Lowrider Librarian

    Hispanic/Latinx Free Symposium OCTOBER 15, 2021 In celebration of National Hispanic Heritage Month (September 15 – October 15), the San José State University School of Information held a free symposium to discuss best practices in library services to meet the needs of the Hispanic/Latinx community with greater impact, cultural understanding, and sensitivity. Entitled “Making Vital Connections: Understanding and Serving the Hispanic/Latinx Community,” this inaugural event featured keynote addresses and panel discussions. I  had the honor of sitting on a panel at San Jose Sate University's School Hispanic Heritage Symposium.   I begin about 47 minutes in. #Antiracist   #libraries   #LIS   #Education   #HispanicHeritage   #SJSU

“It is our duty to fight for our freedom. It is our duty to win. We must love each other and support each other. We have nothing to lose but our chains.” Assata Shakur American Hero and Revolutionary Innovation is so much more than technology!  True innovation will only come when we break the incestuous cycle of white supremacist knowledge production.  We need new voices and those voices are standing right here.  Real innovation will come when people who created Hip-Hop, Jazz, Rock and Roll--when the people who created flavor in American cuisine and who pretty much generate American culture throughout the continent are involved in information production and knowledge creation.  Indigenous, Black, Brown, and other people of color will create a groundswell like never before once they are allowed to fully function within the academy.  We will change education's structures, its techniques, its goals, its meaning.  We are the harbingers of change and we are here...

Scientists, Mathematicians, Computer types and other data driven colleagues, please join us for a special antiracist session about how we can center racial equity throughout data integration in our work at PCC.  Our guest speaker is Angela Bluhm! Event Date and Time: November 10th, 2020: 1pm PST Session description: Since 2019, AISP (Actionable Intelligence for Social Policy) at the University of Pennsylvania has led a diverse workgroup of civic data stakeholders to co-create strategies and identify best practices to center racial equity in data integration efforts. Angela Bluhm is an Analyst for the Educator Advancement Council in the Oregon Department of Education. Angela worked with the AISP while serving as Research, Data, and Communications Coordinator for the Oregon Longitudinal Data Collaborative in the Chief Education Office and later in the Higher Education Coordinating Commission (HECC). Angela will discuss the work of the AISP, the Toolkit for Centering Racial...

For DEI: Nobody! Holding Cultural Petting Zoos is Easier than Creating Equitable Institutional Structures.  Many institutions are stuck in a loop of cultural events that consist of food tasting and traditional dress modeling, etc...As if the mere exposure to such multicultural aspects would cure racism overnight.  Of course, these events do have a place, but they can't be relied upon to create progress in a historically white institution. I've been thinking about this for a long time and it really comes down to accountability and value. Claiming Equity, Diversity and Inclusion as a part of a traditionally white educational institution or organization is a benefit most schools have taken.  Schools have the benefits of doing something without actually having to make any real changes as there is literally no accountability, nor credibility. The above claim is damaging to people of color  and other oppressed groups because it puts out the issue, but doesn't re...

We need critical information studies now! EthnicStudies Readings + LIS education = some good shit.   Are there any Ethnic-studies based LIS classes in the US?   I draw much of my inspiration and my thinking is different than most of my colleagues because of my exposure to writers like   # Acuña   # Fanon # Newton   # Baldwin   # Peltier   # Churchill   # RobertFWilliams   # MalcolmX # SubcomandanteMarcos   # bellhooks   and others... We need something like this to help create change in LIS.

Buy this book for your Library An American Genocide: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe, 1846-1873 (The Lamar Series in Western History)by Benjamin Madley is a book that should be in every library in the US.  This book covers an essential history that has heretofore been neglected save for a few works such as Murder State . Series:  The Lamar Series in Western History Hardcover:  712 pages Publisher:  Yale University Press (May 24, 2016) Language:  English ISBN-10:  0300181361 ISBN-13:  978-0300181364 Product Dimensions:  6.1 x 1.8 x 9.2 inches The book covers the history of the genocide of Indigenous peoples in the state of California from 1846-1873.  During this time, the book traces the beginnings of the genocide from scattered massacres to full scale state and federally sponsored militia and military massacre campaigns.  The sheer brutality and callousness against the indigenous people of Califor...

This is a video I created (with help from the school's video production team) for my introductory Information Literacy class. It was meant to broach the subject of Culture and Information Literacy. It can be used to generate a discussion or as a reflection writing assignment catalyst. I would LOVE feedback on this please.

This talk was given on 4/20/2016 at PCC for Whiteness History Month at PCC. It is based on my trilogy of blog posts on the history of Whiteness in the US. Here are links to the posts: Colonialism and Whiteness: A Legacy of Brutality http://lowriderlibrarian.blogspot.com/2016/02/colonialism-and-whiteness-legacy-of.html Slavery (a Tool of Colonialism) and Whiteness: a Legacy of Brutality   http://lowriderlibrarian.blogspot.com/2016/03/slavery-tool-of-colonialism-and.html    Embedded #Whiteness: A Legacy of Brutality  http://lowriderlibrarian.blogspot.com/2016/04/embedded-whiteness-legacy-of-brutality.html    Here is the talk: I would love to know what you think about the talk, the concepts and the imagery. Please comment. Thank you,  Max 

Whiteness tells us our story through the lens of our oppressor? What does this do to truth, validity, information and the construction of knowledge?

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...