struggle

Goodbye, ALA

Posted on by April Hathcock

Over six years ago, I decided to run for the Council of the American Library Association because I wanted to see how the organization was run, Council being the Congress of the organization.

Today, I just completed my last ALA Council session.

I first decided to run for ALA Council after going with a couple of other Spectrum Scholars and early-career BIPOC library workers to sit in on what was listed as an “open” session of an ALA governance group at ALA Annual 2013 in Chicago. We sat in the small hotel conference room, grabbed some drinks, and waited for the session to start. And waited. And waited. Finally, after about 20 minutes, a group of White women (yes, all White, all women-presenting) came in and immediately shooed us out: “Sorry, this is a closed meeting. The scheduler is wrong. You’re not supposed to be in here.” In a desultory nod to too-little-too-late politeness, one of the women, an ALA staffer, tossed her card at us on our way out when we mentioned being Spectrum Scholars. But that was it. We were Black and Brown and not invited to continue to sit down.

That was my intro to ALA governance. Two years later, I ran for ALA Council. Six years after that, I finished my second and last term. And not much as changed since.

Having gotten a glimpse into the inner workings of the organization, I’m more convinced than ever that ALA has always been and will always be centered on promoting the “neutrality” of white supremacy and capitalism. Despite the endless working groups and task forces aimed at the contrary, there is no interest in changing the organization. Despite the continuous parade of hard-working BIPOC leaders who seem to get sucked into the org and—once their work has been fully taken advantage of—spit back out of the org, there is no interest in making the organization more welcoming to those who do not represent the 87% of White librarians in the profession. ALA is what it is and it will remain what it is.

Don’t get me wrong, I respect those who have been and continue to fight to make the organization a better space. I honor their belief that meaningful change is possible. I just don’t see it ever happening.

This is an org that repeatedly states a commitment to diversity and inclusion and equity as part of its Core Values but still shies away from any actions that hold itself, the libraries for which it claims to advocate, or the government from which it gladly begs and receives funding, accountable.

An org where being quiet and nice and patient is of more value than fighting strenuously for the rights to humanity that so many are denied.

This is an org where the newly (and finally) enacted Code of Conduct is centered on tone-policing the personal social media of those frustrated with the org, most of us BIPOC, rather than engaging in meaningful action to address the micro- and macroaggressions that occur regularly in ALA physical and virtual spaces.

An org with failing finances where high dues and conference registration rates go into inviting overpriced vendors and oppressive government entities into our spaces, while full-time staffers are underpaid, overworked, and furloughed, and volunteer labor is exploited to get business done.

This is an org where the workers of the profession continuously ask “What have you done for me?” and continuously get told their opinions don’t matter unless they pay dues and maintain carefully tone-policed “niceness” in their interactions.

An org that nonetheless wonders why its membership numbers are steadily declining.

This organization is not an organization for me. If I want to put my efforts toward improving the profession and making it more welcoming to those not part of the majority demographic, ALA isn’t the place to do that work. And this is nothing new: bureaucratic organizations have never been sites of liberation, and frankly, they never will be.

I’m glad to be done with my time with ALA. And I’m glad to be able to put my hard-earned time, effort, and money toward more worthwhile groups and efforts, in particular groups and efforts dedicated to seeing BIPOC, and other historically excluded groups, in the profession thrive. Groups and efforts like We Here, WOC + Lib, Green Book for Libraries, just to name a few.

In the meantime, goodbye, ALA. I wish you could’ve been better.

#ShutDownAcademia #ShutDownSTEM

Posted on by April Hathcock

Here is the text of my out of office message for tomorrow’s #ShutDownAcademia #ShutDownSTEM:

Subject: Away and Not Responding in observance of #ShutDownAcademia

Today I am away from my desk and not responding to email in observance of #ShutDownAcademia #ShutDownSTEM, a day of reflection and learning on ways to engage more effectively in anti-racist practice and activism: https://www.shutdownstem.com.

