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Two comedians talking about race. Does it get any better??

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Politically Re-Active Podcast - W. Kamau Bell and Hari Kondabolu

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Comedians W. Kamau Bell and Hari Kondabolu separate fact from fake news as they talk to fascinating artists, activists, writers, journalists and political thinkers.

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From NPR

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Ever find yourself in a conversation about race and identity where you just get...stuck? Code Switch can help. We're all journalists of color, and this isn't just the work we do. It's the lives we lead. Sometimes, we'll make you laugh. Other times, you'll get uncomfortable. But we'll always be unflinchingly honest and empathetic.

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See Something Say Something (seesomethingsaysomething) on BuzzFeed. BuzzFeed is the best place to post, find, and share the hottest content on the web.

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Writes in an insightful and challenging way. I cannot get enough of his work!

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The Atlantic covers news, politics, culture, technology, health, and more, through its articles, podcasts, videos, and flagship magazine.

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The Fire Next Time - King County Library System

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The Fire Next Time (Book) : Baldwin, James : At once a powerful evocation of his childhood in Harlem and a disturbing examination of the consequences of racial injustice, The Fire Next Time, which galvanized the nation in the early days of the Civil Rights movement, stands as one of the essential works of our literature.

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We need to talk about an injustice by Bryan Stevenson

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We need to talk about an injustice by Bryan Stevenson

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8,083,741 views | Bryan Stevenson • TED2012

In an engaging and personal talk -- with cameo appearances from his grandmother and Rosa Parks -- human rights lawyer Bryan Stevenson shares some hard truths about America's justice system, starting with a massive imbalance along racial lines: a third of the country's black male population has been incarcerated at some point in their lives. These issues, which are wrapped up in America's unexamined history, are rarely talked about with this level of candor, insight and persuasiveness.

Become a TED Member

Want to hear more great ideas like this one? Sign up for TED Membership to get exclusive access to captivating conversations, engaging events, and more!

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Bryan Stevenson: We need to talk about an injustice

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In an engaging and personal talk -- with cameo appearances from his grandmother and Rosa Parks -- human rights lawyer Bryan Stevenson shares some hard truths about America's justice system, starting with a massive imbalance along racial lines: a third of the country's black male population has been incarcerated at some point in their lives.

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A History of Racial Injustice Daily Calendar

Learn more about our nation's history of racial injustice by reading our online calendar, which features a different historical event each day.

Visit calendar website

Visit EJI's Legacy Sites in Montgomery

Support

EJI is committed to ending mass incarceration and excessive punishment in the U.S., challenging racial and economic injustice, and protecting basic human rights for the most vulnerable people in American society. We've earned a perfect score from Charity Navigator.

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EJI works to end mass incarceration, excessive punishment, and racial inequality.

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Insightful, challenging (for me, anyway) and fucking brilliant!

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Read writing from Ijeoma Oluo in The Establishment. Come for the feminist rants..stay for the selfies and kid quotes. Inclusive feminism here. Every day, Ijeoma Oluo and thousands of other voices read, write, and share important stories on The Establishment.

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The Justice & Inclusion page has great information.

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Main Content

We have a legacy of "deeds not creeds." Our work for a better world calls us to unexpected places as we harness love's power to stop oppression. From grassroots community organizing to interfaith state, national, and corporate advocacy; in protest marches, prayer vigils, and press conferences; in homeless shelters and in prisons, Unitarian Universalists put our faith into action.

Our justice efforts are grounded in our congregationally-driven social justice statements and our call to break down divisions, heal isolation, and honor the interconnectedness of all life and all justice issues. We model these commitments by creating just, welcoming, and inclusive congregations. We act in partnership with groups and communities most impacted by injustice on local, state, national, and international levels.

Our ministry includes service, education, advocacy, and public witness (the spiritual practice of taking a public position in support of justice). Our Side With Love campaign harnesses the power of love to end oppression. Our Love Resists campaign -- a joint effort with the UUSC -- activates people of faith and conscience to resist the harm inflicted by criminalization. Our UU College of Social Justice provides experiential learning opportunities to deepen the work of justice for people of all ages. Our work is led by our denominational staff, congregational leaders, and a wide variety of coalition partners and UU groups focused on justice and identity.

