 So hello everyone, thank you for joining us today. I am Dr. Via Gran. I am the chair of the San Jose State University High School Diversity Committee and welcome to our 2020 Diversity webinar series. This is our eighth session for the 2020 series and our final session for the year. Our series focuses on diverse topics from diverse speakers and is really for university students, faculty, staff, alumni and affiliates of SJSU. And so I wanna do some little housekeeping. You'll be able to find a full list of our recorded sessions, including this one by visiting our SJSU iSchool YouTube channel at youtube.com backslash SJSU iSchool. And I placed it in the chat and we'll also place it there again. But when you subscribe, you'll automatically be notified of any new content. So once this recording is available and I do wanna point out that there is a diversity webinar series playlist. So you can listen to all of the diversity series if you wish. If you have any questions during today's session, please place them in the chat. I'll be monitoring the chat throughout as well as at the end for our speaker. And if you do identify with BIPOC, place an asterisk before your question as we will be following the progressive stack technique. And this gives marginalized groups and voices a greater chance to speak. If you want to chat with others or just post comments in the chat box, make sure you select in the little drop down carrot, all panelists and attendees. Otherwise your messages will only come to Max and I. So with that, I think that takes care of our housekeeping. I would like to welcome all of you. Thank you for joining us. And now I'm going to introduce our speaker. Today we have Max Macius, part-time instructional in librarian at Portland Community College. And Max will be sharing with us, moving beyond diversity to anti-oppression. So Max, I'm gonna turn it over to you. Hey, thanks a lot. Hey, thanks so much for having me. I wanna thank Dr. Viagran and San Jose State too, and everybody for being here. Thank you so much. I'm gonna go ahead and share my screen. I have a presentation. All right. Is everybody seeing this? Looks good. Okay, I did something. Whoops. Okay, there we go. I got a new computer. It's like really touching. Yeah, so moving beyond diversity, equity and inclusion. I think that, or for me, when I moved beyond for a while, I don't want to insult people that are into EDI. It's important. But for me, I've come to a conclusion that anti-oppression, anti-racism is the work that needs to be done mostly. So that's what this talk is gonna be about. Give my land acknowledgement here. We're installed in land. It's a spoil of colonial genocide, unrepentant colonial genocide. We should think about what that means. Got some notes here, I'll read off. So let's take a minute to recognize this and ponder and reflect on how it impacts library science, education and the society we exist within. This is kind of a huge deal. How does this impact information, knowledge creation and learning? Just take a second to think about that. The reason I'm having us to think about this is because we don't talk a lot about genocide and our culture. And this is a culture that was based on genocide. So I think it's quite important. So a little bit about me, Max Macias, can read this stuff here. So all of these aspects impact my views and my analyses. I like to be upfront with people and tell people who I am and how I see the world. Now, my background is I have an undergraduate degree in philosophy from the University of Portland. I was super infatuated with Western culture at that time, but I think the critical thinking and self-reflective skills have really lent themselves to everything that I do. Been a member of the ALA President's Task Force on Equity, Diversity and Inclusion. I was a member of the ALA President's Equity and Diversity and Inclusion Implementation Task Force. That's a little bit about my background. I've been a librarian since 2009 officially. Got my library degree then, but I've been working in a library since 1987. So a long time. What does anti-racism mean to you? Racism and anti-racism mean different things to different people or friends, family, colleagues, et cetera. What does it mean to you? To your friends, your family, your colleagues, right? To get a sense of ideas, let's share on this padlet that I have. Can you share this link in the chat? I'm gonna click on that. And it's gonna bring you, when you click on the link, it's gonna bring you to this page. And you can click this plus sign to add a little snippet about what you think racism is and what anti-racism is racism is. So let's just take a minute to populate this with some ideas. No ideas are wrong. This is just where we're at. In this journey that I'm on, I've really come to the conclusion that it's a journey. It's not like I'm gonna get to the end of this anti-oppression or diversity work. It's just ongoing all the time. This is to help us see like the different viewpoints that people have in this group here. We have 81 people. That's great. Thank you so much. And people are going off on it. Awesome. Systematic oppression to a group of people. This is racism. Bias beliefs about a specific race. System that favors whiteness over all others, the attitudes, et cetera, power structures. Nice. Just take a few minutes here to do this. I like to be interactive. This is the interactive section of my presentation today. There'll be more interaction, but I wanted to hear from you all. We'll share this link out later on. It'll be available. Keep it up. Awesome. All right. It looks like people have stopped typing. So I think I'm gonna move on. Just like to see where people are at and like other people to see where they're at and just think about it. All right. Thank you so much. So I read this book about a year ago and it really had an impact on me and really kind of changed the way I thought about racism and anti-racism. And I have a, Kenny's, right, great, great. I have a Kenny's definitions here. He's so nice and clear. Racist is one who's supporting a racist policy through their actions or inaction or expressing a racist idea. An anti-racist, one who is supporting an anti-racist policy through their actions or expressing an anti-racist idea. So anti-racism is not EDI. Not being racist is not anti-racism. In fact, nobody in the Americas can escape being a racist in some way. We've all been impacted by racism. And I would venture to say that we're all, we all have racist ideas in our heads because the culture that