Library Trends

Diversity Discussion: Variations on a Thirty-Year Theme

The context in which diversity is addressed in organizations is one in which there is likely avoidance of direct communication and attempts to depersonalize the concept, among the other considerations that are likely to limit the fulfillment of diversity-related goals.

(Winston 2008, 144)

Power and language—their intersections and deployments—are central to diversity issues and initiatives in libraries and library and information science (LIS) as a field. Indeed, the very phrase “diversity issues” is a linguistic receptacle that requires but rarely receives clear definition and unpacking, even as we supposedly use it to instigate change. Power, who has it, and the ways others are kept from it are at the heart of social and cultural inequities that libraries ethically eschew and work to counter. However, the historical discrimination against diversity that the LIS profession seeks to address in its own membership, services, and spaces was written into existence via laws and policies and reinforced everyday via naturalized [End Page 39] institutional language practices. Yet language, power, and the hegemonic control they deploy and reproduce are rarely part of the conversations, let alone action plans, to increase LIS diversity. The result is decades-old rhetoric of diversity and inclusion (as it pertains to the library as a set of services, an institution, and a professional field), which Lorna Peterson, in her half of a 1999 publication dyad exploring the definition of diversity, calls toothless and which is ultimately performative rather than effective (21).

Language (written, spoken, visual, etc.) is often a constant in many if not all of the spheres that we occupy as individuals and professionals, and it operates as a main mode for communication, shaping our expectations and establishing and perpetuating our social systems. Yet for all its inescapable presence, language, like many constants, is often taken for granted, and when, as is the case with interrogating lack of diversity, language is a tool for considering every other possible barrier, interrogating language itself is an easy omission to make. Peterson, DeEtta Jones (1999), and many others who have written over the years about the absence of diversity and lack of change within multiple facets of library and information science use examples of professional language to discuss dominant trends in library practice, and nina de jesus (2014, para. 3), Freeda Brook, Dave Ellenwood, and Althea Eannace Lazzaro (2015, 252), and Isabel Espinal (2001, 141) have written invaluable analyses specifically about libraries’ tendency to “entrench oppression,” “naturalize whiteness,” and standardize the false universality of the “white perspective,” respectively, despite efforts to uphold equity. However, although they touch on it, these analyses do not examine language itself, how it is used in our institutions and discussions (that is, talking about the way we talk about diversity), and its role in the entrenchment and naturalization of oppression within the library. This article seeks to take that next step and build upon this previous work by considering the roles of language, power, and oppression to explicitly unpack how our field’s institutional language, along with other impediments, cycles and recycles diversity conversations, such as LIS scholarly literature, professional guidelines, and even career-development discussions.

By turning to critical discourse analysis as a framework, I will outline how our institutional language is shaped and shapes in turn, and tying in concepts from critical race theory, I will explore the intersections of language, power, and oppression that specifically come into play or are overlooked in our broader discourse (all thirty years of it) about diversity in LIS, stalling change through rhetoric that works against the very goals it discusses. This is not to say that our discussions about addressing diversity-specific disparities within the field are not well-intended or that those having them are not sincerely seeking and strategizing for change. Quite the contrary. What this article will attempt to show is how the systems of [End Page 40] inequity and oppression we are attempting to combat are extremely sophisticated and robust, operating at multiple interpersonal, institutional, and cultural levels with scads of built-in fail-safes. Language is one such fail-safe, and as this article will show, without persistent critical interrogation of language (who is employing it and how), it is exceedingly difficult to define, describe, or discuss oppressive systems like racism in hopes of dismantling them without unintentionally enacting and reinforcing them.

Consider this example from outside of LIS. In 2016, John H. Mc-Whorter, a Columbia University linguistics professor, wrote a brief essay on Slate.com to explain the backlash when a Good Morning America news anchor flubbed the phrase “person of color” and mistakenly used “colored people” to refer to black people. Since it is no mystery why audiences took offense at something offensive, the author aimed instead to explain why the phrase “colored people” is offensive at all while “person of color” is not, presumably in good faith with the hope of diffusing the frustrations of those who did not understand the difference. Overall, the essay is a sincere attempt and different approach to inform readers why “colored person” is an unacceptable descriptor. However, by shifting focus to not simply examining what the essay discusses, but how it does so, the “system fail-safe” of language sleight that naturalizes white supremacy, even as the essay tries to promote the use of “person of color,” becomes clear.

