Showing posts with label informationLit. Show all posts
Showing posts with label informationLit. Show all posts

Saturday, February 6, 2016

Colonialism and Whiteness: A Legacy of Brutality


Colonialism and Whiteness

This is the first post in a series of blog posts that seeks to understand the development of Whiteness in the Americas from colonialism to today.  These blog posts are short necessarily short and are not meant to be exhaustive, but to give the reader an idea of where Whiteness comes from and how it appears in our culture. The need for these posts came out of the backlash against Whiteness History Month at Portland Community College this April, 2016. 

Casta Painting
A Casta (Spanish: [ˈkasta], Portuguese: [ˈkastɐ, ˈkaʃtɐ]) was a hierarchical system of race classification created by Spanish elites (españoles) in Hispanic America during the Spanish colonial period. The sistema de castas or the sociedad de castas was used in 17th and 18th centuries in Spanish America and Spanish Philippines to describe as a whole and socially rank the mixed-race people who were born during the post-Conquest period. These unions produced in the process known as mestizaje. A parallel system of categorization based on the degree of acculturation to Hispanic culture, which distinguished between gente de razón (Hispanics) and gente sin razón (non-acculturated natives), concurrently existed and supported the idea of casta.  Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casta 

Whiteness

Whiteness has been with us since the beginning of European colonialism.  When Europeans conquered what was to become the Americas, they also established a racial caste system based on skin color.   The darker one was, the lower they were on the social scale.  Whiteness is a concept that describes the cultural, lingual, institutional beliefs, practices and behavior that maintains access to power and reinforces power for White people and people of lighter skin tones.  This colonial system was created for and by Europeans for the benefit of Europeans.  Everything was in relation to the European--this is a hallmark of the concept of Whiteness--that everything is judged in relation to Whiteness and not something else.  

Españoles (Spanish) [White people]
Peninsulares (Spaniards) [White people]
Criollos (Spanish Americans) [White people]
Indios (Amerindians)
Mestizos (Amerindian and Spanish mix)
Castizos (Spanish with some Amerindian mix)
Cholos (Amerindian with some Spanish mix)
Pardos (Spanish, African, and Amerindian Mix)
Mulattos (African and Spanish mix)
Zambos (Amerindian and African mix)
Negros (Africans)

This is, in a nutshell, how the European imposed hierarchy in the Americas looked.

This system was brutally enforced.  There were strict rules about who could do what with whom....This system was directly related to slavery and servitude.  The people higher up (Whiter) the hierarchy were granted more privileges and rights than those in the lower section.  Consequently, the amount of distance one could put between oneself and the lower states of the hierarchy, the better chance one had of making a living, or even succeeding in the European (White) dominated world of the Americas (Whiteness).   


Another casta painting

     

-->
     Casta paintings
The casta series represent different racial mixtures that derived from the offspring of unions between Spaniards and Indians–mestizos, Spaniards and Blacks–mulattos, and Blacks and Indians–zambos. Subsequent intermixtures produced a mesmerizing racial taxonomy that included labels such as “no te entiendo,” (“I don’t understand who you are”), an offspring of so many racial mixtures that made ancestry difficult to determine, or “salta atrás” (“a jump backward”) which could denote African ancestry. Source:https://goo.gl/O9DdUP

 These paintings show us the importance of Whiteness to the Spanish from the very beginning of their conquest of the Americas.  The resultant mixture with indigenous, African and Asian people led to a complex hierarchy of racial superiority that was adhered to and, in many ways, is still upheld today.  These notions permeate our society, but in a different guise.

High Civilization (NOT White)
-->
 Indigenous People and Whiteness

In an idealized Mexico where people of African, European and indigenous heritage were intermingling in seeming harmony, the paintings were a reminder to Spaniards that there was still a strong hierarchy of racial purity — with Europeans on top. Source: http://goo.gl/y1mAZQ
On the social scale indigenous people are close to last.  It was a survival strategy to distance oneself from anything that is indigenous.  Choices like adopting the god of the Europeans, to using their script instead of the indigenous forms of writing,  and becoming as Guero (White) in dress, speech and color if possible.