Our justice ministries focus on key priorities for our congregations and communities:

From inSpirit: The UU Book and Gift Shop

Don't leave home without our newest rally signs! Pack of nine, with three signs of each striking design. Not intended for use as yard signs...

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Main Content We have a legacy of "deeds not creeds." Our work for a better world calls us to unexpected places as we harness love's power to stop oppression. From grassroots community organizing to interfaith state, national, and corporate advocacy; in protest marches, prayer vigils, and press conferences; in homeless shelters and in prisons, Unitarian Universalists put our faith into action.

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A great resource for teachers and others working with youth. The webinar series is fantastic!

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The Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA) enabled millions of Black and other voters of color an opportunity to participate in our democracy. Ten years ago, on June 25, 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Shelby County v. Holder significantly weakened a key provision of the landmark VRA. These LFJ articles remind us of the struggle for voting rights and education and the powerful legacy of Freedom Summer 1964. As we confront current voter suppression and education censorship, let us continue the fight for justice in today's movement.

"Following record-breaking voter turnout in the 2020 election, several state legislatures passed laws to disenfranchise voters, especially in Black communities. These attempts at voter suppression work in concert with censorship policies targeting education to further undermine civics literacy and engagement in the United States." -Freedom Schools for Today's Social Justice Movement

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Learning for Justice | Education Resources

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Learning for Justice provides free resources to educators-teachers, administrators, counselors and other practitioners-who work with children from kindergarten through high school. Educators use our materials to supplement the curriculum, to inform their practices, and to create civil and inclusive school communities where children are respected, valued and welcome participants.

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White people like me should use the term because it shifts the race problem to us, where it belongs.

I am white. When I give talks on what it means to be white in a society deeply separate and unequal by race, I explain that white people who are born and raised in the U.S. grow up in a white supremacist culture. I include myself in this claim, as I enumerate all of the ways in which I was socialized to be complicit in racism. I am not talking about hate groups, of which I am obviously not a member. And no, I don't hate white people. I am addressing most of the audience to whom I am speaking, white progressives like me.

If it surprises and unsettles my audience that I use this term to refer to us and not them, even after I have explained how I am using it, then they have not been listening. That recognition should trigger some sense of urgency that continuing education is needed.

Yet invariably, a white person raises the objection: I really don't like that term! I associate it with the KKK and other white nationalist groups. Why can't you use a different term? As a classic example of white fragility, rather than stretching into a new framework, I am asked by a white participant to use language that is more comfortable and maintains their current worldview.

White supremacy captures the all-encompassing centrality and assumed superiority of people defined and perceived as white.

Many people, especially older white people, associate the term white supremacy with extreme and explicit hate groups. However, for sociologists, white supremacy is a highly descriptive term for the culture we live in; a culture which positions white people and all that is associated with them (whiteness) as ideal.

White supremacy captures the all-encompassing centrality and assumed superiority of people defined and perceived as white, and the practices based upon that assumption. White supremacy is not simply the idea that whites are superior to people of color (although it certainly is that), but a deeper premise that supports this idea-the definition of whites as the norm or standard for human, and people of color as an inherent deviation from that norm.

Thus, when race scholars use the term white supremacy, we do not use it the same way as mainstream culture does. Nor, do we use it to indicate majority-versus-minority relations. Power is not dependent on numbers but on position. We use the term to refer to a socio-political economic system of domination based on racial categories that benefit those defined and perceived as white. This system rests on the historical and current accumulation of structural power that privileges, centralizes, and elevates white people as a group. If, for example, we look at the racial breakdown of the people who control our institutions, we see that in 2016-2017:

Congress: 90% white

Governors: 96% white

Top military advisers: 100% white

President and vice president: 100% white

Current POTUS cabinet: 91% white

People who decide which TV shows we see: 93% white

People who decide which books we read: 90% white

People who decide which news is covered: 85% white

People who decide which music is produced: 95% white

Teachers: 83% white

Full-time college professors: 84% white

Owners of men's pro-football teams: 97% white

These numbers are not a matter of "good people" versus "bad people." They are a matter of power, control, and dominance by a racial group with a particular self-image, worldview, and set of interests in the position to disseminate that image and worldview and protect those interests across the entire society.