we grew up in is fundamentally based on racism, racist classifications, et cetera. So being racist, being anti-racist is actively working toward creating a society that does not view individuals as representations of their entire people. Being anti-racist is being actively engaged in bringing about this change in your organization, in your lives, in your communities. We must root out the idea that certain groups of people are superior by their nature and force structural change in our workplaces, organizations, and society. Being anti-racist is actively working towards creating a society that does not view individuals as representations of their entire people. That's huge. Those are the definitions I'm working from. Move on. So anti-racism is a way of thinking. Acknowledge and understand that we exist in a society that has been shaped by racist ideas, policies, practices, laws, and organizations. Anyone who has been raised in the Americas has been raised in a world that is based on skin color and revolves around the concept of whiteness. Whiteness is the best, the highest state. No. Whiteness here is being the idea that people from Europe are the most important, most intelligent, and highest form of beings on the planet. That's my definition of whiteness. Therefore, being as white as possible leads to the aforementioned advantages and importance. It's advantageous to partake in whiteness, right? That's how the whole thing works. The farther away one is from whiteness lends itself to negative characteristics. Being slavish, whoa. Being slavish, let me get back to my words here. Yeah, being slavish, inhuman, and stupid, and being less important among many other negative characteristics. To acknowledge this, to become conscious that one must have biases and unconscious beliefs as a result of being raised in the Americas, this is hugely important, and this must lead to critical self-reflection. Anti-racism is critically reflective. Being aware that one must have racial biases and in effect be racist to a certain extent. I'm saying these things over and over again because they're important. If one were raised in the Americas, it's the first step to becoming anti-racist. Acknowledging this, right? One must critically reflect on one's ideas, behavior, body sensations, and relationship with BIPOC if one wants to advance towards anti-racism. Only when someone becomes conscious of their behavior and ways of thinking, can they then work on fixing that behavior in thought. Being anti-racist also means actively listening to criticism when others call you out on your racism. This is such an important aspect of being anti-racist. In fact, I would say that you can't be anti-racist if you don't do that. I've had friends call me out and my first bodily feeling was anger, denial, and mistrust. But after backing away for a bit and reflecting and really listening to the critical words and ideas about my racist behavior and way of thinking, I was able to hear their message of love to me. And it really is a message of love if someone feels the need to call you out on something. If they didn't care about you, then they wouldn't say anything. I've been able to see problem areas related to racism in my life because of my loving friends who have helped me see where and what I need to work upon. It's a big deal. It's a big deal. So like, I'll tell just a real quick story. Get away from my notes for a second. So when Kobe Bryant died, I was like, oh man. And I was on Facebook at the time, I'm not on social media anymore. I was like, oh man, Kobe Bryant, that guy's a rapist, man. Blah, blah, posting stuff about him being a racist, right? One of my friends was like, hey, man, you're being racist, Max. I'm like, no, I'm not. That guy's a racist. I'm not a racist. He's a rapist, right? And they're like, I'm not gonna argue with you about that, but you're being racist. Think about what you're saying. Think about what you're doing. So I stepped away for a day, thought about it, and I came to the conclusion, yes, I was being racist. The rapist thing is separate from what I'm talking about. What I was doing was I was castigating a black man after he was dead, which is a racist act that racists participate in in the U.S., almost daily you see it. I realized that and I was able to go, wow, I was being racist and I took all that stuff down. I'm not saying don't go after rapists. I'm saying, acknowledge your racism and deal with it. That really helped me think about the way I think. And I was really grateful to my friends for taking the time and having the patience to talk to me, talking through it. So just one little bit of a soft confessional type of thing. We're all impacted by this stuff and I like to be open about it. So racism has everything to do with denial. So does anti-racism, you gotta get out of the denial. Denial is like, it's like a drug addict. I don't have a problem, an alcoholic. I don't have a problem. I don't have a problem with drinking. They can't fix their problem until they acknowledge the problem. Being raised in this racist milieu that is the Americas, it would be irrational to deny having racist ideas in my head. This culture is based on a strict set of racial categories with characteristics applied to each category. This culture is racist in its structures and thought. I would encourage you all to look up the costas paintings. Take a look at those racial categorizations that were created during the invasion of the Americas. So like the alcoholic, the first thing one must do is come to terms with the fact that we're all racist to a certain extent. And the only antidote to racism is acceptance. And then an anti-racist stance. It is a disjunction. This is what I got from Kendi, what I really became clear after reading Kendi's book. This is a disjunction. You're either a racist or you're an anti-racist. There is no in-between. No, oh, I'm not racist. Everything's cool, no. Well, what are you doing to be actively anti-racist then? What actions are you doing? Getting past denial is the first and one of the most important steps to becoming anti-racist. Except the fact that we don't have control over the systems we were born into, but that we can change these systems for future generations by becoming anti-racist. Anti-racism is a state of being. It's a way of being. Being an anti-racist requires that we act when we see policies, behavior, or ideas that racialize behavior. This means that we also analyze the structures that we operate within. The organizations we work, live, and die within