Enough Crocodile Tears! Libraries Moving beyond Performative Antiracist Politics

Abstract

T his editorial calls for social justice actions in libraries and discusses possible ways the library and information science (LIS) professions (including practitioners, educators, administrators, and students) can move beyond solely performative antiracist politics in responding to the contemporary social unrest against racial injustices in the United States. My critical push is for authenticity, integrity, and accountability in libraries and among affiliated stakeholders (e.g., LIS, American universities and colleges) considering their historical and ongoing collusion with systemic racism (Chou, Pho, and Roh 2018; Matthews 2020). Contextual embeddedness in historical racism “nested within a larger social, cultural, political, economic, and legal climate” of white oppression and white privilege has shaped limited practices to decenter whiteness in LIS today (Hudson 2017a; Mehra and Gray 2020, 193). Recent racial atrocities by law enforcement agencies complicit in the horrific murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Aubrey, Rayshard Brooks, Walter Wallace Jr., and others has exposed cultural hypocrisy surrounding racial equality and politics (Hylton 2020). The slowness in dismantling whiteness and continued white supremacy in LIS tells a similar story (Hudson 2017b; Tang et al. 2020). Strong public outcry has urged everyone (including LIS professionals) to speak up and act in political networks to demand culpability of Americans in positions of power (Cooke 2020). Many entrenched, white-privileged establishments, such as libraries, universities, government agencies, and corporations, with documented evidence of institutional racism have embraced antiracist rhetoric and verbiage. These agencies are seemingly “capitalizing” on the traumatic situation, proclaiming public statements of antiracist support, vigils, policies, and resolutions without acknowledging their past’s predominant passivity (i.e., “silence”) and neutrality toward racism among the majority of their constituents. They are now “tripping over their feet” in a race to show their sympathies. On June 3, 2020, the Association for Library and Information Science Education (ALISE; 2020) adopted the “ALISE Statement on George Floyd” in solidarity with those experiencing structural racism and condemned the “enduring violence