They had been here thousands of years and had established societies, cultures and hierarchies.

Once the casta system was imposed by invading Europeans they concept of Whiteness became increasingly important.  The abandonment of their culture, their languages and their identity is what was required, at baseline, if one wanted to survive or even advance in the new hierarchy that had been established by bloodthirsty conquerors. 


Up until recently, skin color has been a defining factor in Latino life.

Are you:

Guero?  (White, or Whiter Than)

Maron?  (Brown)

Negro?  (Black)

The answer could be a determining factor in your life....

Spanish burning indigenous books/knowledge/culture

          

-->
          Cultural Genocide

The racial hierarchy in combination with the destruction of the indigenous cultures by book burning, destroying cultural monuments and using them to build churches (Whiteness), and the enslavement of the indigenous people did much to reinforce the casta system.  Our (Latinos) indigenousness had been written out of the history books, it had been derided and our people discriminated against and persecuted (according to their skin color).  Whiteness can be uncovered when one thinks about how the descendants of European immigrants want to persecute indigenous people from Mexico and other parts of central America for wanting to migrate on their own continent.  Even Latinos are hesitant to use this argument against immigration restrictions on Latinos.  I can only imagine that the bias against Indios still permeates Latino culture and prevents this strong argument from being presented. 

Contemporary Latinos and Whiteness 

As always, this is not a sweeping generalization, but a description of a large part of Latino society in the US that I have been witness to my entire life.

Latinos in large part lost their indigeneity by distancing themselves from their indigenous heritage and appropriating the European religion and culture as much as possible.   It was advantageous to do so, economically, socially and health-wise, it was advantageous to be as European (White) as possible.  This is where we see Whiteness beginning in the Americas.

Since the 1990's there has been a resurgence of interest in indigenous culture by Latinos who want to claim that part of their heritage.  It had never really been a option before--now we see Aztec dancers, and other parts of our indigenous heritage celebrated and exalted by some Latinos.

An example of contemporary Whiteness 

When I pick up a book entitled, American Ethnic Folklore and I open it up and it is really about Indigenous mythology.  I then realize that this is whiteness.  The fact that this book has been written for White people by White people without regard to any other readership uncovers Whiteness in this particular context and moment.  This is Whiteness.  These kinds of subject categories still permeate education and information in general.

We must seek to uncover Whiteness where it is, when it appears.  Whiteness is not a stable, abstract concept.  Whiteness changes according to setting, in shifts it's mode of providing access and maintaining power for White people.   We should and help our allies see and explicate Whiteness when it appears in our institutional and social contexts.

Whiteness displayed before the Irish were considered White



-->
One other thing about Whiteness is that it can be adhered to by non-white people.  Many people of color and those who purport to want to help People of Color adhere to the system of Whiteness that the educational system upholds, supports and requires of POC who want to succeed.  I say that this is why we have made little to no progress in equity, diversity and inclusion in our school systems and our society.  

The brutalities that were used to enforce the racial hierarchies of yesterday are still with us today.They used to come in the form of lynchings--back in the days of Jim Crow.... Now they come in the forms of Police shootings of unarmed African Americans and Latinos in far greater numbers than Whites.  They come in vigilante shootings of unarmed African Americans, for example--the shooting of Trayvon Martin.  

Colonialism is still in full effect....

I appreciate any and all comments (except spam).


 

 



Saturday, November 28, 2015

Knowledge, Affiliation, Identity, Librarianship


Photo of people dressed as Star Trek characters.
Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f4/Star_Trek_uniforms.jpg