have been created in a world that is explicitly racist. We have come a long way, but it is time to dismantle racism. The policies that uphold racism, the ideas, the actions, and the beliefs that are the infrastructure of racism is what we are going for here. We can all do our part whether it's calling out racist behavior in a supermarket, analyzing deep organizational policy for racialized ideas, concepts, practices, and procedures. Everyone can do something towards making our society an anti-racist society instead of a racist society. Max, can I interject real quick? There's a question about the artists you mentioned and we didn't quite catch the name. If you can... Yeah, Costa's paintings. Costa's paintings were paintings, not by a particular artist, but their costas is caste, a caste system. And their racial categorization paintings, if you've never seen them, look them up because they break down like, what's a Spaniard and a Spaniard, the baby they have is Spanish. What's a Spaniard with an Indian woman, the baby they have is Indio. And they have these huge... This is where we get the terms octaroon and all these like racist like mulatto, all these terms come from this kind of stuff. Now, there's a little bit of controversy about how important the costas paintings are with racism, but I would say it's worth looking at. It was shocking to me to see that those ideas are so old, but it's also a good reminder of how embedded they are, how long they've been around. These ideas are really deeply embedded in Western culture, in the Americas in particular. So yeah, so I'll go on to the next slide. Is that cool? Thank you. Hopefully I'd answer it. Okay, so being anti-racist requires us too. It's not like a static thing. I'm anti-racist, okay. You gotta do something. It's an active type of thing. It's like a verb, right? Except that we live in a racialized society and have been impacted by racialization, be actively engaging, dismantling this racialized way of thinking. Be actively self-critical in terms of racist thinking and behavior. Be dynamic and ever evolving in our anti-racist thinking. Use what we learn from our anti-racism successes to dismantle other forms of oppression. A lot of times people always ask me like, well, not a lot of times always, but a lot of times people ask me, Max, how come you stuck on racism? There's so much more. There's this and that, ism, right? Yeah, there are. But anti-racism provides a model from which we can build upon and take them into the other anti-oppression struggles that we are in. So that's what I try to do. So one thing to point out is being anti-racist makes sure that you're not re-traumatizing people of color by making them your sounding board as you work through any sort of guilt you may have. Being racist is not who, but what we are and we can actively change this every day, work to change this. Think about how you can incorporate these aspects of being anti-racist into your everyday work and lives. What can you do towards destroying the racialized way of thinking and the racialized structures we exist within today, tomorrow, and that are ongoing? I like to use the word destroy because I'm not like all like, oh yeah, let's reform this racist crap. Let's destroy it and start over again. Some people might object to this, but this is a deeply Western culture thing. It happens all the time. If you study philosophy and other subjects, you would know what I'm talking about. Okay, so try to think of at least one racist action you can do when you return to your duties in your organization once we leave the session. Not yet, but when we leave the session, there's more to the session there. So what is racist policy? Racist policies produce and reinforce racist outcomes. So yeah, like the policy to have people take racist placement tests to get into graduate school, for instance, that would be one. Racist outcomes are outcomes that treat one group differently than another group. Racist policies work to maintain a racist concept of privilege. Racist policies often take the form of colorblindness racism. So try to think of any racist policies you've seen in a recent past. Colorblindness racism neglects reality in how racialization hurts black, indigenous, and people of color. More on this coming up shortly. It's an extreme example of racist policy for you. It's brand new, 922, 2020. The administration here, past you may have heard about this, executive order, 13950. So whoops, I just have this super touchy computer. Sorry. So this was created by the current administration, the presidential administration, Trump, the racist in power right now. It's presented as a colorblindness thing. And they're asking for no services that are contracted out to be scapegoating or stereotyping people, which on the surface sounds great, but we live in a racist society. And this policy is trying to get rid of diversity training, any sort of anti-racist training. I'm in an anti-racist group for the Oregon Library Association that we were allocated money to create an anti-racist toolkit. When this came out, we couldn't get access to that money anymore from our source. So it's actively stopping people from doing anti-racist work, diversity, equity, inclusion work even. But it's presented as colorblindness here. So it's a racist policy. They're using false race neutrality, double speak is what I would say. It's presented from a post-racial point of view. We're not post-racist, post-racial. It assumes that racism no longer exists and that the racism in the past has no impact on today. Now, there was something in here that says, blaming members of a race or sex for certain things, falter blame, I've never seen that ever in any of the trains that I've been in and pointing out historical fact, yeah, but not like you're white and you deserve all the blame. I've never seen anything like that. So anyway, so this whole thing is a denial of causation. Anybody that believes in causing effect, to me it seems like would be against this. So I'll go on here. These Dr. King is a prop for racist ideas based on false neutrality. The criminal justice system numbers do not back this whole thing up that we're in a post-racialized system. The racialized economics of the US don't back up their claims. Segregation based on race does not back up these false concepts of post-racial America, the United States. The unequal opportunities do not back these faulty concepts up, the unequal opportunities for BIPOC in particular. The lack of BIPOC librarians does not back up these faulty