To provide his explanation, the author attempts to outline the slippery linguistic function and moving-target nature of euphemisms, particularly racial euphemisms like “person of color,” but in doing so, he omits several important factors, seemingly in an effort to manage the discomfort of white readers by reinforcing the dominance of a white perspective. One need look no further than the author’s opening premise to see this at work: “‘Person of color’ is considered perfectly OK, and even modern. Since ‘colored person’ means the same thing, why is it wrong to say it?” (McWhorter 2016, para. 2). These two sentences, which ask a question that many white people actually have, and that it is the essay’s goal to answer, make three rhetorical moves that reaffirm a white supremacist perspective: 1) equation; 2) erasure; and 3) explanation. The first maneuver equates the two phrases—explicitly stating that each “means the same thing”—which is understandable given that, to a reader’s cursory glance, these phrases appear to be mere reversals of each other and the words present have nearly identical dictionary definitions. But in an effort to meet readers where they are with these assumptions, the author disregards the complex set of variables from which language derives meaning, of which context is perhaps the most impactful (Evans 2015, 21–24). The context of who is using a phrase, who is receiving it, in what situation, through what shared frame of reference, and with what historical underpinnings all have inexorable influence over what a phrase “means” at the time it is uttered. Case in point, a phrase chosen by a socially oppressed group [End Page 41] of people as representative of their self-determined identity and a phrase historically used to dehumanize and discriminate against them clearly do not carry the same meaning for that group. This is where erasure comes in. In order to use the equation of the phrases as a premise for the rest of the essay, the historical weaponization of the phrase “colored people” as well as the privilege and power possessed by the anchor who made the gaffe must be disregarded as a way to center and appeal to the perspective of those unfamiliar and/or unaffected by that history and embodied privilege—namely, white people. Finally, the explanation of why “people of color” is acceptable while “colored people” is not, which comprises the remainder of the essay as it follows up on the preceding equation and erasure, upholds a white supremacist perspective by reaffirming that white people confused about the difference between the phrases need not take the oppressed group at their word, but instead should expect explanation that centers and integrates their worldview.

This is only one example and may seem highly specific, but it demonstrates how much language can communicate existing power and dominance with relatively little effort or intention, and libraries, being shot through with the intricacies of language at every conceivable level, can and do reproduce systems of oppression just that easily.

Critical Discourse Analysis: A Brief Application

Language not only expresses ideas and concepts but actually shapes thought.

(Moore 1976, 119)

Using journalistic language as a model, John Richardson (2007) defines critical discourse analysis (CDA) as “a theory and method analysing the way that individuals and institutions use language” (1, emphasis in original). According to this framework, language consists of not only meaning but also action—that is, language itself is a form of social practice. As such, language has a reciprocal relationship with the social structures and/or institutions in which it is used. As Norman Fairclough (1992) puts it “[language] is shaped by these [structures], but it also shapes them,” meaning that as an institution produces language, language produces the institution by differentiating the institution from surrounding culture, outlining institutional norms, and establishing an institutional reality that “frames the sense of who they are,” complete with social structures and power dynamics (61; Mayr 2008, 5). So, bearing this in mind, we might ask, What is the institutional reality and what are the norms produced within LIS by our language in regard to diversity, and what wider institutional practices within LIS are perpetuated by that reinforced reality?

These questions cannot be answered without considerations of power. There are several subsets of research in the study of the relationship between discourse, institutions, and power (Mumby and Clair 1997, 195), [End Page 42] but one particularly salient to LIS as a predominantly white institution is the analysis of how dominant groups “discursively construct and reproduce their own positions of dominance” (Mayr 2008, 3–4). Power is inextricably tied with language as each reinforces the other. Those dominant groups of the culturally privileged (white, male, cisgender, middle class, nondisabled, etc.) are empowered within the institution to name and establish language, language that in turn constructs norms that naturalize the power of the dominant groups. This means, with regard to racial diversity, that because white people hold hegemonic power within libraries, the language they use to frame institutional concepts (e.g., professional ethics, classification systems, service standards, performance expectations, etc.) reaffirms the dominance of their racial privilege, and because “the dominant cultural groups [are] generating the discourse [it] represent[s] [their dominance] as ‘natural’” (Mayr 2008, 13). Because of this deployment of power through language, institutions are also seen as primarily “serving the interests of certain powerful groups” (Mayr 2008, 5). In other words, the groups of patrons and librarians who do not question that the library is meant for them or exists for their use tell us a great deal about who our systems are built to benefit by default and of whom our language of power and access is actually inclusive. nina de jesus (2014) reminds us in “Locating the Library in Institutional Oppression”:

Libraries as institutions were created not only for a specific ideological purpose but for an ideology that is fundamentally oppressive in nature. As such, the failings of libraries can be re-interpreted not as libraries failing to live up to their ideals and values, but rather as symptoms and evidence of this foundational and oppressive ideology.