I will not be reading or responding to any emails received today. Instead, if you are someone who does not identify as Black, Indigenous, or a Person of the Global Majority (Person of Color), I encourage you to take at least a portion of this day to reflect on ways you can grow as an active accomplice in the fight against racism.

If you do not identify as a Black person in particular, I encourage you to take at least a portion of this day to reflect on ways you can grow as an active accomplice in the fight against anti-Blackness.

In addition to the resources on the #ShutDownAcademia #ShutDownSTEM site, I recommend the following posts from my blog, At the Intersection:


I’ll leave you with a poem I wrote a while back that really captures where my heart is right now:


Ode to the Ancestors

It’s exhausting Mr. Du Bois,

that double consciousness wears me thin

I’se tired

Ms. Rushin, my bridge is broken down,

sagging, ain’t taking nobody else nowhere

I gotta take off this mask

Mr. Dunbar, it itches my face and gives me a rash

I’m hungry, starving

Ms. Simone, but all they offer me is the trauma of that strange fruit

My voice is hoarse and I don’t wanna sing no more

Ms. Angelou, I just wanna break out my cage and fly

But I’ll be alright

Ms. Clifton, we’ll celebrate this life I have shaped

I’ll be okay

Mr. Hughes, that dream deferred is still a dream comin

I thrive

Ancestors, because your legacy is my strength

In solidarity,

AH

Floetry: Ode to the Ancestors

Posted on by April Hathcock

It’s exhausting 
Mr. Du Bois, that double consciousness wears me thin
I’se tired
Ms. Rushin, my bridge is broken down, sagging, ain’t taking nobody else nowhere 
I gotta take off this mask
Mr. Dunbar, it itches my face and gives me a rash
I’m hungry, starving
Ms. Simone, but all they offer me is the trauma of that strange fruit
My voice is hoarse and I don’t wanna sing no more
Ms. Angelou, I just wanna break out my cage and fly
But I’ll be alright
Ms. Clifton, we’ll celebrate this life I have shaped
I’ll be okay
Mr. Hughes, that dream deferred is still a dream comin
I thrive
Ancestors, because your legacy is my strength

Floetry: Only One

Posted on by April Hathcock

Do you know what it’s like to be often the Only One?

If not, then consider yourself privileged.

You don’t constantly find yourself walking into a room and noticing people noticing you, wondering why you’re there and if you belong. You don’t what it’s like to look around and realize that you’re the only _______ in the room. That sinking stomach feeling of being exposed as a token _______, representative of all _______s in the world.

You don’t know the feeling of anger and hurt and fatigue when you hear people making jokes or comments about _______s and you realize they don’t even know or care that you are a _______ person and you are there listening to them.

Or if they do look up and notice you standing there, you don’t know the feeling of anger and hurt and fatigue when they turn to you and say, “Oh, but not you. We don’t consider you to be a _______ person. You’re not like the other _______s.”

Or maybe the room is filled with more “progressive, liberal-minded” folk and they’re talking about issues affecting _______s, full of their own authority and knowledge and big-heartedness. And randomly someone turns to you and says, “Hey, you’re _______! What do you think? How do you feel? Bare a bit of your soul, willya?”

They mean well and you know they mean well, but your _______ soul is tired and you just can’t deal.

Even when you do call them out on their wrong-headedness, so full of kindness and sweet notes and milk-and-honey to avoid hurt feelings, you are met with tears and defensiveness and anger. “My best friend is _______! How dare you correct me!” You look around for support, but rarely do you find it. And why would you? You’re the Only One.

You want to be able to retreat to a land of other _______s and compare notes and resentments and shed tears, but you can’t. You’re the Only One.

It can be a lonely feeling. Being _______ in a world of non-_______s, of anti-_______-ness.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, then you are well and truly privileged. May you never know what it’s like to be the Only One.

My Fire, This Time

Posted on by April Hathcock

I’m reading James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time finally for the first time.