concepts. This was from November 1st. It says here, police use pepper spray to break up a North Carolina march to a polling place. This looks like it was from like one of the pictures I saw from like 1958 or something, 1962, whatever man. It looks like deep South crap. So law enforcement officers use pepper spray on Saturday, 10, 31, 2020 to break up a march to a polling place in ground North Carolina. And this decision has caused bond criticism from the state's governor and civil rights groups. It should. The IM changed march to the polls was organized by the reverend Greg Drumright and was attacked by the police as they marched to a polling place in North Carolina. From earlier this month or not post-racial, we need to work on our issues. And that policy that we can't work on our issues, that this allows EDI training and anti-racist work, prevents us from working on those issues. Got this from CNN, November 1st, lack voters in 2020 are facing four updated versions of Jim Crow at the voting booth. What's going on here? I thought this is the 21st century. This is just like mind boggling to me. Disenfranchisement by voter, roll stripping, redistricting and severely limiting polling places in rural areas throughout the country. That stuff is going on right now. This last election, upcoming elections. The US is not post-racial and has a huge racism problem. The problem solution rests partially in the trainings that executive order 13-950 tries to ban. Okay, so back to libraries here. Applying anti-racist analysis in the library. I'm going to talk about a few different aspects. So library policies, practices and procedures are modeled after white normativity. What is deemed as professional and proper is determined by whiteness. People outside of the margins are expected to perform whiteness and to conceal their ethnic and or gender identity to conform. This leads to homogenization, homogenization of the profession. Sorry, even when diverse groups are represented, it is those who can perform whiteness that are most successful. Okay, so I'm going to talk about library anti-racist statements, library fines, police in the library, hiring practices, libraries. And I would talk about collection development policies, but I don't think we have enough time to get into that. These are all aspects that really interest me in libraries where I've seen racist policies and some anti-racist work going on. So library anti-racist statement, example here, this is from Middlebury College in Vermont. It's part of their anti-racist statement. We acknowledge that libraries and archives are not neutral and have served sometimes inadvertently, other times intentionally, as instruments of exclusion, colonialism, and assimilation, and we will identify ways both large and small to undo this harm. We review and revise outdated and racist catalog, metadata, and finding a descriptions. We will review and revise the territorial and collection development strategies to build up black and other marginalized voices. Going on for some more of their anti-racist statement, and this is on one of their welcoming pages. It's pretty good. In our physical spaces online and through social media, we will put front and center the voices experience and works of BIPOC authors from the US and the world through exhibits and displays. Because the college archives bears a special responsibility to document the persisting injustices of our current time, we'll amplify underrepresented voices by collecting and documented student activism, student experiences, and anti-racist work. This is great. It's great. It is missing some things, and there is more to this statement than is here. But I would like to say that missing from their statement is the need, well, here it is. What's missing in this example is the need to not be anti-racist in hiring librarians, and in not acknowledging that racism has caused so few BIPOC to pursue the MLS degree in the first place, MLS, MLIS. What are libraries gonna be doing about that? What is this library gonna do about that? Libraries need to acknowledge that their staff are mostly white and that this is a problem. Land acknowledgement is missing from this example. Now, I think a hardy discussion in libraries about anti-racist hiring, which to me means like, hey, our faculty's out of whack. It's mostly white. It's not representational of our community, of our student population. What are we gonna do about that? Well, usually we spend time advertising in, oh, I'm gonna advertise in these black hiring magazines and diversity hiring magazines in listservs that are ethnically driven, et cetera. They're opening up, trying to open up people's ability to come and apply for a job or announcing it at least, not their abilities, but just announcing it in different places. That's usually the go-to method. An anti-racist viewpoint would say, hey, we don't have enough black librarians. We don't have a single black librarian in our faculty. So what we're gonna do this year, we're just gonna hire all black librarians until we get to parody with what we need. Then we will come back and re-examine our structure. A lot of times people will say like, well, hey, you can't appoint a librarian like that. The other librarians will not like them. They'll think it's unfair. They got the job without deserving the job. Well, these people are already qualified for the job in the first place. The second place is, you know what? Guess what? Some people already don't like BIPOC people and having a really good job is not gonna be a problem. I'm not talking about putting people in without the support that they need because people need support. Yes, they do. But appointing is a good way to go. Don't let anybody tell you otherwise. I think that they're wrong. Anyway, you can let people tell you whatever you want. And you can believe whatever you want, but that's my point of view. So anti-racist statement, cool. Ah, there's the link here. So we'll share out this link afterwards. So another aspect of anti-racism is library finds. Library finds include interpersonal racism. They may play a role when library staff applies subjective criteria to enforcement of library policies. In the case of library fines, staff decide whether to renew a lost item or to give a patron more time, market his claim return, or waive charges. These decisions are largely based on staff judgment where implicit bias may play a role. Institutional racism impacts library fine policy. As present when a library's enforcement of fines has a disproportionate impact