Friday, March 11, 2016

Why Librarians Should Care About Skateboarders: A Personal Outreach Project

Why Librarians Should Care About Skateboarders:
A Personal Outreach Project
By
Matt Allison

Mesa Public library in NM has a skatepark! 
            After Hurricane Sandy until the summer of 2015 the Peninsula Library served the Rockaway Beach community out of temporary spaces. As my staff and I waited for a fully operational library to reopen we had time to plan. I got attached to the community.  Along with the overall rebuilding I enjoyed seeing the surf community build a temporary skate park. I moved nearby in 2014. I got approved at work to have a special skateboard and surf collection. I got the green light to try programming. We reopened in September 2015. Making a connection to the skateboarding and surfing scene has been more difficult than I anticipated.  At work my pet project is to connect public libraries and skateboarders. For my area it’s logical to add surfing. This article will not focus on Storm Sandy or my own local library.  I opened this way for some background. I have a twofold problem with connecting skateboarding and libraries. I need to outreach and give skateboarders reasons to use their local library. Secondly I need to prove to librarians that skateboarders are a legitimate demographic to be aware of. The purpose of this article is to educate librarians on the unique concerns of the estimated ten million skateboarders in the United States and more worldwide.

Contemporary skateboarding is diverse and international

            Since this is for the Lowrider Librarian blog I’ll start with diversity in skateboarding. Anyone who identifies himself or herself as a skateboarder did so by choice. No one was born a skateboarder. This is an important difference compared to racial, gender, and sexual identity. However some choices in life alter how one lives.  Making the lifestyle choice to skateboard is the reason that skateboarders from all backgrounds have a strong bond.  Modern day skateboarding started with the invention of the urethane wheel in the 1970’s. This happened after the civil rights movement. There is no historical moment compared to Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier in baseball. However skateboard humor and culture can be racist. Just google search the popular skate magazine ‘Big Brother,’ from the 1990’s to see examples of racist humor.

Racism sucks

            I started skateboarding in a suburb of Baltimore in 1988. Quickly my parents were supportive. Shortly after I started my parents took me to a skateboard contest to watch.  They set up obstacles around a basketball court.  The contest angered my dad. He thought a black skater did well and got a low score.  There is no way to verify if my dad observed correctly, but it’s not impossible. In the early 1990’s hip-hop changed American culture and skateboarding. The baggy-pants era in skateboarding directly ripped off the hip-hop scene. In 1992 my family moved to Toledo Ohio.  On a visit to Baltimore I remember a skater I didn’t know well say something racist. The guy had a small skateboard sponsor.  He told us how a known black pro from California asked him to stay at his place. Then the guy bragged, “I told him no, there is no way I’m going to let a N---- stay at my house.” Hearing this back then made no sense to me. For one thing he could skate with a pro, secondly he could have a place to stay in California, and thirdly the guy could have gotten a legitimate sponsor developing that friendship. In Toledo, NYC, and most places I’ve skated I’ve observed skateboarders of all races use the N-word. Perhaps the teens are imitating hip-hop or movies, but adults say it too.

DGK

            Rolling Stone did a article and interview with pro skater Stevie Williams.  If anyone reading this has access to the August 9th, 2007 issue or full-text it’s worth reading.  Stevie Williams is an African American skateboarder from Philadelphia who helped develop tech street skating. In the early 1990’s the popularity of skating dropped. Those left progressed the sport. The 1990’s skaters made it an urban activity. This revolutionized the sport and led to lasting popularity from the mid-nineties onward. Stevie Williams in that article states he got shit from kids at school for doing a white sport, and he got shit from the skateboarders for being black. Today his company DGK is a popular brand in skateboarding. The acronym stands for ‘Dirty Ghetto Kids.’ An older skate crew called Stevie Williams and his friends that dismissively at the famous Love Park spot in Philadelphia.
            Years of marketing teen boys, and being under the mainstream censorship radar meant skateboard advertising went for shock value. There are also problems of subtler racism in the skateboard industry. In skateboard videos a black skater most likely will have a hip-hop or a soul song accompany his part.  For Hispanic skaters it’s a Spanish song. I’m not sure if that is stereotyping or an acceptable nod to their backgrounds. I know that in these skate videos the music is sometimes not the choice of the individual riders.

Judy Oyama Winchester skatepark, 1979

            Skateboarding has a lot of gender and LGBQT issues that would piss off many working professionals including librarians. I’ll start with gender since the majority of librarians are women. There is a non-profit called Skateistan, and they are making a difference.  I’m glad some skateboarders are now starting creative non-profits.  Skateistan is a school in Afghanistan that gives children an education while teaching them to skateboard. Most are street kids without schooling in that societal structure. The Afghanistan location was successful enough that Skateistan has expanded to Cambodia and South Africa.