It’s beautiful to see my reality reflected in someone else’s words, even over the distance of several decades. In some ways, it’s disheartening to see how little things have changed; but mostly it’s empowering, just as it’s always empowering to connect to the ancestors’ wisdom for how to make it through to another day of struggle.

photograph of a single candle flame up close

“Still” by roujo via Flickr.com, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

In his short book of two letters, Baldwin says some things that really sync with my current reflections on life in this white supremacist patriarchal world:

In a letter addressed to his nephew: There is no reason for you to try to become like white ppl & there is no basis whatever for their impertinent assumption that THEY must accept YOU. The really terrible thing, old buddy, is that YOU must accept THEM.

and

In a self-reflective letter: There appears to be a vast amount of confusion on this point, but I do not know many Negroes who are eager to be ‘accepted’ by white ppl, still less loved by them; they, the blacks, simply don’t wish to be beaten over the head by the whites every instant of our brief passage on this planet.

This makes me think about conversations I’ve had with family, friends, and allies lately. How I’ve grown past the point of wanting to bond with white people or even be a part of their world; how I’m now just struggling with them for the right to live my life, equitably, fairly, without their censure or policing or gaze. Free in my physical body. Free in my mind. Free in my spirit. To be my whole Black woman self.

It’s hard.

The thing is, it’s the so-called Nice White Folks™ who do the most damage, who stand most in the way of my freedom. Baldwin calls them “the innocents.” The ones who don’t believe they’re doing any harm, who hardily support “diversity” and “inclusion” and “multiculturalism.” As long as it doesn’t cost them anything. They’ll eat our food and learn a bit of our languages, steal our music and watch our tv shows, peer avidly into our lives as a form of “cross-cultural exchange” because doing so is free. They cede no power or privilege in treating us, the very real physical traumatized fact of us, as exotic anomalies for their amusement.

That makes me tired.

I’m tired of allies treating my presence, my very reality, as a problem that needs solving. As if I’m little more than part of a clogged pipeline that just needs a little adjustment over here, off to the side; again, not costing them anything. Sprinkle a little scholarship money here, a program there, some assimilation over here…it’ll all be fine; I just need to stop being “bitter” and “angry” and “divisive” and start being filled with gratitude for my generous white saviors. Who still have not been cost anything.

Yeah, well, I’m done with all that. I’m with Baldwin. Because ultimately it doesn’t matter if they like me or accept me or want me. It doesn’t matter if they understand me. I don’t have to continue squeezing the wholeness of my Black womanhood into tiny bite-sized, white-sized parcels that they can swallow. Because nothing will ever change that way. Nothing can ever change until they’re willing to accept the cost. There’s a price to be paid for the undoing of their privilege, for the dismantling of their so-called supremacy.

And how many of them are really ready to pay?

Columbus Day 2017: Tear It All Down

Posted on by April Hathcock

Today is Columbus Day, but I’m in the midst of a social media break so you won’t see this post until much later. Still, I’ve been thinking about this for awhile, and it’s really come to a point where I’ve got to get the thoughts down.

I just eavesdropped on a white woman talking about her family’s participation in the New York City Italian-American community’s Columbus Day celebrations. (Columbus Day became a holiday in the U.S. initially as a way for marginalized Italian immigrants to celebrate their heritage.) There will be protest by native folks and allies against the settler colonization and genocide that Christopher Columbus represents. In the words of this woman, “I get it, but I don’t get it.” Then, she proceeded to give all the usual trite arguments:

  1. It’s a celebration of Italians in America, not Columbus per se (though he was Italian in America and a genocidal one at that).
  2. You can’t judge historical figures by today’s standards of morality.
  3. I supported the taking down of the Confederate monuments, but where do we draw the line?
  4. Blah, blah, blah.

I don’t mean to rag on this woman. She’s only saying what many other well-meaning, white, liberal Americans say. But this thinking is the very epitome of why we will likely never decolonize and dismantle white supremacy in the country (or anywhere else really).

White people are just too married to their own supremacy and privilege. Even the well-meaning, so-called “liberal” and “progressive” ones.