on people of color, BIPOC, who are overrepresented among low income populations due to the racial wealth gap. Another aspect is structural racism. It exists whenever libraries rely on revenue from fines to cover general operating expenses, to the extent that people have difficulty paying these fines, negative consequences, e.g. being blocked from library and computer use or being reported to a collections agency. God, that's horrible. Are compounded across multiple institutions contributing to systematic barriers. So there's also another practical outcome of eliminating fine studies show that more materials returned and usage increases when late fees are completely removed. The information I got here is from advancing racial equity in public libraries, case studies from the field, which was published in 2018. Racialequityalliance.org is where the material exists. I'm not gonna click the sorts link, but that's where it's at. So another example of anti-racist analysis is anti-racism and anti-racist policies and racist policies of police in the library. So here's some questions. It says how police have power in your library. Are they stationed in the building? Do they make rounds? Do you share surveillance camera feeds or footage with the police? Do you share other info with them without warrants? Do you have private security in your library? Is private security contracted through local police or through the police? Do private security guards carry weapons? Do police or security guards communicate or collaborate with library staff or do they make decisions and enact policy without input? So I used to get physically sick when I was in the proximity of a police officer. I mean, I would throw up really bad. One of my earliest memories is of one of my uncles telling me, hey, never run from the police, don't shoot you. It's kind of mind boggling to me that this stuff is still going on today. Like I was a kid, like a little kid, I'm serious. It's one of my earliest memories. So are private security given anti-racist training if you have private security? Who handles mental health crisis in a library? These are all questions to think about when trying to apply an anti-racist analysis to police and security issues in your library. I'm not providing you with any answers here. I'm providing you for something to think about and analyze and yeah, just think deeply about it. People have different experiences with the police. My experiences have not been great. As a young man, I remember being asked, hey, which gang are you in by the police? When was the last time you were arrested, Max? Let me check your arms for needle marks. That kind of stuff. Just I was walking down the street and got her asked by the police. They asked me all these questions, which aren't really questions, right? So the source of this information is from the Library Freedom Project. Thank you, Library Freedom Project. Good stuff. So another example is anti-racist hiring policy, right? So I was looking for, I'm always looking for a job. Here's something I want to say. Being anti-racist is not an easy thing. Being anti-racist can make you not popular with racists or people who are unconsciously racist. It might make you a target. So just to be aware of that. So organizations have a hard time taking on the anti-racist moniker or the endeavor because they're scared of this. They know it's true. You become a target when you become an anti-racist. A target for whom? A target for racists. And other people like that. So that's just, I just want to say that right off, not right off the bat, but in the context of this presentation that it's caused me grief to be an anti-racist in some respects in the library world. I've become a pariah in some respects. I graduated in 2009 and I'm still not able to get hired full-time as a librarian. And I truly believe it's because of my anti-racist work. So that's something to realize. I'm not saying this for me, oh me poor as well as Max, right? I have a nice IT job that pays better than most librarian jobs. And I don't have to supervise anyway. So that's cool, but it's, being an anti-racist can be a hard thing. So I was looking for jobs. That's where I started. And I ran into this anti-racist policy. I think it's an anti-racist policy from where? From Bend, Oregon, Eastern Oregon, which is kind of a scary place to me, but like I was surprised. So check this out. The college recognizes the value of skills and knowledge gained outside of formal higher education and paid employment. Applicants who do not meet minimum qualifications but present other qualifications or experienced equivalent to those required will be considered and are encouraged to apply. To qualify under equivalency, applicants must indicate how they qualify under equivalency by responding to the supplemental questions presented during the application process. That is beautiful. I love this thing because it takes into a, it looks at the reality that opportunities aren't available for everybody to have a formalized education. Opportunities aren't available for people to have a lot of professional experiences for BIPOC in particular, I would say. So yeah, so this hiring statement acknowledges that racism impacts the ability to gain formal higher education and paid employment by BIPOC and others who are marginalized. In addition to analyzing policies, we can develop and advocate for and budget for and implement anti-racist policies. Analysis is not enough. We always have to be trying to figure out how to enact anti-racist policies, not just analyze, right? So are there any questions? Question and answer period here. I wanna thank everybody for coming. Be happy to take any questions. I might not have answers for you, but be happy to take any questions. Thank you so much, Max. If you have a question, go ahead and place it in the chat and we will get to them. I was posting the links as you were speaking, Max, so they have access to all of the sources you included in your presentation. Thank you, and we have plenty of time for questions or discussion, any kind of comments you wanna make. Some people might say, well, Max, your ideas are really like, go, they're up there or whatever, but how are you gonna implement them practically, right? I work in a library where we cannot do that. We gotta have Nazis come in and use our meeting rooms or whatever. I'm not telling you that you can change those like that. But what I'm saying is to think about these things and start having discussions about them. People, it's so striking to me