What is Missing from the Equity Pedagogical Movement and Why it Matters

San Jose ISchool Hispanic/Latinx Free Symposium Panels...

  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

Innovation is Crucial to Success: Antiracism is Crucial to Innovation

“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 now.  

Education is Stale

Education is stale, the ideas are backward and the time for change is now.  New blood, new ideas and finally--some progress in society--not just progress in making tools.  Western people are the best tool makers, but have little to no idea about how to live with one another and how to create good human relations--which lead to real security.  Not the false security that guns everywhere provide, but the real security of knowing that your neighbor’s fate and experience directly relate to your own. 

The truth is that Education needs us!  We bring flavor, new insights, conceptual relationships that white people don’t even know exist--we bring progress.  The academy needs to aggressively recruit people who have backgrounds from ‘marginalized’ communities and then allow these scholars to create radical change within our academic institutions.  This change is not something we are asking for--this change is something we bring and are announcing.  The backlash is on and we stand ready and strong--stronger than we have ever been.  We are at war--it is a cultural war.  We are bound to win, we must win--”we have a duty to win.”  

Ideas to speed up change:

• Create an action research center at your school that focuses on anti-oppression integration in education.  

• Block hire a BIPOC cohort into your school or organization.  

• Create support systems for BIPOC and other oppressed groups.

• Create support systems for antiracist activators and activists at your school--protect them and promote them!

• Create an EDI/Antiracist Handbook for your department--you have the expertise.  Research, learn, share and promote antiracist and anti oppression curriculum, pedagogies and systems.

• Use antiracism as a model for building other anti-oppression tactics for the liberation of all oppressed groups.

• Create and sustain affinity spaces for oppressed groups at your organization.

• Create partnerships with schools and other vocational training organizations to form a pipeline of BIPOC employment recruits.

• Empower BIPOC leaders to lead.

Until we have a system that has been created with BIPOC and other oppressed groups involved, we will never have equity, inclusion, diversity nor anti-oppression as part of our organizations.  We need NEW systems that have been co-created by BIPOC and that are inclusive and are not oppressive.  What are you doing today to create this needed change? This will necessitate the destruction of old structures.  There are many racists who are deeply invested in these shitstems--they must be defeated and these racist structures destroyed.  We will replace them with inclusive systems and structures that will create real progress for society.  

Racial Equity in Data Integration

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 Equity Throughout Data Integration, and ongoing work with Data and Equity. 

Recording link: https://lnkd.in/gQ9YPUm

 Link to toolkit: https://www.aisp.upenn.edu/centering-equity/

Risk Benefit Matrix Exercise

Link to folder of resources

It is All Pretty Words and Shell Games

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 really seek a solution.  In the end--all sides are frustrated and race and other oppressive relations and structures remain the intact.

And the worst part of this is that it is all built on the backs of POC and other marginalized people.

We are meant to represent ALL people of color and when and if we screw up we are so severely punished that it sets a psychological example for others on all sides.  In the end--POC and other oppressed groups--raise their hopes, but are constantly let down--because there is no real accountability for DEI to the admin, faculty, staff, nor the organization.

Here is a sarcastic take on DEI in educational institutions and organizations:

Benefits of DEI inclusion on organization mission statements.

• Increased reputation
• Increased student enrollment
• Increased administrative pay

• No accountability
• No real changes required 
• Huge ROI with little to no effort
• White people feel great

• All of this built on the pain and suffering of POC at your institution
• Implement now for highest returns
• Organizations don't have to value DEI work by staff members

The above bullets are satirical, but they are based on my experience working in large educational institutions and national professional groups.   

Accountability and transparency are vital.

We must have accountability for DEI progress, or lack thereof within organizations and institutions.

We must have real change in faculty, administration and staff representation.  

We must demand that resources are spent on DEI if they are part of a mission statement.

We must demand that POC are not the only ones expected to have a stake in this work.

We must demand that DEI work is valued and counts toward tenure and other professional advancement opportunities.

We must require our organizations and institutions to live up to their mission statements when it comes to DEI.  

Callout a lack of DEI progress.

We must hold our leaders accountable for progress or lack thereof when DEI is part of a mission statement.

DEI should be part of performance assessments, budgets, organizational goals and other concrete planning for any educational institution or organization.

#EthnicStudies + LIS education = Change

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.

