Lowrider Librarian

Black dead bodies pile up on the television screens across the nation. While there is a 'debate' about force by some fancy people in some fancy room. Children live in terror everywhere. Educated grown men and women tremble at the sight of a police officer. These are lynchings that puts the Klan to shame. This is Freedom in the US at the beginning of the 21st century.

[This is the last installment of a three part series on Whiteness.]   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.   Whiteness is embedded in the fabric of everyday life in the US The use of patrols to capture runaway slaves was one of the precursors of formal police forces, especially in the South. Slave patrols were organized groups of three to six white men who enforced discipline upon black slaves during the antebellum U.S. southern states. http://plsonline.eku.edu/insidelook/brief-history-slavery-and-origins-american-poli...

Part 2 of  a 3 part series on Whiteness and colonialism. [This post is in no way meant to be an exhaustive historical analysis of Slavery and Whiteness.  It is meant to introduce the topic and is meant as a tool for discussion.  Time limitations prohibit me from writing more extensively on this topic.  Thank you for reading.] Plan of the Slaver Vigilante.  Image source:  http://goo.gl/BTYfpC "...northern European settlers and traders, such as the English and Dutch, had less prior exposure to sub-Saharan Africans, or to Mediterranean slavery systems. Their laws for establishing chattel slavery formed primarily in the context of the New World, with a heightened economic incentive to secure slavery for plantation agriculture through rigid racial hierarchies." http://ldhi.library.cofc.edu/exhibits/show/africanpassageslowcountryadapt/sectionii_introduction/contrasting_beginnings_of_slav Slavery and Whiteness Slavery and Whiteness go together li...

Libraries and the Fight Against Terrorism Libraries can and should be an important weapon against terrorism.  "Librarians are soldiers in the war against ignorance!"  Racism is fundamentally ignorance which leads to hate.  This is a call out to all librarians to help end the ongoing terrorism against people of color in the US. People of color in the US live under a state of domestic terrorism.  This terrorism is conducted via many official channels.  The education system, law enforcement, healthcare, judicial system and other aspects of the state have been and are used against people of color in the US. The terrorism we experience on a daily basis meets ALL the criteria below:  "Domestic terrorism" means activities with the following three characteristics: Involve acts dangerous to human life that violate federal or state law; Appear intended (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) to influence the policy of a government by ...