...

Foundations Discussion #3: Mirrors and Windows

28 September 2023

NOTE: due to sudden circumstances the week of the discussion and past experience of getting pushed back on questioning course materials, I didn't actually post anything for this discussion board and ended up writing the following to make things clear instead. Apparently it was thought-provoking enough that it could have counted for the discussion despite being entirely skeptical about things. It's a topic I think needs more specificity than it typically gets though, so it definitely deserves to be saved here.

---

You are the future of the profession!
Mirrors: where did you see yourself? (provide explicit reference to a reading)
Windows: where did you get a glimpse of the diversity in the field? (provide explicit reference to a reading)

...I will admit, though, that the big thing in my lack of attention is that I don't really find the topic(s) compelling enough to write up a substantial post, not without embellishing a lot of it, anyway. Where are the mirrors for me, a black boy who was raised to the standards of whiteness well enough to be called an oreo by numerous peers growing up? What mirrors are there for a black boy who can't remember facing a single instance of explicit racism over his entire life, in a media landscape that largely only seems fixated on the black struggle instead of almost anything else whenever it deigns to do so? Is a window even necessary for someone who wasn't "called" to librarianship as much as they just happened to hang around the profession all the time and doesn't feel like being anywhere else? And while I do think there should be like triple the amount of books by "minority" authors on the stacks given that the US is going to be a majority-minority country pretty soon, I think the benefits of diversity and representation are a bit overstated in some aspects. I also very much do not like using platitudes in regards to equity without putting any actual action behind it, even if it's for something as hypothetical as a siloed school discussion.