“She’s all bring me information, sitting on her chaise lounge of privilege, and getting fat on oppressive grapes.”
How many of us know a person like this or are like the person described? I said this to a friend in describing someone we both are acquainted with via our professional lives. The person being described is a white, middle aged female who works in academia and continues to do the kind of work that maintains the status quo.
Status quo = the existing state of affairs
What is the status quo in academia? When looking at racial demographics of the student body it’s usually around 70–80% white and caucasian with 20–30% of non-white students. When looking at faculty and staff it’s about the same or greater. If you break it down by administrative roles and/or those at the top of the hierarchy it’s almost entirely white at the top. If you break it down by departments, academic libraries on average, are around 85% white.
The picture I paint above is my experience working in an academic library on a college campus. The university is notorious for touting “its dedication to diversity and inclusion,” so much so the very people that uphold the status quo become desensitized to it and/or are full of the belief that the opportunities at this university and others in the area are truly dedicated to this. And it’s because they are getting full on the “oppressive grapes.”
What are the “oppressive grapes?”
It’s being on a search committee and going through the training from Human Resources. It’s being “taught” that in order to best serve on the committee you need to “mitigate your biases” and “recuse yourself from activities in the search where you have known biases with applicants/candidates.” It’s you trying to correct language in a job description to make it inclusive and Human Resources or your department’s admin removing the whole statement. It’s you with your search committee making the recruiting of racially and ethnically diverse candidates intentional and Human Resources and admin offering up a slew of empty excuses as to why advertising venues and language in the ads has been restricted.
It’s being in a job classification hierarchy and being the lowest ranked class. It’s speaking up for equity, equal treatment, and parity and being met with apathy, privilege, and people in higher ranked classes saying they have no power. It’s having the people in your classification unionize and try to weave solidarity and eventually win a contract renewal for four years of which two have been spent negotiating with concrete walls from Human Resources and Campus Admin. It’s working on a LibGuide with a non-tenure-track librarian and a civil service colleague and the Dean giving all the credit to the NTT librarian. It’s hearing about opportunities in the library for professional development available to all, then bringing it up to the Associate Dean who wants to go through HR and having them mandate the opportunity as volunteer and shadowing preventing direct experience and them taking authority over the time being VOLUNTEERED.
It’s hearing ableist commentary about candidates selected to interview and trying to address problematic hiring practices.
It’s watching search after search after search be awash in white faces, white names, and white bodies.
It’s having the Dean punt an introduction statement to Library Council and all the older, white women taking issue with a strong statement of solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement calling it exclusive. By goodness, pearls have to be clutched, faces puckered like a sour gumball is trapped inside, and all the status quo assenters come to the chat box offering nothing of substance.
It’s having departmental admin announce a division’s new dedication to having a “goal” of meeting equity, diversity, and inclusion. And the same division head, putting off the “goal” and any address of how this will be implemented and carried out for six months after the announcement.
It’s you continually reminding the department of opportunities that lay before them. Replacing cabinets that store archival materials? Let’s make them physically accessible and easy to manage! Nope. The money has been spent on seven foot cabinets that have heavy and unwieldy drawers. Request to spend money on advertising that would demonstrate our commitment in recruiting from marginalized communities? Nope. We need to be fiscally responsible. Renovating the bathrooms and making them “All Gender”? Nope. Outdated state codes say otherwise. Bathrooms have been renovated, can we get sanitary receptacles re-installed in the women’s bathrooms? Nope. That’s an argument we are not going forward with Facilities. Viral pandemic is looming large, can we send everyone home to wfh (work from home)? Nope. That is not admin’s call.
It’s the Black student groups coming together on campus and standing up to campus admin. It’s campus admin sending an email to all of campus implying that the Black student groups are lying about interactions they had with athletics. It’s athletics being treated with grace and the Black student groups coming through with ALL THE RECEIPTS and gaining supporters from all races and ethnicities in the process.
It’s the head media guy printing a letter to the editor of an alum magazine that was homophobic, intolerant, and hateful. It’s much of the campus coming together on social media, emails to admin, and openly publicizing the egregious misstep.
It’s at the end of the day, a place where when you’re white and violate the mission for excellence in diversity and inclusion you get to keep your job, you get to continue to make six figures, you get to have a conversation about how to help recover your reputation, while also saving the campus’.
THESE. ARE. THE. GRAPES.
It’s more than time for the root to suffer rot, and for the vines of oppression to wither and die. End the fattening of whiteness. The world is overfull of whiteness. Whiteness is obese. Dear World, it’s time for a diet.
Disclaimer: the observations above are mine. I write this as a white woman who is able-bodied and employed. I would like to acknowledge that these privileges prevent me from knowing the full extent of the experiences I describe above and thusly, I have only captured here, an infinitesimal amount of the oppression and discrimination that exists in academic libraries and college campuses in the US and across the globe.