Over the last few months with all the hullabaloo about taking down Confederate monuments, so many well-meaning liberal white folks took to their thinkpieces to explain why it’s the white (do I mean “right”? Is that really a typo?) thing to do to take down the Confederate monuments, and why it’s okay to leave monuments to other well-known slave-owners and native murderers because of “all the good they did in founding our great country.”

Huh. Cue thinking-face emoji.

What “good” did they do? For whom? What “great country”? For whom?

Because from where I sit, I see native peoples being chased by dogs and teargassed for trying to protect the sanctity of their (and all of our) water.

From where I sit, I see black athletes, whose very bodies are owned by wealthy white men (sound familiar?) being castigated and Black-balled (quite literally) for engaging in peaceful protest against state-sanctioned, racist violence.

From where I sit, I see Spanish-speaking, colonized Americans, Black, Brown, and every shade in between, being left to die of thirst and disease in the midst of one of the worst natural disasters in their living history.

But yes, let’s please preserve the racist legacy of the racist people who built this racist country. By all means.

I say tear it all down. I say this as a proud American who wants to be even prouder of her country. I say this as a Black woman, most of whose ancestors didn’t choose to be here, but here we are, so deal with me. I say this sincerely and unequivocally.

Until we’re willing to, figuratively and literally, tear down every vestige of our nation’s racist, white supremacist history—from Washington to Jackson to Tr*mp—we will never attain the equality and equity we like to talk so glibly about. We need to confront our history and our present, and then we need to tear it down.

Until then, enjoy your ridiculous parades and bank holidays. I’ve got better things to do.

 

Post-ALA Race Fatigue

Posted on by April Hathcock

I just spent the last 5 days at the American Library Association annual conference in Chicago, and I am suffering serious race fatigue. 

Race fatigue is a real physical, mental, and emotional condition that people of color experience after spending a considerable amount of time dealing with the micro- and macro-aggressions that inevitably occur when in the presence of white people. The more white people, the longer the time period, the more intense the race fatigue. 

My ALA Annual 2017 conference badge

 

I usually come back from conferences pretty exhausted anyway. I’m an introvert, an over-achiever, and an over-joiner, so I’m always faced with having to be conscious about taking breaks, saying no, and engaging in other forms of self-care. But when you combine that with 5 days of being talked at, over, and through by folks in a profession that’s 88% white…well, let’s just say I hit my limit. 

Its been 5 straight days of being tone-policed and condescended to and ‘splained to. Five days of listening to white men librarians complain about being a “minority” in this 88% white profession–where they consistently hold higher positions with higher pay–because they don’t understand the basics of systemic oppression. (They’re librarians. You’d think they’d know how to find and read a sociology reference, but whatever.) Five days of having “nice white ladies” tell you to be “civil” and “professional” when you talk about the importance of acknowledging oppression and our profession’s role in it. 

Even with well-meaning white people, friends even, it’s been exhausting; the fatigue is still there. Five days of having white colleagues corner you to “hear more” about the microaggressions you’ve suffered and witnessed, not because they want to check in on your fatigue, but because they take a weird pleasure in hearing the horror stories and feeling superior to their “less woke” racial compatriots. 

Five days of mounting anger and frustration that you struggle to keep below the surface because you can’t be the “angry and emotional person of color” yet again. 

Don’t get me wrong, there were delightful moments of reprieve. I went to the Spectrum Scholarship 20th Anniversary celebration and met the amazing Dr. Carla Hayden–first black, first woman, first librarian–Librarian of Congress. (She’s so wonderful. We chatted about my name, which I share with the main character of her favorite children’s book.) I caught up with friends and colleagues of color and met new ones. These moments kept me going. And I did have some moments of rest with a few absolutely invaluable and genuine white allies. 

But I’m tired. 

Luckily, the rest of my summer will be spent going on vacation with family, steeping in time with the people who love and know me best. I’ll be getting some much needed R & R in this racial battle called life. And when I get back to it all, I’ll keep on fighting, bearing in mind the inspiring words Dr. Hayden imparted to us at the Spectrum celebration: “You gotta be in the room. You gotta be at the table. You gotta fight.”