for libraries to play the neutrality game, right? We're like, oh, we gotta allow these people that hate black people to come into our library and have their meeting, for instance, right? And maybe they'll try to get around it by saying like, oh, we have a policy that says any sort of disruption of our regular library activities, then you can't be here, right? They'll try to hide behind that, which, you know, it works. But why aren't libraries saying, hey, we're anti-racist, we're anti-oppression. We do not allow people that are gonna come in here and intimidate people that work here and our other patrons. We're not gonna allow that, we don't allow it. That's not free, it's not a point of view either, right? Like people will always hide behind this point of view thing, oh, my point of view is that I hate black people. Sorry, that's not a point of view. That's a hate statement. That's not free speech. It's not any sort of like point of view. It's, you know, you like vanilla and I like chocolate. We can totally talk about the differences between that and that's your point of view and my point of view is different. But when you say, hey, I hate Mexicans, we're not gonna be able to talk about that. That's not a point of view. I'm sorry, that's a racist, hateful statement. So I don't see how libraries, you know, and the other thing that strikes me about libraries is they're awfully scared about getting sued by white people but they're not scared about getting sued by BIPOC. So I have this grand idea to get BIPOC people this legal fund together and like start suing libraries for making, for creating, you know, if your library allows hate groups into the library, if your school allows hate groups into the school, you're creating not only a hostile work environment, it's a dangerous work environment where somebody could get shot. A lot of these people carry guns and stuff. It's really scary. So it's not just this intellectual like, thing that I'm thinking about. It's impacting people's lives daily, you know? Anyway, enough talking, but with this question, please. We actually, we have one question so far and I think this is a great question, particularly for any students that might be joining us or listen to this later. But any advice you have to MLIS students to take anti-racist actions while in grad school? Yeah, I would say that that's a great time to start organizing students, not just in your school but in other schools to start creating a movement and maybe have like the unconference, like an unconference teaching on anti-racism, anti-oppression. Right now at our school, we're trying to organize a teaching for the winter or spring term on anti-racism. So I would say that start organizing around anti-racism and work with students from around the country, not just in your school. Cause one thing I've noticed is some schools, like I went to Emporia State and it was horrible there, like for anti-racist work and DEI work, it was really hard. But when I met people from other schools, was able to gain some momentum and get ideas going. So I would say work within your organization and outside your organization. And I would say do things like anti-racism teachings, even workshop seminars right now, we're in this virtual world. Anybody that has a Zoom account, if you're a student, you have a student Zoom account, you have, you're hugely privileged. You can put on your own little conferences. So I would say do something like that, invite guest speakers in, you know, that's one thing that I'm deeply heard about. I think that I don't like to chew my own horn but I'm whatever, infamous or famous or whatever you wanna call it as an anti-racist librarian Emporia State has never had me come and talk to their students ever. And they have like local classes where they have in person classes here. It really hurts. So that's me, but like what I'm saying is for you is like bring in people to talk from outside of your organization. If you don't have a strong anti-racist faculty, bring in people and we can get things going. I hope that answers the question. Thank you for your question. And we welcome you with open arms at San Jose State University. Thank you. And I will say too, just one thing for those that are here from San Jose, I'm also the college EDI committee chair and we're looking at a project on anti-oppression specifically for pedagogy and looking at curriculum but it will involve students, faculty and staff and our library liaisons. So there's a huge project coming up in the near future you'll be hearing more about. There are several comments here, but let me go to we have a lot of questions and comments. Let me scroll back up. Okay, here's a question. Systemic racism has been deeply rooted in the experience of BIPOC and will continue to affect their children and future generations in the form of collective and generational trauma. How do you respond to the notion of undoing racism and what can be some of the practices to address the long-term impact of racism? Great question. It's a great question. It comes upon something I think about a lot. It's fundamental in my thinking is can I get out of this? Being raised here, I talked in the presentation being raised in the Americas it's a fundamentally racist society and everything I learned went through that lens. All my education was from that point of view and it's only as an older adult an adult and older adult that I've been able to come out of that but I'm not completely out of it. I don't think you can escape it because it's fundamentally part of our American culture Americas, the culture in the Americas not just the United States, but the Americas. The Americas, I see the Americas as being fundamentally racist place because of colonization. So I don't think you can get out of it. So then what do you do, right? What do you do? And so for a long time, I was like, oh man, I'm a separatist. I don't wanna be part of this because it hasn't worked. We had far greater people alive in the 60s and 70s that were activists that were working and what happened to them? They were all neutralized. Things have gotten worse. So then what a rational person to me says, well, you don't keep doing something that doesn't work you do something else, right? And to me that else is finding how to be separate. And I don't think that you can start a separate country. I don't think you can do that. I don't think we can have a new Africa or different things like that. I don't think you can do that. It wouldn't be allowed by the racists for one thing. They're