We demand that LIS directly acknowledge and address the root of the issue: White Supremacy was built into our structures and systems from the very beginning and continues to be an active destructive force (Leung & Lopez-McKnight, 2021).
We know that institutional racism is built into every aspect of our collection building systems, and that these systems work in concert to uphold white supremacy in knowledge production. In this section we have re-organized and edited our reflection questions into sections that focus on different processes in library collection building and maintenance. In each section, we invite you to reflect on how whiteness and institutional racism is built into your collection building practices: how our collection practices favor white knowledge at the expense BIPOC knowledge, how our collections serve as a physical manifestation of white supremacy in knowledge production, how our categorization processes normalize whiteness, and how our weeding process can decrease diversity.
These questions are not meant to shame individuals or any identity. This is an exercise for identifying systemic barriers and challenging norms. The questions are also designed to spark new ideas for moving forward, creating alternative systems, and dismantling harmful processes.