Grit? Git!

Posted on by April Hathcock

I’ve been thinking a lot about resilience lately.

Angela Galvan, Jacob Berg, and Eamon Tewell gave a fantastic presentation on the myth of resilience and grit in academic libraries at the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) conference in Baltimore earlier this year. While I wasn’t able to attend because (of course) the conference gods had scheduled one of my panels at the same time, afterward, I dove into their presentation, handout, and the related tweets with gusto. I sincerely hope Angela, Jacob, and Eamon take their work further because it’s really important stuff. They talk about how the myth of resilience reifies oppression and maintains the status quo. How grit is an excuse for the haves to continue having and the have-nots to continue without.

Now, the ACRL President’s Program is planning a program on “resilience (hopefully) in all its complexity” for the American Library Association (ALA) Annual meeting next year. They’ve asked for people to share (for free) their ideas about resilience so that the speakers (not yet identified) can use those ideas as the basis for their talks (likely without attribution as the originating comments are to be anonymized). In other words, ACRL wants us to show resilience by pouring out our gritty souls as fuel for what promises to be an interesting program.

Yesterday at the Untold Histories unconference, I sat in on a session about creating a diversity pipeline for the GLAM (galleries, libraries, archives, museums) professions. We’d hardly gotten settled in our seats when the conversation quickly turned to the abysmally low pay commonly found in our professions, even when they require graduate-level degrees. As one participant put it, “I feel a little guilty encouraging people from underrepresented groups to enter this profession when I know they’re going to be paid so little for so much work.” In other words, they’ll be expected to spend the rest of their professional lives wallowing in grit and resilience.

All of this thinking has made me reach a conclusion: Our profession’s obsession with resilience plays a huge part in destroying our attempts at increasing diversity. I am convinced that a big reason why we’re still 87% white is because we are obsessed with grit. Grit keeps our libraries underfunded, our staff underpaid, our work undervalued. We wear our grit like medals of honor when it’s that same grit that keeps us mired in the status quo.

2044390284_6c745d312e_o

“Grit” by Al Greer via Flickr.com, CC BY-NC 2.0

Grit is the magical fairy dust that makes “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps” physically possible. Normally, that phrase, so common among those with privilege, is nonsensical. (No, really, it can’t be done.) But when you sprinkle on a bit of grit, all of a sudden, the hapless pickaninny floats up from his place in the dust and accomplishes the incredible. All without touching the much-protected privilege of the master in power. Resilience absolves those with privilege of the responsibility for dismantling oppression and erecting systems of equity. Resilience is the wheel that keeps the myth of meritocracy grinding.

And we, in the library, profession love it. We’re obsessed with it. We love our tales of the library staff who kept the place open after-hours, without pay, for the sake of the community. The library folks who continued to provide the same level of services even when their budgets had been slashed in half. We proudly share our job postings calling for a library unicorn with an MLIS, a second masters, and the ability to do the job of five people while being paid the salary of three-fifths of a person (that age-old fraction always at play). We shove our graduate students into unpaid internships where they pay tuition for the pleasure of handing out their free labor, and we tout their resilience for the sake of gaining “valuable” experience. We love grit.

And we are steadily choking to death on it.

If we truly want to diversify our profession, we MUST give up our obsession with resilience. We must give up our never-ending dreams of grit. As Angela, Jacob, and Eamon note in their work, we have to accept the possibility of failure. Services may (will) be cut. Libraries may (will) close. It’s tragic. But it’s happening anyway, even with our grit. We can’t continue to try to make do with nothing. Our resilience is doing us no favors. It isn’t the life raft sent to save us; it’s just extra weight dragging us down.