really good with guns. So I would say that I've been able to find rational discussions and comfort in affinity groups. Affinity groups, if you don't have them at your school your organization, start affinity groups because you can get together with people that have similar experiences and talk about things without having to constantly prove, yes, racism exists. Yes, racism exists and getting to that same discussion that happens over and over again you probably know what I'm talking about. It wastes a lot of time and creates a lot of mental unhealth for people to participate in that especially if it's BIPOC trying to convince some white person of that that racism exists. I don't do that anymore in my consultation page. It says that I don't work with white people. Not because I hate white, not because I hate white people, no. It's because I truly feel like I can't convince them and it's mentally and physically unhealthy for me to try to do so. That's white people's job is to convince other white people, not my job. So I know that's not a great answer. It's not like a solution but this is a philosophical question that I'm always asking myself and I'm not gonna be a big self promoter or whatever but my blog, Lowrider Librarian, I have a lecture on whiteness and colonialism that kind of addresses that a little bit and I have a video on information literacy and racism that I think you should watch and I'll share those links with the doctor here and we'll share those out with you all. I think we can post those after the session, can we? Sure, we can post it on our website with the recording but I did just put your link to your blog in the chat. Thanks, I've been doing my blog for a long time and there's a lot of stuff in there if you're interested in any of this kind of stuff. I have quite a lot of stuff in there. Great resources too. We have a lot of comments and some questions so let me get to some of these. I have a comment, this is from a person of color. In my experience, far more patrons who even asked for exceptions, et cetera, to fines appear to be white than a parent POC. This could be correlated with our total usage but it does stand out to me. Thank you for your thorough and honest presentation. Another comment and a question. The library at our institution has a surveillance feel entering through electronic gates, library staff observing everybody as they enter, monitoring certain students, et cetera. Can you comment on this? Yeah, it is very panopticon-ish, right? Even more so nowadays, it used to be that you can go to the back of the library and get away from everybody now but now if you do that, right? You look up and there's a little circular camera thing up there on the wall so you're constantly being watched and what does that do to your behavior? And like, Jeremy Bentham, I think it was, did the panopticon prison and it was the idea where you never know when you're being watched so you better do the right thing all the time because you never know. So I think that has a lot to, that's big in American culture, not just with racist stuff but it has a lot to do with racism for sure, for sure. So yeah, I hope that addressed a question. I don't, can you read the question? Did I get off track on that? I kind of made me think about the panopticon. I was like, boom. So just commenting on, I guess, your thoughts related to the survey. Well, yeah, my thoughts about librarians are kind of like how my thoughts about teachers have changed. It used to be that the teacher was an authoritarian and like you went to the teacher and they imparted the knowledge they had and they're like, here's the knowledge and you get the knowledge from them and like it was this real hierarchical thing. But now I see teaching and learning as like a give and take almost an equal thing where the teacher's on an equal plane with the student because the teacher's learning all the time from the students and it's like we're all learning. So I see libraries need to be like that more. They need to be less authoritarian. Like if I see a cop at the library door I probably won't even go in. Like to me that's like, man, that's like unwelcome. They don't want me here, especially the symbol of the cop. To me it's a pig. I'm sorry to use that term, but like I see them as the pigs, they're the police. And I got that term from my uncle. They told me like don't run from the cops like that long ago and things haven't changed. So I would say that libraries need to be a lot less like that. And I think with the fines too is like that's a big deal. I've not gone to libraries before because I couldn't afford to pay the fine. I know how that feels. And it actually hurts the library, right? You're reducing the library usage. So like I wouldn't even go there to hang out. I'd feel so bad. Like, huh. So anyway, I think that libraries need to be a lot more welcoming in the sense where like, I think you're right. A lot of times I walk in a library and it looks like it feels like they're looking for something you're gonna do wrong or like just like a good boss. You should like, you know, like, hey, like empower the library should be empowering you to find stuff and to feel free to find stuff and to feel welcome not, oh, if I do something wrong they're gonna throw me out of here. That's yeah. So that's my take on that. Thank you. Some more comments. This was such a great presentation. I really appreciate this. I was recently elected to the executive board of a small state library organization. And I've been trying to collect ideas for how to promote anti-racism when my term as president begins next summer. So this was very helpful. Let me see. If you're interested, send me an email at max.missius at gmail.com. And I can send you info right now. I'm working on the Oregon Library Association's anti-racist task force. And we're coming up with an anti-racist toolkit that we're gonna distribute. So I'll share info with you. Send that to me too, Max. I put your email in the chat so everybody has your email address. I don't wanna miss a couple more questions. What is the best way to give a thoughtful, authentic land acknowledgement? Sometimes I find them inauthentic and like everything, sometimes checking off a box. So I hope my land acknowledgement was a thoughtful, meaningful one because that's where that came from was seeing the same people, librarians, especially like they love to copy other people like the conference, they're like, oh, I'm gonna come back and with all these ideas and stuff. We're like, I got sick of seeing the