now we know it, too.

Love is doing something about it.

------------

1 - "I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens Councillor or the Ku Klux Klanner but the white moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says, 'I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can't agree with your methods of direct action.'"
- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail

2 - "I can no longer have this conversation, because we're often coming at it from completely different places. I can't have a conversation with them about the details of a problem if they don't even recognise that the problem exists. Worse still is the white person who might be willing to entertain the possibility of said racism, but who thinks we enter this conversation as equals. We don't."
- Reni Eddo-Lodge, Why I'm no longer talking to white people about race

3 - "Amid every conversation about Nice White People feeling silenced by conversations about race, there is a sort of ironic and glaring lack of understanding or empathy for those of us who have been visibly marked out as different for our entire lives, and live the consequences. It's truly a lifetime of self-censorship that people of colour have to live. The options are: speak your truth and face the reprisals, or bite your tongue and get ahead in life. It must be a strange life, always having permission to speak and feeling indignant when you're finally asked to listen. It stems from white people's never-questioned entitlement, I suppose."
- Reni Eddo-Lodge, Why I'm no longer talking to white people about race

4 - "White people love to be the victim in the conversation about race."
- Rachel Cargle, I Refuse to Listen to White Women Cry

5 - "Whatever white people do not know about Negroes reveals, precisely and inexorably, what they do not know about themselves."
- James Baldwin, Letter From a Region in My Mind

6 - "...and this is the crime of which I accuse my country and my countrymen, and for which neither I nor time nor history will ever forgive them, that they have destroyed and are destroying hundreds of thousands of lives and do not know it and do not want to know it. ... But it is not permissible that the authors of devastation should also be innocent. It is the innocence which constitutes the crime."
- James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time

7 - "And no one would be brought to account for this destruction, because my death would not be the fault of any human but the fault of some unfortunate but immutable fact of 'race,' imposed upon an innocent country by the inscrutable judgment of invisible gods. The earthquake cannot be subpoenaed. The typhoon will not bend under indictment."
- Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me

8 - "So often in today's culture, Americans will affix 'personal responsibility' on minorities to defend or deflect blame for prejudicial and, at times, deadly treatment. There is almost never an acknowledgement from a majority of white Americans that racism remains a very real threat to minorities.
- Leonard Pitts, Pulitzer Prize winner: Many Americans in denial about 'innocence,'

9 - "We have to find some way with these dialogues to show and to encourage the white liberal to stop being a liberal and become an American radical."
- Lorraine Hansberry

10 - "If someone¡¯s blatantly racist, you know their agenda, their motive, and you know exactly what they¡¯re saying and why they¡¯re saying it. But when people make subtle racist comments, they often don¡¯t believe or realize they¡¯re being racist and maybe don¡¯t mean it. So, if you challenge them, they¡¯ll often be defensive, 'I¡¯m not harming anybody, it¡¯s only a joke'. Or, they may think I¡¯m being over-sensitive. But imagine if you were on the receiving end of that joke? How would you feel?"
- Sam Reason, Black Voices: Learning to speak up against racism

11 - "Many members of that early band of twentieth-century pilgrims must have yearned for the honesty of Southern landscapes where even if they were the targets of hate mongers who wanted them dead, they were at least credited with being alive. Northern whites with their public smiles of liberal acceptance and their private behavior of utter rejection wearied and angered the immigrants."
- Dr. Maya Angelou, Letter to My Daughter

12 - "There are white people who know how to act politely to blacks, but deep down you know they're uncomfortable. They're worse, more dangerous than those who speak their minds, because they don't know what they're capable of."
- Cristina Garcia, Dreaming in Cuban

13 - "There is no collective slavery revenge fantasy among black people but I am certain, if there were one, it would not be about white people, not at all. My slavery revenge fantasy would probably involve being able to read and write without fear of punishment or persecution or a long vacation in Paris. It would involve the reclamation of dignity on my own terms and not with the 'generous' assistance of benevolent white people who were equally complicit in the ills of slavery."
- Roxane Gay, Surviving Django