(para. 40)

Our institutional language and discourse around diversity, which is constitutive of the institutional relationship with diversity, is as much a product of the culture of assimilation and social disparity as of the ideals of equity and intellectual freedom. A far too short time ago, public libraries were staunchly committed to assimilating immigrants into the literacy of “good” American citizenry, and academic libraries have always been entrenched in the false universality of privilege inherent to higher education and their parent institutions. Both of these branches of librarianship might reject these historical practices, now claiming a more egalitarian, “neutral” service philosophy, but neutrality is impossible, first because the very conceit of the library is shot through with political purpose (de jesus 2014), and also because libraries as institutions do not exist in a vacuum or with walls magically impermeable to the systemic oppression of the culture in which they are situated. For example:

In a profession where some 87 percent of credentialed librarians are white, libraries have historically served as sites for white racial socialization, including a high incidence of microaggressions and a general denial of the cultural experiences of people of color.

(Peet 2016, 16) [End Page 43]

The complex relationship between systems of oppression, their reproduction within LIS as an institution, the insufficiency of institutional diversity and inclusion rhetoric, and language and power as the fulcrum that connects them is a topic to which we are coming. But first let us take a moment to explore an example of the institutionally productive function of language regarding diversity.

Language has power, especially in libraries. The way we talk about things in our field matters—we have established that. Using critical discourse analysis as a framework, we recognize that our institutional language (created and reinforced by hierarchical power dynamics) naturalizes the concepts shaped by that language—it establishes normative and therefore nonnormative practices, and it produces and reinforces a kind of institutional reality, the investment in which yields phrases like “we’ve always done things this way,” a mindset resistant to any change that disrupts the naturalized hierarchy. This institutional reality includes the way we frame diversity—the way we talk about it and the way we address it or integrate it within our practice. Citing Foucault, Mayr (2008) describes how discourse not only has but actually constructs a topic like diversity: “It governs the way that a topic can be meaningfully talked about; [t]his in turn means that discourse . . . can limit and restrict other ways of talking and producing knowledge about [the topic]” (8). The LIS field’s institutional reality, created and reinforced via language, regarding diversity is distorted, and while that distortion is difficult to see precisely because it has been naturalized, it is nonetheless identifiable in the language we often use to discuss diversity—the very language that reinforces our distortion as normal.

Take for example the phrase “diversity problem” (or “diversity issues” or “dilemma” or whatever synonym is most familiar). This phrase, benign as it seems, is not simply a passive, neutral language construction. It is actively (re)establishing our collective framework for understanding diversity within our field, but more than that, it is reinforcing that distorted framework that, in part, has kept our field’s progress regarding diversity so stagnate. Now, that’s a lot to claim about two fairly straightforward words, so let me unpack what I mean.

First of all, “diversity problem” is an imprecise and inaccurate phrase, yet we hear it and its variations constantly. “The library and information science field has a diversity problem.” Consider that when a home is host to uninvited rodents, we do not say that the home has a cat problem. When a colleague has chronic back pain, we do not say that they should take care of their chiropractor problem. The LIS field does not have a diversity problem—it has a white supremacy problem, a heteropatriarchy problem, an ableism problem, an anti-Semitism and Islamophobia problem, a Western-centrism problem, a classism problem. LIS has an oppression problem. “Diversity problem” is discourse that is “endowed with the performative power to bring into being the very realities it claims [End Page 44] to describe” and is precisely the difference between performative rather than effective rhetoric (Fairclough 2003, 203–4). That is, using language that conflates the situation that needs to be addressed with the method of resolution not only misrepresents the solution as somehow contributing to the problem but also muddies the distinctions between “identifying” and “addressing,” such that the performative discourse about the need for a solution to the lack of diversity comes to constitute a solution in and of itself, stalling action toward real change.

“Diversity problem” as a language construction also tacitly frames our understanding of the relationship between the LIS field and diversity as a concept. “Diversity problem” situates diversity as a concept apart from us that we are working on, which effectively separates us (the problem solvers) from diversity (the problem). This language positions diversity not only as something fixed and concrete as opposed to fluid and intersectional but also as something separate from the everyday, nuts-and-bolts functioning of the library and the profession. Diversity is that very important issue we discuss and attempt to address, but when the budget takes a cut, when the staff numbers drop, when the HVAC implodes, when more pressing priorities emerge, diversity is relegated to the nonessential.