same land acknowledgement. And I started thinking, well, what is a land acknowledgement really? Like the land, a lot of the land acknowledgments a lot of times when I see them, it sounds like it was written and I make white people feel better. Cause like they say this and then I'll feel better after I say this. And then they don't be cool that we killed all these people and stole all their land, right? That's why my land acknowledgement is like, hey, we live on unrepentant genocidal stolen land. Like what do you think about that? Like how people think about, try to get people to think deeply about genocide cause that's what we're talking about. And I would, on my blog, I got a book I reviewed. It's called, it's about genocide in California in about the horrendous genocide that happened in California, my God. And it's so shocking that people just don't know. And it's so, you know, what would Germany be like in, you know, 100 years after they won World War II and they got rid of all of the Jews and they took everything from the Jews, right? Like, well, it'd be like here. Like people don't even realize that we live in a genocidal culture, you know? It's, and yeah, so that's what I would say about my land acknowledgement or about any sort of land acknowledgement. It should be authentic and people shouldn't copy other people's land acknowledgements. I don't like that myself personally. Thank you. I'm trying to do better of that too. I now have it in my courses as part of my course and the introduction, but I think I need to work on that. So I appreciate who asked the question. Great question. Thank you, yes. A couple more things that came in. There was another comment. Let me make sure I get to it. Thanks for an energizing presentation. I'm curious if you see opportunities to incorporate anti-racism ideas, practices and actions at the consortia level, collaboratively as a group of academic libraries that complement individual libraries' efforts. Oh, I hadn't thought about that, but I would say there's just as much opportunity there as anywhere else. And I would say that the payoff would be a lot, would be huge with that because it just spread out, right? These consortiums have councils that run the whole thing, right? They got committees and councils that run this stuff. So maybe you can ask to get, and you're getting me to think about our consortium in Oregon, do you have an anti-racist committee, a DEI committee? And how do I get on that? And how do we get this going if they don't have one? That would be, that's a great opportunity. So that's what I would say about that. I hadn't thought about that. Thank you so much for getting me to think about that. Yes, I'm gonna jump on that. Yeah, and you can email Max if you wanna elaborate if you have more questions or thoughts on that. A couple more questions. I'm wondering about the Kobe story. Were you saying that the story you shared reduced his life to that single story? Sort of, yeah, sort of, yeah. It was the act itself was an act that if you take Kobe Bryant's name out of it, it's just Max attacking a dead black man. And I don't need to do that. That's a racist act that people participate, the racists participate in every day. I see it every day. And I don't need to participate in that. And so, yeah, that's what I see. And I still have a lot of work to do. And I think that it's good for people to acknowledge that kind of stuff because I hear a lot of fragile people a lot of times. Oh, like, I don't wanna work on that or I don't have anything to work on but like everybody has stuff to work on. I agree, 100%. It's all a journey. We're all on this journey together, hopefully together and being welcoming and inclusive. Our question, what can we do to replace the Dewey Decimal system? You know, there is a, I don't have the link on me right now but I know that there's been work I think is in Canada that where they have instituted indigenous classification systems. And I think it was archives in these archives. I was reading an article about it not too long ago. So I would look at other forms of classification from other cultures, indigenous cultures in particular. And you know, a lot of times like it's weird, like American culture has got this weird thing where it was super stuck on Western culture. It's like, well, you can have communism or you can have socialism and like they're always operating in this Western culture thing but there's so much more than Western culture. I'm not saying try to become African or anything like that, but like you can find things that work from different cultures and use them to create something new. So I would say, look at that. I'm sorry, I don't have the link or the name. I can't even remember it right now of the article I was reading. But if you look, I think it's indigenous classification like keywords that I would search for indigenous classification archives, Canada and it should probably come up. If I could find the link, I'll give it to the doctor. Somebody actually shared a link with us in the chat from bbc.ca. So perfect, thank you. I know we're a couple of minutes over. I don't see any other questions. Just a few comments I'll mention regarding the land acknowledgement. I think it acknowledges indigenous presence too. And then another comment that Nazi Germany was based on Jim Crow laws. Oh yeah, you know, I read a book about how the Nazis sent over their scholars to the US to study our laws. And the Nazis actually thought that our laws were too extreme. Like for instance, they didn't believe in the one drop rule. They thought it was too extreme. The Nazis thought our racist laws were too extreme. Yes. Thank you for sharing that. We will collect all of the URLs, the links that were shared in the chat and post those on our website so that you will all have those resources. I want to give a hearty thanks to Max for sharing this with us. It's such an important topic and I actually wanted him to be my kind of my end of year. Like this is the final 2020 session. And I think it really encompasses all that I've been trying to do over the year with all these different webinars and really what San Jose is doing and all the work we're working towards, right? More learning and being better in this area. And it's such a critical topic to everything we do. So thank you again, Max. I'm sure we'll be in touch. And thank you to everyone that's here and everyone that listens to this recording. We appreciate each of you. Totally, thank you so much. I appreciate this. It's an honor. Thank you. Take care.