Book Review: An American Genocide: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe, 1846-1873 (The Lamar Series in Western History)

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 California is stunning and hard to read.

CA Indian Population 1845-1880 Genocide in Numbers

This book shows how the pattern of forcing Indians from their home hunting grounds and by the removal of game due to large numbers of immigrants--beginning during the Gold Rush.  The indians then could not feed themselves, so they stole cattle from White ranchers.  The White ranchers would then raise a posse, or a militia force to go "teach the indians a lesson."  The lesson would entail murdering every man, woman and child of the first indigenous village happened upon.  No matter if they were 'guilty' or not.

Vigilantes were supported by the local government and the state. 

 The combination of vigilante massacres with state sponsored militia killing campaigns and the military murder expeditions was lethal and decimated the Californian Indian population.  The Indians had nowhere to hide except high in the mountains, where there was little food.  This forced them to steal from White people, which led to more murder expeditions against them.  It was a cycle that was lethal and effective in 'eradicating' the indigenous people of California.

If you were lucky enough to survive a massacre, you would not have any food, clothing or shelter to help you live.  Many survivors died from exposure or starvation.  As I was reading this, I thought of Ishi--his story is heartbreaking.  You can read about it here: http://history.library.ucsf.edu/ishi.html.

The brutality of the immigrants is mind-boggling. 

The killing was relentless.  The Indians sometimes fought back and killed whites, which raised even more ire and retribution.  The murder unmerciful and was encouraged by California Newspapers.  These papers called for total annihilation of all Californian Indians.  

Slow death at the  reservation.

You may be thinking, "Why didn't the Indians just go to a reservation.  When Indians fled to reservations starved the Indians.  They didn't provide the promised supplies.  Many starved to death. 

This brought about the horrible choice of leaving the reservation and facing:

Enforced slavery.  There were vagrancy laws that stated an Indian had to prove they were not in debt to someone.  This entailed the possession of a certificate that stated they were not in debt.  If the Indian could not prove this, then they were arrested and put up for auction.  They were sold to someone for a period of time, usually years.  During this time they were charged for food and clothes and were never paid enough money to pay off this debt.  Therefore, they could never get their certificate of no debt.  They would be stuck in perpetual slavery.



Or

Being tracked down and murdered by a posse of citizens or a state sponsored militia.  After a theft, they would hunt down and kill any Indian they encountered.  They used this as a chance for "pedagogical violence."  Violence that would teach anyone who heard about it that they should not steal from White people or they would face utter annihilation or slavery.  They often collected scalps and brought them back as souvenirs.  Some local country stores had Indian scalps nailed to their walls well into the 20th century.


The state paid well for militiamen to track down and murder Indians in CA.  They they sought reimbursement from the the federal government.  The federal government paid for the genocide of California Indians and it paid well.  This pay, in itself, was a reason to form a militia and make some money.

State sponsored Genocide in CA.

Sometimes the children and women were kept alive, but sold into the california slave system.  Women were sold into sexual slavery and other forms of bondage.  Children were often sold to estates where they remained the rest of their lives as chattel.



Some Indians turned to gold mining when their territories were impinged upon. Once there was an influx of White immigrants into CA though, there wasn't enough for everyone and the White miners simply murdered the Indian miners and claim jumped their claims.

There is a timeline at the end of the book that tracks the murder of indigenous people in CA according to state historical record that includes body counts.  This is the most well-researched and comprehensive information on this subject to date.

US genocide has yet to be covered in any manner similar to the Holocaust in Europe.  The time is coming though.  The cat is out of the bag.

Other important books on this subject:

Churchill, W., & Mazal Holocaust Collection. (1997). A little matter of genocide: Holocaust and denial in the Americas, 1492 to the present. San Francisco: City Lights Books.

Lindsay, B. C. (2015). Murder state: California's native american genocide 1846-1873. Place of publication not identified: Univ Of Nebraska Press.

Stannard, D. E. (1992). American holocaust: Columbus and the conquest of the New World. New York: Oxford University Press.

Culture and Information Literacy Video

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.

Colonialism and Whiteness: a Talk

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 is Identity Jacking/Identity Jacking is Whiteness

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: 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)

Source: https://goo.gl/IFq1Lq 

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

     

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     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)

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 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

          

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          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

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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).

Next Post:  Slavery and Whiteness in the Americas