For a clear example of what it means to have institutional control and use it to the advantage of your group, we can look to women's suffrage in the U.S. Only white men could grant women suffrage because white men controlled the government (and all of the other institutions that allowed them to disseminate and enforce patriarchy across society). They still do. While women could be prejudiced against men and discriminate against individual men in isolated cases, women as a group could not deny all men their civil rights. Yet men as a group could deny all women their civil rights. Once white men finally granted women the right to vote, only white men could then deny access to that right for women (and men) of color. White people also write the history that tells us that "women" were granted the right to vote, and erases the reality that that access was not granted equally across race. The term white supremacy allows us to capture the all-encompassing and multi-dimensional nature of white control.

While the dominant racial/ethnic group in other cultures may not be white, there is nonetheless a global dimension of white supremacy.

While the dominant racial/ethnic group in other cultures may not be white (for example, the Chinese rule Tibetans, and the Tibetans may experience racism from the Chinese), there is nonetheless a global dimension of white supremacy. Through mass media, corporate culture, advertising, United States-owned manufacturing, military presence, historical colonialist relations, missionary work, and other means, white supremacy is also circulated globally. One of the most potent ways this is disseminated is through media representations, which have a profound impact on how we see the world. Given the role of media in modern life, films shape our ideas about romance, conflict, family, friendship, sexuality, criminality, belonging, and otherness.

Those who write and direct films are our cultural narrators; the stories they tell shape our worldviews. Given that most white people live in racial isolation from people of color (and Black people in particular) and have very few authentic cross-racial relationships, white people are deeply influenced by the racial messages in films. Of the 100 top grossing films worldwide in 2016, 95 were directed by white Americans (99 of them by men). That is an incredibly homogenous group. Because these men are most likely at the top of the social hierarchy (in terms of race, class and gender), they are the least likely to have a variety of authentic egalitarian cross-racial relationships. Yet they are in the position to represent the racial "other." Their representations of the "other" are thereby extremely narrow and problematic, and reinforced over and over.

Take, for example, the Jackie Robinson story. Robinson is often celebrated as "the first African American to break the color line and play in major-league baseball." While Robinson was certainly an amazing ballplayer, this story line depicts Robinson as racially special; a black man who broke that color line himself. The subtext is that Robinson finally had what it took to play with whites, as if no black athlete before him was strong enough to compete at that level. Imagine if instead, the story went something like this: "Jackie Robinson, the first black man whites allowed to play major-league baseball." This is a critical distinction because no matter how fantastic a player Robinson was, he simply could not play in the major leagues if whites-who control the institution-did not allow it. Were he to walk onto the field before being granted permission by white owners and policymakers, the police would have removed him.

White supremacy is rendered invisible while other political systems are identified and studied.

Narratives of racial exceptionality obscure the reality of ongoing institutional white control while reinforcing the ideologies of individualism and meritocracy. They also do whites a disservice by obscuring the white allies behind the scenes who worked hard and long to open the field to African American players. These allies could serve as much needed role-models for other whites (although we also need to acknowledge that in the case of the desegregation of baseball, there was an economic incentive for these allies).

White supremacy as a powerful ideology that promotes the idea of whiteness as the ideal for humanity is especially relevant in countries with a history of colonialism by Western nations. Charles Mills (1997) describes white supremacy as "...the unnamed political system that has made the modern world what it is today" (p.1). He notes that while white supremacy has shaped Western political thought for hundreds of years, it is rarely named. In this way, white supremacy is rendered invisible while other political systems-socialism, capitalism, fascism-are identified and studied. In fact, much of its power is drawn from its invisibility-the taken-for-granted aspects of white superiority that underwrite all other political and social contracts. White resistance to the term white supremacy prevents us from examining this system. If we can't identify it, we can't interrupt it.

