Course:LIBR559A/Galvan, A. (2015).

Purpose:

“Despite the growing body of research on our professional demographics and multi-year diversity initiatives librarianship in the United States remains overwhelmingly white. I suggest the interview process is a series of repetitive gestures designed to mimic and reinforce white middle class values, which ultimately influence the hiring decisions—and relative lack of diversity—of librarianship as a whole. I consider how the whiteness of librarianship may manifest long before the hiring process. By identifying and interrogating the body of white, middle class values inherent to both librarianship and professional job searching. I offer suggestions to encourage an authentically diverse pool of applicants” (Galvan, In Brief).

Main argument:

Librarianship in the United States is an exercise in performative whiteness. Those minorities who do approach the profession are forced to slot into designated ideas of whiteness. The requirement to conform to and perform whiteness “offers prescriptive identities, removing most agency from the employee” (Galvan, 2015).

Method:

This article is an essay reviewing perceptions and literature about minorities and whiteness in libraries.

Topics:

diversity, identity, library, performative culture, resilience, Whiteness, employment, group norms

Novel ideas/weakness:

Galvan examines the ways that minority librarians are expected to fit into white library culture through an articulation of several gatekeeping techniques. Galvan then proposes ways to combat performance and gatekeeping activities. Methods of performance examined are expectations of clothing, sexuality, wardrobe, expectations of job duties because of status, conspicuous leisure and wealth, and narratives of resiliency. Suggested means of combating these structures are reimaging internships and professional development, engaging project driven assignments in a meaningful and engaging fashions, interrogate standard assumptions regarding personality judgments, reconceptualize the interview metrics of interview questions, and be conscious of what diversity is.

This area of inquiry is tricky because while defining whiteness sets the structures of what that means, whiteness is often more than it appears. The narrative of whiteness suffers from a critique that of acceptance and denial. Those who are willing to accept the narrative are hard-pressed to allow diversity into whiteness. Those who are unwilling to accept and thereby deny the narrative find exceptions to the defined whiteness. The narrative is then seen as too narrow, denying diversity, and engaging in identity politics. While the essay exposes serious problems in the dominant culture of libraries and proposes viable solutions, the narrative of whiteness remains problematic.

Page author: Erin Brown