“Killing It from the Inside”: Acknowledging and Valuing Black, Indigenous, and People of Color as LIS Faculty

Abstract

George Floyd was killed on May 25, 2020, on the heels of the deaths of Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor. The deaths seemed to inspire a racial awakening that manifested in a spate of webinars, booklists, and pledges to be antiracist. And just like clockwork, conferences and journals began adopting antiracism as their special theme and topic. But what was different about the deaths of these young Black lives? Why an awakening now? And is an awakening really enough, or should the goal really be a reckoning and reconciliation? The point is that violence against the lives of Black people and Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) is not new; the social justice movement is not new, even if our field believes that to be so.