Naming white supremacy changes the conversation because it shifts the problem to white people, where it belongs. It also points us in the direction of the life-long work that is uniquely ours; challenging our complicity with and investment in racism. Yes, this work includes all white people, even white progressives. None of us have missed being shaped by the white supremacy embedded in our culture. Current research in implicit bias demonstrates that all people have racial bias, that most of it is unconscious, and that it does manifest in our actions. Because white people control the institutions, our racial bias is embedded and infused across society and works to the advantage of all white people, regardless of intentions, awareness, or self-image. Our task is not to exempt ourselves from the impact of these conditioning forces, but rather to continually seek to identify how these forces shape us and manifest in our specific lives, and interrupt those manifestations.

The term white supremacy seems to be especially resisted by those whites who marched in the Civil Rights movement of the 1960's.

The term white supremacy seems to be especially resisted by those whites who marched in the 1960s Civil Rights movement. For those of you who did march, I understand that you may have strong negative associations with the term. So let me acknowledge that your involvement was critical. I and many others are grateful for your activism. The racism you marched against was coming from white people (as it always does). In that, it was our problem, as it always has been. We needed to get involved. And precisely because our voices have been granted more legitimacy under white supremacy, we needed to use those voices to challenge the apartheid of the time. I sincerely thank all of the white people who put themselves on the line to protest.

Having said that, we can now move on to the next point: marching in the 60s did not certify you as racism-free for the rest of your lives, with no re-certification necessary, ever. Nor did it free you of any need for further accountability to people of color. And might there have been some of the more subtle (to whites) forms of racism perpetrated even as you marched? I am not talking about fire hoses on protesters or beatings at the lunch counter forms of racism. Of course you were, and are, against those explicit forms. I am talking about the white progressive forms of racism that support these more explicit forms; the white savior syndrome you likely brought with you (how could you not - you are a product of your culture), the condescension and patronizing, the marveling at how articulate the Black folks were, even as you took over their movement. I am talking about the reasons that have led folks to do things differently today; why we have Black Lives Matter (BLM) and Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ). BLM leads, and SURJ is expected to take its direction from BLM.

If we take a closer look at the stories we tell about Jackie Robinson, ourselves, and our activism, we see that these stories mask white supremacy by rendering invisible whites, white advantage, and the racist policies and practices of the institutions we control. This is what we need to make visible, understand, and interrupt.

So, no, we won't stop using the term white supremacy.

It's not on those of us involved in the movement today to change our language for further white comfort. In fact, that is the height of white entitlement. Rather, it is on white people to break out of our comfort zones, realize that things have changed, and initiate our continuing education and skill-building. The internet is over-flowing with excellent guides on how to do this. The inability (or refusal to do so) functions as a form of resistance to change and protection of a very limited and problematic world view. This resistance is not benign; it functions to hold the current racial order in place. No neutral stance exists. We need to move on and move forward, because we are calling it what it is: white supremacy.
This article was originally published by The Good Men Project. It has been edited for YES! Magazine.

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No, I Won't Stop Saying "White Supremacy" - YES! Magazine

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White people like me should use the term because it shifts the race problem to us, where it belongs. I am white. When I give talks on what it means to be white in a society deeply separate and unequal by race, I explain that white people who are born and raised in the U.S.

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To understand white liberal racism, read these emails

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To understand white liberal racism, read these emails

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KUOW

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On a gray day last October, teachers across Seattle wore a shirt that read BLACK LIVES MATTER.

They knew there might be criticism. John Muir Elementary in south Seattle had done this in September and received a bomb threat and hate mail from across the U.S.

But they did, and the day was, by most accounts, uneventful. Some kids got it - most didn't. Just another school day.

And then, a backlash, but this time not from outsiders. White parents from the city's tonier neighborhoods wrote to their principals to say they were displeased. A Black Lives Matter day was too militant, too political and too confusing for their young kids, they said.