They are changing the world

            In Afghanistan girls are not allowed to ride bicycles, but once Skateistan started the local authorities decided girls could skateboard.  As a result half of the students there are girls. This is a revolutionary statistic, and could point to a bright future for skateboarding. In the United States, and most first world countries skateboarding is a male dominated sport. One reason is the subculture. For too long the targeted audience was the American teenage male, and it shows. The rough politically incorrect humor targets male teens just like hip-hop music does.  I imagine it’s grating for a girl or woman to be surrounded by the misogynistic humor in skateboarding. Female skaters frequently get vibed out at crowded skates packed with males. My guess the percentage of the sport participation is still over ninety percent male.  The skate industry should be more inclusive of all genders. Jenkem Magazine did an interview with Vanessa Torres, a pro skateboarder and she discusses these issues. She now skates for a small company called Meow Skates that is owned by a woman, and all the riders are female. In my opinion skateboarding will continue to be misogynistic and sexist until enough girls and women participate to change the game. People think of football as being sexist, but not so much for soccer.
            The second reason for the gender problem in skateboarding is our society’s gender roles. Skateboarding is considered a rough activity. Some idiots think full pads should be enforced to have the right to step on a skateboard. The majority of skateboarders beg their parents for their first skateboard. I prefer that to kids getting forced into it.  Choosing to be a skateboarder is part of the experience.  I imagine girls have trouble getting that first skateboard because parents would rather their girls do other sports.
            In 1988 in our new neighborhood, there was a skateboarding craze. One of my sisters broke her rib early on and may have had parental pressure to stop.  Within two years in one accident I rolled over two fingernails that came off, and learning kickflips I got five stitches in my left eyebrow. I don’t remember parental pressure to quit.  At my elementary and middle school I was in special ed classes. Maybe my parents didn’t mind me doing something I enjoyed. In my old neighborhood the crew of boys skated and the girls did other things.

Tim Von Werne: Gay Skater

            Now on to homophobia, and skateboarding has it like most male dominated activities. I’d like to think it’s mostly kids an teens imitating hip-hop and movies, but many adult skateboarders use derogatory language.  Homophobic humor is part of skateboard culture. I’m a fan of the Berrics game of S.K.A.T.E. The game is a knock off of H.O.R.S.E in basketball and opponents get a letter if they miss a trick the competitor lands. On the pro level the difficulty and consistency is intense.  Watching the Berrics though I’m amazed how grown adults feel it’s okay to use homophobic humor in the interview segments. I’m against censorship, but the skateboarding world needs to learn differences with others are okay and homophobic humor is outdated.
            There are documented incidents in skateboarding history of pros fighting gay men. Today that is considered a hate crime. Growing up skating I talked the same as the others in my group. I used inappropriate humor in an effort to fit in. Moving to Toledo in 1992 I was fortunate enough to go to a progressive private high school.  When I used inappropriate humor in that school I was corrected.  Over the next four years on weekends my middle sister and I would visit our eldest sister at Oberlin College. She had a gay friend who became the first gay friend I had. I remember him telling me when he tried to get into skateboarding he stopped quickly. He felt that group of skaters he encountered were horrible people. I remember thinking over his experience back then. Today at skate parks when I hear homophobic slurs or humor by kids or teenagers I tend to ignore it.  I’m there to skate and not to be an authority figure. Young people need to have those thought changing conversations themselves. Their outlook may change during their college-aged years, especially if they go to college.
            One reason being a librarian is good for me is I’ve had gay and lesbian colleagues. Many I respect for the work they do.  This has expanded my life experience. I was diagnosed with mental illness at age seventeen, Afterwards I focused on my education. I took a step away from skateboarding and did not skate much in my twenties.  I’m fortunate I got a college education and the reason for that is my family support. I remember my mom helping me with my papers and assignments during my undergrad years.  Other skateboarders, even my age, have a different life story. For those skaters that did not go to college or that don’t work in a liberal field may not have had friendships with gay people. Today, skateboarding is important to me. I’m not going to develop friendships and possibly partnerships with New York City skaters if I argue with them every time they say something politically correct or what most librarians deem offensive. What I can do is not use hateful humor myself.  