Kael Moffat
Information Literacy Librarian, Saint Martin’s University


As librarians, one of our many hats could be expressed as “identity formers.”  At first glance, this may seem like a grandiose claim, but if we look at aspects of our profession in light of Georg Simmel’s concept of the web of group-affiliations, we can see that we do play such an important role.  Simmel was a late nineteenth-century, early twentieth-century German sociologist and philosopher who wrote on such broad topics as the history of philosophy, philosophy of money, and social structure.  One of his influential shorter works, “The Web of Group-Affiliations,” published in 1922, can be used as lens through which we can look at how librarianship affects identity formation.
Simmel points out that an individual’s identity is initially imposed on them through the “web of circumstances” of family and other heterogeneous groups, such as religious and geographical communities (p. 331).  The family is the primal group-affiliation, obviously, but as the individual grows, he or she “establishes for himself [or herself] contacts with persons who stand outside this original group-affiliation,” but these first forays into non-familial affiliations tend to be with persons that are still somewhat similar to the individual (p. 331).  Affiliations like family, religion, and geography constitute organic affiliations since they arise “naturally” and lay claim on the individual without the individual’s own efforts and consent.  These affiliations are, according to Simmel, “sensual” (p. 331), meaning tied to what one experiences with the senses, and are also marked by “self-interest” and emotion, or a “mixture of both” (p. 334).
If we think of information as a kind of basis for community, connecting disparate individuals, we can see that it operates in similar ways to the webs of group-affiliation that Simmel writes about.  Patrons have their first information webs imposed on them through family, religion, social class, ethnicity, neighborhood, country, etc.  This gives them their initial worldview.  The individual experiences this worldview as “natural,” marked by sensuality, emotion, and self-interest.  Information, in this state often seems to be judged by how it “feels” or how it supports or contradicts the given worldview.  
Community definition text
Source: http://www.thebluediamondgallery.com/pictures/community.jpg
Group-affiliations, though, grow beyond these initial affiliations when they become defined by “purpose [by] factual considerations, or, if one will, [by] individual interests” (p. 331).  At this point, individual interests are those interests the individual gravitates towards by choice, although compulsion from parents, friend, religious leaders, etc. may also play a role.  These associations are “formed by objective criteria” and “constitute a superstructure which develops over and above those group-affiliations which are formed according to natural, immediately given criteria” (p. 333).  In contrast to the organic affiliations, these affiliations are more rational in nature because the individual can choose to cultivate or ignore them.  These wider contexts expand the individual’s world by putting him or her in contact with people and ideas that lie outside the contexts of family, religion, and geography.  Simmel observes that these affiliations “[tend] to enlarge the sphere of freedom” because the individual begins to choose “with whom one affiliates and upon whom one is dependent”; these wider contexts allow for and even encourage or demand change and make it “possible for the individual to make his [or her modified] beliefs and desires felt” (p. 3330).  
As an example of interest affiliation, Simmel discusses the emergence of Renaissance humanism as a competing form of affiliation to the medieval worldview, which was based primarily on religion and emotion.  The emergence of humanism coincided with the development of non-theological “academic” education, and the “independence of the intellect” (p. 333).  Humanists’ commitment to the life of the intellect, their “restless” and “adventurous spirit,” made them “indifferent to all other obligations usually incumbent” on individuals in the medieval world and engendered different forms of social interaction, embracing “the poor scholar and the monk, the powerful General and the brilliant Duchess, in a single framework of intellectual interests” (p. 333).  Such affiliations would likely not have arisen in the pre-humanist world.  He refers to such affiliations as “secondary groups,” and are more “rational” in character since the “substantive purpose of these group [was] the result of conscious reflection and intelligent planning,” rather than the happenstances of birth and geography (p. 334).  These broader affiliations of interest contribute to the individual’s sense of identity because they are more elective and each individual’s “pattern of participation is unique; hence the fact of multiple group-participation creates in turn a new subjective element” (p. 334).  Thus, the individual creates a sense of separate selfhood through his or her particular web, or combination, of group-affiliations.
Woman reading in library
Source: https://www.jisc.ac.uk/sites/default/files/library-study.jpg
An important part of these group-affiliations is the information associated with that affiliation.  A person affiliated with golf and the stock market will have a qualitatively different set of knowledge from somebody else who affiliates with quilting and community service, for example.  Different worlds require different information and knowledge; thus, in the spirit of Simmel’s analysis, our patrons are, in part, unique because of their unique combinations of knowledge.  As librarians, we help facilitate our patrons’ interactions with multiple large information and knowledge domains, thus playing a role in their emerging unique “pattern of participation” in the world.  This understanding should cause us to consider how we contribute to the emerging identities of our patrons.  Do we encourage their agency, their ability to explore and more deeply engage with their information worlds?  Do we consider how the information and knowledge we help our patron’s to discover enmeshes them in oppressive or liberating information worlds or contexts?  Once we understand how our work contributes to the development of our patrons’ identities, our reference and instruction activities should take on a new sense of significance.  In helping patrons access specific books, articles, DVDs, etc. we are in a material way contributing to their sense(s) of selfhood.  How are we doing?  Are we reifying systems and structures of oppression?  Are we encouraging open inquiry and exploration?  Enormous questions, to be sure, but ones we need to ask over and over again, even and especially when the answers may be uncomfortable.