Some danced around their discomfort, others snarked in ALL CAPS. These parents would not talk to us, so we made a public records request for their emails.

Their names were blacked out, which is why they are not named here.

Wrote a parent at Laurelhurst Elementary: "Can you please address ... why skin color is so important? I remember a guy that had a dream. Do you remember that too? I doubt it. Please show me the content of your character if you do."

From Eckstein Middle School in Wedgwood: "What about red and black or yellow and white and black? How does supporting Black Lives Matter help that gap?"

And from Bryant Elementary in Ravenna: "I'm writing to share what my 9-year-old daughter told me about what she learned in class regarding the Black Lives Matter discussion. She said she 'felt bad about being white.' And that 'police lie and do bad things.'"

These three schools are in northeast Seattle, one of the whitest, most affluent corners of the city. They are also in staunchly liberal neighborhoods dotted with rainbow yard signs that say "All are welcome."

"This is what I've come to call Seattle's passive progressiveness," said Stephan Blanford, a Seattle school board member whose doctoral research focused on race and public education. "We vote the right way on issues. We believe the right way. But the second you challenge their privilege, you see the response."

Blanford is black and represents the Central District, the historic African-American heart of the city. He wasn't surprised by the emails from parents after the Black Lives Matter day. Middle-class white parents have asked him for help getting their kids out of Madrona Elementary, which is 44 percent black.

"No one will say to me, 'We don't want our kids to go to a black school,' but I believe that's frequently the underlying reason," Blanford said.

Black Lives Matter emerged from a Twitter hashtag in 2013. The movement gained momentum as videos emerged of police officers killing black men, and from there became a rallying cry against racism. Those three words say that black lives haven't mattered enough in this country, and they should.

Reaction to the Black Lives Matter day might have been more muted had Sarah Talbot, the principal at Laurelhurst, not sent an email afterward to parents.

"I heard from a few parents concerned about what teachers weren't saying," Talbot wrote.

"They weren't saying anything about lives - the lives of students, parents and families - who are not black. I worried about that too. Would our Native students feel left out, since they face the same (or worse) effects of systemic racism in schools and outside of schools that black students face? What about the majority of the students in our school who are white? They also live with the effects of a society that unfairly prioritizes their lives.

"But then I remembered that at Laurelhurst Elementary, we have a 20 percent difference in the growth of black students' reading skills when compared to the average growth of all students at our school."

The Laurelhurst Blog, which doesn't name its writer, wrote to media a week later: "Many parents contacted the Laurelhurst Blog and found the email disturbing, divisive and offensive, and one called it 'racially biased.'"

The blogger continued, "Talbot says there is 'injustice' and there are 'gaps' - but where are her examples? Since she didn't provide any, is it her own invented bias that she is bringing to the community, creating divisiveness?"

Director Blanford urged me to interview Jill Geary, the school board director representing northeast Seattle. Geary is a white mom of five with a daughter at Laurelhurst Elementary; maybe she could explain parent thinking, he said.

Geary doesn't see herself as a total insider, however. She was once an administrative law judge who focused on special education; years ago she refused to join other parents in trying to oust a program for highly traumatized kids at Laurelhurst.

She sighed a little as she explained:

"They would prefer to be 'all lives matter,' because then their child is included in the conversation about mattering," she said. "What they don't think is, would a black mother feel like her child matters, based upon the way that history, the nation, the city, the institutional structures, have treated her child? That's not the process they're using."

Geary shared a story from earlier in the year: A sticker that read "HCC = APPartheid" was placed outside Thurgood Marshall Elementary. HCC stands for Highly Capable Cohort; APPartheid is a play on what the program was called before - APP, or Advanced Placement Program.

The sticker's message: The gifted program is overwhelmingly white. Last year, 1 percent of the program was black, even though the district was 16 percent black.

"We got very angry emails about that, as though we had sponsored it," Geary said. "They were upset their kid was being shamed for being in HCC. I think that's the same instinct."

When Geary spoke with a parent upset about the Black Lives Matter day last fall, she said, "I know your child matters. You know your child matters. But I'm not sure that we as a society have made it clear that we believe black children matter in the way that white children matter.'"

