That Which Cannot Be Named: The Absence of Race in the Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education

https://journal.radicallibrarianship.org/index.php/journal/article/view/33

I know I've read this one before, and have tweeted about it, but apparently having spent a few months locked this year means not being able to find my old tweets. Argh, twitter, you are a stinker.

"Given that the Framework is meant to provide guidance to students on the information environment, an understanding of the systems of oppression within that environment—
and of the library’s complicity in those systems—is essential to the “reflective discovery of information”

"We cannot fully examine the information environment without understanding how it is impacted by the structural oppression of people of color"

Somehow the Framework mentions other axes of oppression but not race.

This silence protects white people from discomfort and positions "the Framework as part of the history of white hegemony in higher education, librarianship, and information literacy instruction"

"the Framework (in spite of its purported criticality) provides no mechanisms for scrutinizing how structural racism shapes the information environment, which is a necessary step toward antiracist information literacy instruction"

(I wasn't part of the development of the Framework and haven't looked to see who was, but knowing how documents like this are collaboratively created, I cannot imagine that no one involved thought to include race. So were they afraid to speak or just silent/silenced?)

"Within academia the traditional focus of the curriculum
on scholars + authors who are understood to be white + on materials that portray those seen as white more positively than people of color means that students R exposed to content that upholds the idea of white superiority"

(This is also why we've seen so many Black women lately saying that we need to read and support stories about Black joy too, not just an endless focus on misery and suffering.)

"some so-described “diversity” courses are “so broad that racism and other issues that deal specifically with dismantling oppression get neutralized”

(somehow the example provided isn't the diversity requirement at my uni!)

"An analysis of twenty-one diversity action plans in institutions of higher education showed that the plans positioned people of color as deficient, as outsiders, and/or as simply a way to add value to the university."

(achievement gap anyone?)

"This welcoming, though, means that “Whiteness is produced as host, as that which is already in place or at home. To be welcomed is to be positioned as the one who is not at home”"

(I have never successfully explained my concerns with this word to my lib colleagues)

"Archives at PWIs reflect content created mostly by those who are... white; it is indeed only recently that a few archives at these colleges+ unis have sought to provide a more complex view of the racial history of the institution"

(which is why our digital archive is racist af)

Cataloging, with whiteness as the default in subject headings and description

"Like higher education, the LIS profession focuses its diversity efforts not on institutional change but on representation and inclusion that perpetuates an assumption of the normality of whiteness and does little to address oppression at a systemic level."

"the Framework has made concessions to accommodate
critical librarianship, but it does not break completely from a decontextualized view of information literacy."

the Framework privileges resources created by and for middle-class white Americans, that are kept behind paywalls, centering traditional academia as authoritative

(continues to devalue expertise of disabled people, Indigenous knowledge keepers, etc.)

"The first frame, “Authority is Constructed and Contextual,” does not address the influence of racial bias on the evaluation and assignment of personal authority" or provide any guidance on addressing issues of power and oppression

Focusing on diversity of ideas while ignoring racism

Focus of the Framework is on individual learning rather than on groups or communities.

(This is informed by our ideology but also often invisible to us, because it's part of the hegemony.)

Scholarship as Conversation says that students will learn to identify barriers to entering scholarly conversation but somehow doesn't address how to remove those barriers or how to respond if your attempts to enter are silenced or marginalized.

(Again, our ideology at play.)

"By centering marginalized voices, focusing on stories that reveal insidious impact of white supremacy, libs can work with students to begin to rethink the presumed normalcy of white privilege, addressing such privilege instead as a historical construction of power + control."

counterstories vs stock stories

"a stock story may have it that diverse candidates are not interested in a particular position or institution, while the counterstory would be the account of a candidate who was denied an interview or faced microaggressions during the interview"