Lowrider Librarian

When you are a person of color and you speak about race, you are playing a game of Whack a Mole and you are the mole. Ready for the next one! Something I have seen recently jarred me into consciousness about how peer pressure bullying works in combination with Race in the US. Often, when a person of color brings up Race, they are most often told to shut up in one way or another.  If they don't or happen to bring up Race again, then they are most often attacked. Once the initial attack happens, other bullies join in and reinforce the idea that non-White viewpoints on Race don't count and don't matter. This has happened to me countless times and most often it happens with the bullies hiding behind the guise of paternal/maternal patronizing comments about the person of color being a racist. This type of bullying has happened to me in forums, on Facebook, in person and in various other scenarios when speaking about Race. Recently I was a witness to this on th...

As a library worker who is a person of color, I have experienced discrimination in libraries.  From receiving such edifying duties as "sorting the mail," to being judged harshly in comparison to my colleagues who are not people of color, to being bullied so hard and often that I became shaky about myself and my own skills.  I escaped that situation, and landed a job in IT.  It is illustrative of how much I was being bullied and discriminated against at my library job, by the fact that once I was in the IT department, I was valued, told I was doing a great job, told that the feedback on my work was ALWAYS great and other accolades.  I couldn't believe it at first, because I had been so bullied and told that I " was incompentent," and other such disheartening, and in the end, downright mean, insults and other abuses based on my "weak performance."  I have not had a bad review since leaving the library job I once had.  I have continued to teach for that l...