But Geary said caring a lot is part of the culture at affluent schools like Laurelhurst, where parents have time and money to get involved.

"There's a portable on the playground, and we are arming ourselves to get rid of it," Geary said. "I hate to say it, but that is privilege amplified."

I asked Jennifer Harvey, a religion professor in Des Moines, Iowa, to read these emails and share her thoughts. Harvey recently had an opinion piece in The New York Times titled, " Are we raising racists? "

"As a white person myself, I hear and I know how white people think about race, and I wasn't surprised to see just a basic lack of understanding of how racism functions," Harvey said. "This would not be unique to Seattle liberal whites, nor among liberals who didn't vote for Trump. These kind of sentiments are very deep seated."

She continued: "What I see when I read these emails is this utter failure to value black life. Because if you value black life you go, 'Oh my god, even if I don't understand this, why is it that African-Americans need to have this movement for black lives, and what is it like to be a 10-year-old child who's black?

"It's like there's this total white vortex that just screams out from these emails, whether they are being nasty intentionally or just saying, 'I don't get it.' They make me really sad."

Not that all parents bristled at the Black Lives Matter day. Several cheered on the school in their emails. And when I contacted members of the Laurelhurst PTA members, two moms replied that they supported it.

But there was also a mom heartbroken by how the day had played out for her son.

"I was feeling scared to drop them off at school, [my son] in particular, being at Laurelhurst as a brown student in a sea of white peers and white staff," she wrote to Principal Talbot.

That morning, the mom and her son talked about what his Black Lives Matter shirt meant. "He told me he felt scared," the mom wrote.

"As we parked, he said, 'Mom! I just got a good idea. If I get white paint and put it all over my body to cover the brown so they can't see it, then people will stop killing us black and brown people.'

"I cried so many tears of sadness, fear, anger and feelings of lost hope yesterday morning," she said.

After school, she learned that her 5-year-old was asked to stand up in front of his class and talk about Black Lives Matter and his shirt. By the end of the day, he had taken it off and shoved it in his cubby.

"I asked him why, and he said because he was tired of people asking him about it and wanting to take his picture," the mom wrote. "I was so angry all I could do was pick him up, hug him so tightly and said, 'I can see why you chose not to wear it. That sounds uncomfortable and unfair.'"

When I told Director Blanford this story, he said it made sense the boy was overwhelmed. "In his day-to-day experience as a student, he's probably pretty invisible, and then all of a sudden, he's the celebrity in the classroom."

Referring back to the critical parents, he said, "The intersection of class and race always has the potential to be explosive. This was a nice powder keg, and it just needed the match."

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To understand white liberal racism, read these private emails

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On a gray day last October, teachers across Seattle wore a shirt that read BLACK LIVES MATTER. They knew there might be criticism. John Muir Elementary in south Seattle had done this in September and received a bomb threat and hate mail from across the U.S.

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Malcolm Gladwell's amazing podcast!

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Revisionist History Podcast - Malcolm Gladwell Podcast - Pushkin Industries

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Revisionist History is Malcolm Gladwell’s journey through the overlooked and the misunderstood. Click now to listen to the Revisionist History podcast on Pushkin Industries.

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Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Cotes

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Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Cotes

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"Never forget that we were enslaved in this country longer than we have been free. Never forget that for 250 years black people were born into chains - whole generations followed by more generations who knew nothing but chains."

(This book opens with a quote from Richard Wright that contains the title of the book):

And one morning while in the woods I stumbled suddenly upon the thing, stumbled upon it in a grassy clearing guarded by scaly oaks and elms. And the sooty details of the scene rose, thrusting themselves between the world and me.

Add Notices

Violence: Murders of African American men

Add Age Suitability

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Between the World and Me - King County Library System

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Between the World and Me (Book) : Coates, Ta-Nehisi : "For Ta-Nehisi Coates, history has always been personal. At every stage of his life, he's sought in his explorations of history answers to the mysteries that surrounded him--most urgently, why he, and other black people he knew, seemed to live in fear ...