Andy Roy (pro skater) on drugs

            One important thing librarians need to know about skateboarders is their use of drugs. Christian Hosoi was a top pro in the 1980’s, and in the 1990s spent five years in prison for smuggling large quantities of meth on an airplane. Amazingly, today he skates at a pro level.  In his memoir he states drugs are the ‘open secret’ of skateboarding. There is another memoir called Dreamseller by Brandon Novak, who showed a lot of promise at a young age but chose heroin over skateboarding. In the introduction to that memoir Tony Hawk wrote that a fall from drugs is so frequent with skateboarders it has become an industry cliché.  A lot of kids and adolescents can skate well. Then some hormones kick in, and they go wild. Some become burnt out before they can legally drink.  One of my friends, Ian, in a conversation said, “you can’t tame skateboarding, it’s always going to be a roller coaster.”
            Today more adults are skateboarding than ever before.  In my opinion people over 21 can do whatever the fuck they want as long as they don’t harm others.  Perhaps I drink more alcohol and consume more marijuana than I should. Recent research suggests the fully developed human brain reacts better to Marijuana than a developing brain. If Marijuana triggers mental illness, it’s more likely to do so to teenagers as opposed to adults. And there are more reasons teenagers should wait to use drugs.

Positive mentorship is powerful!

I believe that adult skateboarders and the skateboard industry should make more of an effort to mentor the teenagers in our sport. One of my friends, Julian, put it well, “if you go to skateparks enough and see the same kids you feel like their grandparent.” Basically older skaters want the young skaters to do well. Skateboarding is a time consuming activity and becomes an obsession. Young talented skateboarders don’t get special treatment from their schools.   Skateboarders of a young age who are good, skate with people of all ages in their region. Kids that play school sports usually play with kids their own age. That has advantages in many ways, but not when it comes to drugs.  Many teenage skaters unnecessarily go through pressures their older skate friends are facing. In 1994 when I was seventeen I had a psychotic episode. I had another one when I was eighteen, and the last one when I was twenty.  As a result I was diagnosed with a type of schizophrenia.  Too much weed at a young age was a factor in what I went through. And skateboarding is very much the reason I partook so much at that age. Vice did a documentary on a promising British skateboarder Paul Alexander. He was better than I ever was, and I’m fortunate I respond well to medication. I got shivers watching the documentary on this skater because of my own experience. I’m sharing this because I realize that’s why I care. Most people are able to separate hobbies from work. I feel with my librarian career going well I can make a difference in the skateboarding world through my work. I just don’t know how.

Artwork by Gonz

 The unique lifestyle of skateboarding does have positive attributes.  A lot of talented artists, musicians, and entrepreneurs were skateboarders first. In New York City I’ve met a lot of self-supporting independent working professionals who skateboard. All of the skateboarders I’ve met in New York City in the last seven years have been amazing, and I feel part of something. I don’t know how much I can expect from my work pet project. One thing I ask librarians is if you see someone walk into your library holding a skateboard with some attitude, and maybe a hoodie on to realize his or her life is more complex than one may assume.
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Interview with woman skate pro Venessa Torres:

Here is a documentary of Paul Alexander, a talented skater who became mentally ill

This is a popular series on Vice called Epicly Latrd, they interview a lot of skateboarders, and try to get he real story.  This may be disturbing to some, but it’s happened to others even if the Antwaun Dixon story is an extreme example of it. On youtube this has a lot of views.

On a good note, here is one of Stevie Williams part, he is a success story and owns one of the most popular skate brands out there, called DGK.

If you are interested in getting involved in library programming and skateboarding,  then please join our FB group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/832831213425673/?__mref=message_bubble  



Thursday, February 25, 2016

ALA task force seeks your input on economic implications of participating at ALA functions


Subject: ALA Task Force Seeks Your Input on Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion





Greetings! 

The ALA Task Force on Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion was created in the spring of 2014 by then ALA President, Barbara Stripling.  The Task Force is currently in the information-gathering phase.  To aid with information gathering, it has launched a series of short surveys to be conducted at times to coincide with the ALA Midwinter Meetings and Annual Conferences through 2016.  These surveys are designed to help understand the culture of the association, the profession, and our communities with respect to equity, diversity, and inclusion.

We recognize that incidents of racial bias and injustice continue to occur across the country on a regular basis.  This third survey, however, focuses on the economic implications of participating in ALA functions.

The survey can be accessed at https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/TEDI3. Responses will be collected through March 18, 2015. ALA members and non-members are encouraged to participate.

Please take a few minutes to answer the survey, which should take no more than 7 minutes to complete. “Embracing and celebrating diversity, and creating a more inclusive profession have been long-standing goals of the American Library Association.  With your help, we hope to ensure these values are upheld,” said Task Force co-chairs Trevor A. Dawes and Martin L. Garnar.

