White Estrangement sustains White Institutional Presence (WIP) by “distancing Whites physically and socially from people of color” (Gusa pp. 478). White people spend much of their lives segregated from people of color, and when they arrive in the potentially more diverse spaces of higher education, they are unable to conceive of how to create a truly multicultural environment or even to initiate genuine contact and dialogue with their peers of color.
Overwhelmingly white collections contribute to White Estrangement from people of color by prioritizing white structures of knowledge production, communication, and format that perpetuate Monoculturalism and White Ascendency & Entitlement. White-dominated collections contribute to white estrangement by both alienating people of color from library resources, and failing to connect users to the scholarship and ideas of people of color.
White estrangement also stymies efforts to establish multicultural library communities, events, and spaces. The task of creating a truly diverse collection is made more difficult by the overwhelming whiteness of the library profession, as white librarians’ estrangement from communities of color will mean they have a harder time creating a multicultural environment and a collection that reflects the needs and interests of a diverse community.