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One of the best explanations of white privilege I've read.

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Netflix documentary by Ava DuVernay

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In this thought-provoking documentary, scholars, activists and politicians analyze the criminalization of African Americans and the U.S. prison boom. Watch trailers & learn more.

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Netflix documentary about Nina Simone. This doc really showed the impact of racism on a brilliant and talented woman.

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by Michelle Alexander

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The New Jim Crow - King County Library System

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The New Jim Crow Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (Book) : Alexander, Michelle : "As the United States celebrates the nation's 'triumph over race' with the election of Barack Obama, the majority of young black men in major American cities are locked behind bars or have been labeled felons for life.

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critlib

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critlib | critical librarianship, in real life & on the twitters

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132nd chat, Tuesday July 19, 2022: libraries drop the I-word
6 pm Pacific / 7 pm Mountain / 8 pm Central / 9 pm Eastern

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I have watched the growth of critical librarianship into a mainstream movement with excitement. Critical librarianship supports the belief that, in our work as librarians, we should examine and fight attempts at social oppression.

Over the past few years, critical librarianship has become a force that pervades every area of our work, from reference to library instruction, collection development, cataloging, and storytime. Biweekly #critlib Twitter chats ( crit​lib.org) address topics across all areas of librarianship. Many librarians are thinking about how they can fight for social justice in their work, which raises the question of whether that work reflects the neutrality that has long been a value in our profession.

One tenet of critical librarianship is that neutrality is not only unachievable, it is harmful to oppressed groups in our society. In a world that is fundamentally unequal, neutrality upholds inequality and represents indifference to the marginalization of members of our community. If the majority of what is published represents a white, male, Christian, heteronormative worldview, then we are not supporting the interests of other members of our communities by primarily buying those works. If Library of Congress Subject Headings whitewash injustices like Japanese-American internment with terms like "Japanese Americans-Evacuation and relocation," then neutrality supports it.

Only recently have I begun to see critiques of technology through the lens of critical librarianship. It is tempting to believe that searching in our library discovery systems is somehow more neutral because results are ranked by relevance based on an algorithm. But that's far from the case, as many researchers have suggested that algorithms can reproduce and support the same negative stereotyping that occurs in society. Grand Valley State University librarian Matthew Reidsma published a fascinating analysis of bias in library discovery systems and explored some of the biased and offensive search results he found in his library's discovery layer.

Neutrality is not only unachievable, it is harmful to oppressed groups in our society.

Whether or not we improve library discovery systems, our patrons are still using online tools that have been shown to be biased. In his TED talk "Beware Online Filter Bubbles," Eli Pariser showed how tools like Google and Facebook personalize what users see and primarily show content that agrees with their worldview. Information scientist Safiya Umoja Noble studied Google search results to show the damage done to young black girls when the top results in a search for "black girls" are highly sexualized. When the internet tools we use provide a partial or distorted view of the world, they influence the attitudes, actions, and self-esteem of the people we serve.

Librarians may not be able to change Google or Facebook, but we can educate our patrons and support the development of the critical-thinking skills they need to navigate an often-biased online world. We can empower our patrons when we help them critically evaluate information and teach them about bias in search engines, social media, and publishing. Libraries that have created research guides for Black Lives Matter and other social justice topics are helping to curate information and points-of-view that might not be traditionally published.

We are not doing our job if we remain neutral when it comes to library technologies. Accepting many of the technologies available to support our missions means accepting technologies that are biased, not accessible, not protective of the privacy of our users, and not easily usable by some of our patrons. A commitment to social justice is a commitment to equal access, which is at the heart of our professional values. We are not being neutral when we advocate for our patrons, but we are being good librarians.

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Never Neutral | American Libraries Magazine

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I have watched the growth of critical librarianship into a mainstream movement with excitement. Critical librarianship supports the belief that, in our work as librarians, we should examine and fight attempts at social oppression. Over the past few years, critical librarianship has become a force that pervades every area of our work, from reference to library instruction, collection development, cataloging, and storytime.