The ALA Task Force on Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion’s charge is to develop a plan and strategic actions to build more equity, diversity, and inclusion among our members, the field of librarianship, and our communities.  The most important Task Force outcome is the public and honest conversation generated by its plan and recommended actions.  The final Task Force report will include recommendations for ensuring that a continuing focus on equity, diversity, and inclusion is embedded throughout the ALA organization.

Questions about the survey can be sent to the Task Force at diversity@ala.org.

Should technical issues arise, please contact the ALA Office for Research and Statistics at ors@ala.org or call 1 (800) 545-2433. ext. 4273.

Max Macias ALA TFEDI member

Saturday, February 6, 2016

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)

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).


 

 



Saturday, November 28, 2015

Knowledge, Affiliation, Identity, Librarianship


Photo of people dressed as Star Trek characters.
Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f4/Star_Trek_uniforms.jpg

Kael Moffat
Information Literacy Librarian, Saint Martin’s University


As librarians, one of our many hats could be expressed as “identity formers.”  At first glance, this may seem like a grandiose claim, but if we look at aspects of our profession in light of Georg Simmel’s concept of the web of group-affiliations, we can see that we do play such an important role.  Simmel was a late nineteenth-century, early twentieth-century German sociologist and philosopher who wrote on such broad topics as the history of philosophy, philosophy of money, and social structure.  One of his influential shorter works, “The Web of Group-Affiliations,” published in 1922, can be used as lens through which we can look at how librarianship affects identity formation.
Simmel points out that an individual’s identity is initially imposed on them through the “web of circumstances” of family and other heterogeneous groups, such as religious and geographical communities (p. 331).  The family is the primal group-affiliation, obviously, but as the individual grows, he or she “establishes for himself [or herself] contacts with persons who stand outside this original group-affiliation,” but these first forays into non-familial affiliations tend to be with persons that are still somewhat similar to the individual (p. 331).  Affiliations like family, religion, and geography constitute organic affiliations since they arise “naturally” and lay claim on the individual without the individual’s own efforts and consent.  These affiliations are, according to Simmel, “sensual” (p. 331), meaning tied to what one experiences with the senses, and are also marked by “self-interest” and emotion, or a “mixture of both” (p. 334).
If we think of information as a kind of basis for community, connecting disparate individuals, we can see that it operates in similar ways to the webs of group-affiliation that Simmel writes about.  Patrons have their first information webs imposed on them through family, religion, social class, ethnicity, neighborhood, country, etc.  This gives them their initial worldview.  The individual experiences this worldview as “natural,” marked by sensuality, emotion, and self-interest.  Information, in this state often seems to be judged by how it “feels” or how it supports or contradicts the given worldview.  
Community definition text
Source: http://www.thebluediamondgallery.com/pictures/community.jpg
Group-affiliations, though, grow beyond these initial affiliations when they become defined by “purpose [by] factual considerations, or, if one will, [by] individual interests” (p. 331).  At this point, individual interests are those interests the individual gravitates towards by choice, although compulsion from parents, friend, religious leaders, etc. may also play a role.  These associations are “formed by objective criteria” and “constitute a superstructure which develops over and above those group-affiliations which are formed according to natural, immediately given criteria” (p. 333).  In contrast to the organic affiliations, these affiliations are more rational in nature because the individual can choose to cultivate or ignore them.  These wider contexts expand the individual’s world by putting him or her in contact with people and ideas that lie outside the contexts of family, religion, and geography.  Simmel observes that these affiliations “[tend] to enlarge the sphere of freedom” because the individual begins to choose “with whom one affiliates and upon whom one is dependent”; these wider contexts allow for and even encourage or demand change and make it “possible for the individual to make his [or her modified] beliefs and desires felt” (p. 3330).  
As an example of interest affiliation, Simmel discusses the emergence of Renaissance humanism as a competing form of affiliation to the medieval worldview, which was based primarily on religion and emotion.  The emergence of humanism coincided with the development of non-theological “academic” education, and the “independence of the intellect” (p. 333).  Humanists’ commitment to the life of the intellect, their “restless” and “adventurous spirit,” made them “indifferent to all other obligations usually incumbent” on individuals in the medieval world and engendered different forms of social interaction, embracing “the poor scholar and the monk, the powerful General and the brilliant Duchess, in a single framework of intellectual interests” (p. 333).  Such affiliations would likely not have arisen in the pre-humanist world.  He refers to such affiliations as “secondary groups,” and are more “rational” in character since the “substantive purpose of these group [was] the result of conscious reflection and intelligent planning,” rather than the happenstances of birth and geography (p. 334).  These broader affiliations of interest contribute to the individual’s sense of identity because they are more elective and each individual’s “pattern of participation is unique; hence the fact of multiple group-participation creates in turn a new subjective element” (p. 334).  Thus, the individual creates a sense of separate selfhood through his or her particular web, or combination, of group-affiliations.
Woman reading in library
Source: https://www.jisc.ac.uk/sites/default/files/library-study.jpg
An important part of these group-affiliations is the information associated with that affiliation.  A person affiliated with golf and the stock market will have a qualitatively different set of knowledge from somebody else who affiliates with quilting and community service, for example.  Different worlds require different information and knowledge; thus, in the spirit of Simmel’s analysis, our patrons are, in part, unique because of their unique combinations of knowledge.  As librarians, we help facilitate our patrons’ interactions with multiple large information and knowledge domains, thus playing a role in their emerging unique “pattern of participation” in the world.  This understanding should cause us to consider how we contribute to the emerging identities of our patrons.  Do we encourage their agency, their ability to explore and more deeply engage with their information worlds?  Do we consider how the information and knowledge we help our patron’s to discover enmeshes them in oppressive or liberating information worlds or contexts?  Once we understand how our work contributes to the development of our patrons’ identities, our reference and instruction activities should take on a new sense of significance.  In helping patrons access specific books, articles, DVDs, etc. we are in a material way contributing to their sense(s) of selfhood.  How are we doing?  Are we reifying systems and structures of oppression?  Are we encouraging open inquiry and exploration?  Enormous questions, to be sure, but ones we need to ask over and over again, even and especially when the answers may be uncomfortable.