Simmel, G. (1998). ‘The web of group-affiliations’. In M. S. Kimmel & C. Stephen (Eds.), Social and political theory: Classic readings (pp. 331–341). Boston: Allyn & Bacon.


2. Simmel’s reading of the medieval and Renaissance worlds is a bit simplistic here, of course, but his point that broader group-affiliations allow for broader social interaction does seem to hold.


Wednesday, February 11, 2015

#DiversitiesAndRepresentation

[We welcome this week's guest post from Da` Lyberri-Ann]

By: Da’ Lyberri-ann


Caldecott_medal.jpg
So another Midwinter has passed and like red carpet season, our new literary award winners have been announced with great fanfare. Facebook was filled with selfies and group pictures of committee members proud of a year’s hard work and accomplishments. As a librarian I should feel giddy and excited. New books are winning awards for outstanding literature in many different categories. As a children’s librarian I should be pulling out rolls of golden stickers to note these books of honor and proudly promoting them to my community. But I am not excited or proud. I’m upset. Disappointed. Dare I say “pissed off?”. Why? it is because again I see that although #blacklivesmatter for sound bites in the news, it doesn’t result in actual change.  

At the risk of pointing out the pink elephant in the room I’ll tell you why: The Caldecott committee didn’t have any people of disadvantaged minority status. Or to be blunt: No Blacks, No Hispanics, No Native Americans served on the Caldecott this year. Again.

[There were two people of color on this year's Caldecott Committee: The chair, Junko Yakota and Lucia Acosta]. 
weneeddiversebooks-logo.jpeg

And to be honest I am sick of it! 20 people on the committee: 16 women, 4 men, one of Asian ancestry, and .. thats it. 19 white folks and one token Asian! WTF!!!! A committee that is supposed to find the best picture books in the nation didn’t have a single Hispanic! For crying out F****in’ loud, how hard is it to find a Hispanic children’s librarian in a country with over 30% of its population Hispanic?

Honestly how hard is it to find a Black children’s librarian to serve on  this committee? Now I know the excuses and they are bulls****. Minority ALA members pay dues, they are  active in the organization but are repeatedly blackballed, and denied access to the very committees that will result in a change in ALA structure.  When was the last time a book about a Black or Hispanic child won the Caldecott? ….. I’ll wait. ( you had to google it, admit it) And that proves my point.

Black and Brown.jpg

It is not enough that the CSK (Coretta Scot King) award exists. If #blacklivesreallymatter and #brownlivesmatter we need to acknowledge in mainstream awards that the stories of their lives are significant. It’s like a Black musician being happy their album won the BET awards. It’s all well and good be acknowledged by your own, but true change happens when your music crosses into the mainstream and wins a Grammy.  I know what some of you are thinking: Viva Frida was honored! And a that book about the slave poet in 2011… it was honored too. It is significant that the books are acknowledged right?

B4CSlIuCMAEKxe1.jpg large.jpg
2009 Newberry Honor Book

Not anymore.  I am sick of books about minorities earning second place. I am sick of the message that they are good enough for CSK but not for Caldecott. I am sick of the message that the stories are not worthy of a mainstream audience.  And until I see consistent Black and Brown faces on the committees I will not see this change. So I won’t be  supporting this racist situation by marketing the Caldecott winners to my Black and Brown library users. #Blackbooksmatter.