Let’s give up resilience and grit and follow in the steps of Christina Bell, that beautiful creature:

Screen Shot 2017-05-12 at 12.46.08 PM

Screenshot of tweet by @librarybell

LIS Mental Health Week

Posted on by April Hathcock

This week is LIS Mental Week. Founded last year by two people I absolutely adore, Cecile Walker and Kelly McElroy, it’s a time for those of us in the library and information profession to learn, share, and support one another when it comes to mental health issues affecting us and our families. 

With what’s happening in our world and the immense weight of social justice work nowadays, it is absolutely vital that we be able to talk openly and unabashedly about our mental health. As a black woman and a practicing Christian who also suffers from anxiety, OCD, and panic disorders, I know all too well the silence and stigma that can surround mental illness. I’m also intimately acquainted with the danger of suffering mental illness in silence without treatment or support. And I, too, have felt the ill effects of recent events on my mental and physical health. 

Now more than ever, we have to find and cultivate those safe spaces where we can ask for much needed help and see to much needed self-care. It is part and parcel of the important activism and advocacy work that we do. In addition, those with privilege who serve as allies need to also recognize the physical, mental, and emotional strain that results from living a life beset by systemic oppression. 

I encourage all of you to take time this week to find trusted friends and allies with whom you can provide mutual support and care, to learn more about what mental illness can mean for those who have to deal with it, and to discover and practice effective strategies for managing your own self-care. This work we do is a marathon and not a sprint: if we’re going to make it all the way through, we’ve got to take care of ourselves. And each other. 

“There’s No # For That”

Posted on by April Hathcock

Yesterday I experienced an amazing moment of solidarity and activism with trusted, like-minded individuals who care deeply about fighting oppression in all its forms:

I shared a platter of barbecued meat with Chris Bourg, Eamon Tewell, Emily Drabinski, Zoe Fisher, Jessica Critten, and Angela Pashia. 

Oh, you thought I was going to talk about the #WomensMarch? We did that, too. We’re all in Atlanta for the American Library Association Midwinter Meeting, so we joined the rally and march in Atlanta–in John Lewis’ district no less. We even got to hear him speak. 

But truthfully, as fun as it was to see millions of people come out across the world in support of social justice–and against the current US administrarion and its campaign of hate–the fact is these marches were really about little more than–to use a white guy buzzword–optics. It looks good that more people showed up in DC to protest the new administration than showed up for the actual inauguration. It looks good for people who’ve been sitting on their privilege to get up and put on genitalia hats and demand justice. It looks good when people peacefully and cheerily take to the streets to do activism for a day. It all looks good. 

But as my wise friend Emily Drabinski pointed out yesterday while we’re ankle-deep in Georgia mud: “Activism isn’t sexy. There’s no hashtag for that.”

No, there is not. 

We slogged through mud for a couple hours for activism yesterday, but what about those of us who have been slogging through mud for years doing this work? People like my lunch companions who are my trusted comrades and allies in the struggle? I’m glad so many feel they’ve “woken up” in the last few months, but what about all of us who have been awake and working so long we’re weary with sleep deprivation?

Slogging through the Georgia mud

 

The truth is we can wear pink hats and carry funny signs all day but that won’t do anything to combat systemic oppression. Not while white women are policing the words and actions of women of color, and black women in particular, telling us to “stay on message” when we point out the complicity of white women in getting us to where we are now. Not while one of the biggest “intersectional” marches for social justice is yet predicated on an erasure of disabled people. Not while this “intersectional” action has become almost entirely centered on the cis-glorification of womanhood based on the possession of certain sex organs. Not while marchers take the time to divert to the sidelines to take pictures with and hug the police presence, stepping past “Black Lives Matter” signs to do so.   

Not while, standing in the Georgia mud as John Lewis speaks, my comrades and I look over to see a white woman holding a sign that reads: “John Lewis is my spirit animal.” Yup. 

So I’m going to stick with my takeaway of the great activist experience I had yesterday. That meat was delicious. (If you’re ever in Atlanta, check it out.) Our conversation, as is always the case with these folks and many others like them, was enlightening and inspiring. It was a space of safety and honesty and care. And meat. Lots of meat. 

There’s just no hashtag for that.