Simmel, G. (1998). ‘The web of group-affiliations’. In M. S. Kimmel & C. Stephen (Eds.), Social and political theory: Classic readings (pp. 331–341). Boston: Allyn & Bacon.


2. Simmel’s reading of the medieval and Renaissance worlds is a bit simplistic here, of course, but his point that broader group-affiliations allow for broader social interaction does seem to hold.


Friday, October 30, 2015

#Terrorism, #Libraries and #POC in the US

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 intimidation or coercion; or (iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination. or kidnapping; and Occur primarily within the territorial jurisdiction of the U.S. 
Definition from the FBI: https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/investigate/terrorism/terrorism-definition

 For example, here is how law enforcement treats our children in school:



Spring Valley High School 'safety 'officer' and student

What kind of an education can on get while studying under these conditions?  What kind of educational experience does this girl now have?

 This terrorism is conducted by state officers from all levels of law enforcement in the US.  As a person of color, I am more worried about being assaulted, or being shot by a police officer than I am of any sort of domestic terrorist.  I have been the subject of humiliating questions like, "What gang are you in?"  "When was the last time you were arrested?" and other non-question insults by the police.

Libraries Against Violence

Our libraries can help mitigate this situation by providing a broader viewpoint of the world to our patrons.  We can do this by pooling our resources, sharing information, planning and implementing programming that addresses the ongoing terrorism of POC by law enforcement and other state agencies.

This is a country that relies on force as a first choice solution to almost ALL problems.

When force/violence is used as a tool like this, then it becomes part of the culture.

Once it becomes part of the culture individual citizens will begin to use force as a problem solving tool--just as we have seen with the increasing mass shootings in the US.

Violence and force are now normal and everyday.  One turns on the television, visits a news web page, or turns on the radio, and one is confronted with a smorgasbord of violent offerings.

Librarians can help mitigate this situation by helping to educate people and offer alternative sources of information.

Contemporary lynching victim: Michael Brown

This violence/force is most often directed at people of color in the US  It is used to create contemporary lynchings--in the form of killings of POC by police.  These lynchings serve to reinforce POC's lack of respect in society, the lack of value placed on our lives, and the fact that our bodies can be violated and left dead in the street as some sort of macabre warning to everyone else. 

The officer in the video at the high school is practicing this kind of intimidation.  He is showing the other children what is in store for them if they don't immediately fully submit to someone who might harm them.

Library/Librarian Activism

Libraries can do much to help fight against this type of terrorism.  They can sponsor programming, have cultural events, reading groups, conversation groups, maker spaces, lectures and collections that can help educate the public and academia (if you work in an academic library).

A symposium sponsored by the Boston Radical Reference Collection

As librarians we can curate collections that are well rounded and that address multiple perspectives on our culture--not just the standard viewpoints adhered to by conservative anti-intellectuals (I don't think all conservatives are anti-intellectual).

We can use our spaces to hold important discussions and debates and we can help facilitate these events.  Our special skills at doing research and presenting the findings in an intelligible manner can be used to help in the fight against the terrorism that POC in the US face daily.

It is our duty to help fight against terrorism.

What are some other ways libraries, librarians and other information professionals can help fight against this kind of terrorism?