Lowrider Librarian

Librarians are NOT representative of the current US Demographics According to my calculations, the ALA had 88.5% White Librarians in 1985, and 87.97% in 2009-2010. According to my calculations, the ALA had 1.8% Asian/Pacific Islander Librarians in 1985, and 2.7% in 2009-2010. According to my calculations, the ALA had 1.8% Latino Librarians in 1985, and 3.08% in 2009-2010. According to my calculations, the ALA had 6.1% African American Librarians in 1985, and 5.19% in 2009-2010. In the US, the above image is linked to the image below. Figures derived from Equity at Issue document from ALA 1985 and ALA office of diversity 2009-2010.

Police Sniper in Ferguson. Libraries should be developing programs to help people deal with the police. There has been a huge increase in police shooting, beatings and other transgressions against citizens. We, as librarians, should recognize the community's need for information on how to stay safe, avoid police confrontation, and how to act when confronted by police. We can form partnerships with legal organizations to provide patrons with basic survival instructions for the world of today. Lets do this! #LibrariesAgainstPoliceBrutality

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...

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