belpre_medal.jpg  CSK_gold_watermark.jpg

Pura Belpré
2015 Author Award Winner
butterfly-hill.jpg
I Lived on Butterfly Hill, written by Marjorie Agosín, illustrated by Lee White and published by Atheneum Books for Young Readers, an imprint of Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing Division
Pura Belpré
2015 Illustrator Award Winner
viva-frida.jpg
Viva Frida, illustrated and written by Yuyi Morales and published by Roaring Brook Press, a Neal Porter Book
The Coretta Scott King Book Awards
2015 Author Award Winner
medium_020115 ALA Midwinter411179 (1).JPG
“brown girl dreaming” published by Nancy Paulson Books, published by the Penguin Group, Penguin Group (USA) LLC

The Coretta Scott King Book Awards

2015 Illustrator Award Winner

020115 ALA Midwinter411170_1_0.JPG


“Firebird” written by Copeland and published by G. P. Putnam’s Sons, published by the Penguin Group, Penguin Group USA

Wednesday, August 6, 2014

Tags, Tagging and Information Diffusion


I was was gazing at some train tags--some nice bombs in the train yard with my littler brother, who happens to be a graffiti artist.  He interpreted the tags and bombs I could not read.  He and I read me all kinds of information from throughout the country, from LA, to Chicago, to Seattle and other places.  Then a train yard cop came and chased us away.

Tags in Denmark


My brother Jaimie used to be well known throughout San Jo as Daze2000 back in the 80's, then went on to LOVE and other names throughout the years.  He's retired now.

For those unfamiliar with tagging--here is a sufficient definition from Wikipedia:
Some of the most common styles of graffiti have their own names. A "tag" is the most basic writing of an artist's name, it is simply a handstyle. A graffiti writer's tag is his or her personalized signature. Tagging is often the example given when opponents of graffiti refer to any acts of handstyle graffiti writing (it is by far the most common form of graffiti). Tags can contain subtle and sometimes cryptic messages, and may incorporate the artist's crew initials or other letters.Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tag_(graffiti)

Back in the day, I could be anywhere in San Jose and see my brother's tag.  I would immediately know it was him, and that he was getting up in a variety of places.  Tags can also be used for groups, or "crews" of artists, who tag their territory--similar to gang tags.  Gang tags convey a host of meanings to those who are aware of them.  They convey the name of the gang, that gangs history, and the implicit threat that this is "their" territory and they will protect it, etc..


Fab Five Freddy's tag travelling throughout NYC.


The above is a characterization of tagging as a folksonomy by artists and by gangsters.  The tags carry meaning, information and knowledge can be gleaned from them--for instance, the knowledge the one is in a particular gang's territory and more.

I would liken the above to information tagging on files on the internet and in computer systems in general.  There is a relationship between the two types of tagging that has yet to be explored.


Graffiti Tagging Information Tagging
Imparts information to readers Imparts information to users
Is portable, can travel  Is portable, can travel 
Is a system of social classification  Is a system of social classification 
Can be collaboratively created, or at least understood Collaboratively created
Can be broad or narrow folksonomies Can be broad or narrow folksonomies
Is a folksonomy Is a folksonomy
Can satisfy information needs Can satisfy information needs





Tagging information


Tagging became popular during the social software craze known as Web 2.0.  Pre-Yahoo Flickr was a major player when it came to bring tagging as a folksonomy on the web to the masses.

Graffiti tagging on buses or trains conveys travelling information--the tags are carried around town or around the country and people are shown the tag.  I would liken this to searching via tags in tag clouds or by other means--one will travel to the place where the information is located--it is in a way opposite of graffiti tagging, but closely related.


The above is meant to be a super brief sketch of an idea.  What do you think?  Do you agree?  Disagree?  Have something to add?


I would like to open up the study of the relationship between Hip Hop culture and Information Science.


Sunday, May 4, 2014

Information Literacy and Colonialism

In the US, every piece of information and every bit of knowledge we have has been mediated through a White-Supremacist lens--this is especially the case the more educated an individual is in the US.
It usually doesn’t matter what the ethnicity of the creator of this knowledge is, nor what their first language is because they have been educated in a system that is fundamentally White-supremacist. It takes much work and effort to even attempt to break out of this colonial mind set. #InformationLiteracy #education #EthnicStudies #Libraries #Information #knowledge #colonialism #21stCenturyEmpire