Language, Power, and Oppression: (Un)Learning Objectives

At the crux of all this is our persistent discomfort with the role that equity plays in diversity work. Treating everyone “the same” today, even if that were possible, still does not erase the cumulative effect—the continuing impact—of historical inequality.

(Clark 2011, 59)

As a result of the naturalized language norms that reproduce the perspectives of dominant (privileged) groups, LIS institutional discourse is often in service of oppressive systems. This is not to assign malevolence or even intention to the LIS institution (although lack of intention does not remove accountability), but rather to comment on the operation of systems of inequity. Inequitable, hierarchical disparities among those culturally privileged and those culturally oppressed are the default of our social structures, and as Clark (2011) states above, attempts to treat patrons, for example, equally only perpetuates existing barriers and inequities. Equality vs. equity is a vital language distinction for discourse about diversity. Someone may be thinking to themselves that equality and equity mean essentially the same thing, but that is not quite the case for two reasons. First, their definitions are, in fact slightly different, equality being about uniformity or sameness and equity being about impartiality or fairness. Second, equating these two concepts is to employ the same rhetorical moves from our initial example with the Slate.com essay. These two terms can only be equated by erasing context—the historical and contemporary social, [End Page 45] cultural, and legal barriers of discrimination, which affect how we qualify fairness. Kathy Castania (1996) in her essay “What is Diversity?” states that “societal divisions based on our group identities have been maintained through legal, educational, religious, and other institutions” (2), which DeEtta Jones (1999) affirms with her definition of equity: “Individual and group equity means understanding and working affirmatively to amend historical and present misrepresentation” (8).

Our field in general (there are certainly pockets where this is not the case) often misunderstands what equity truly entails because our constructed institutional reality lacks understanding or interrogation of what inequity, oppression, and marginalization truly entail. With her words, as applicable now as they were twenty years ago, Peterson (1999) tells us that “scant evidence of progress may mean that diversity is not about equity at all . . . [as] the conversation is not about redressing past discrimination and it has not even significantly altered the look of the profession” (18). To counter this misunderstanding and push against the institutional rhetoric and stagnation—or what Balderrama (2000) calls “the gap between what the library has been saying and what it has been doing with regard to diversity” (204)—we can begin with considerations of how language and power operate within two different but related aspects: the language of oppression and oppressive language.

The language of oppression could also be called “oppression literacy,” and while that literacy involves learning new terms and concepts, it also requires unlearning and relearning concepts with which we thought we were familiar. A classic example of this is reframing our definition of terms like racism. Many folks (not unreasonably) conceptualize racism and other forms of oppression as an individual’s prejudice or discrimination against another individual based on race, and based on that conception, they also logically assume that refraining from such behavior on their own part is all that is required to combat racism in their library practice. In reality, however, racism operates at interpersonal, institutional, and cultural levels, reinforced by and reinforcing of hegemonic power dynamics in which the superiority of whiteness is both assumed and naturalized. You may not discriminate against a patron of color, for instance, but racism is still at work within the library’s classification system (Olson 2001) and within the traditional trade (Low 2016) and scholarly (Roh 2016) publishing industries that produce most of the books and journal articles available in the library’s collections.

It is no accident that this more accurate conceptualization of racism is also more complex. Language that accurately highlights systems of oppression at work is always more complicated than language that erases them, leaving them invisible and allowing them to continue operating uninterrogated. Another important concept within “oppression literacy” is the understanding that, while we can name and discuss systems of privilege [End Page 46] and oppression as well as social power structures, we are never outside them when we do so. It is easy, as with the seemingly innocuous phrase “diversity problem” discussed above, to linguistically situate ourselves at a distance from these systems, examining them with a fabricated sense of detachment. We are always examining systems of oppression from inside them, and we are always capable, with the very language we use to discuss them, of reproducing those systems and their power disparities. If libraries wish to create effective pathways to equity, then we must acknowledge the many facets of inequity as a system and challenge all the barriers it creates. Learning, unlearning, and relearning the structure and functions of language in perpetuating systems of oppression and locating our institutional language within those systems and power structures is key.

Oppressive language—that is, language that invokes and enacts oppression—is the other aspect with which any interrogation of LIS institutional language must be concerned. I am not referring here to explicitly discriminatory or dehumanizing phrases such as “colored people,” though they also comprise oppressive language, but rather more to the implicit language constructions that reaffirm systemic oppression and power differentials, even as they appear to do the opposite. One popular example of this is the (over)use of “diversity and inclusion.” This prepackaged linguistic dyad of diversity and inclusion, while positive on the surface, is not only insufficient on its own to address barriers to equity, it also often enacts the exact opposite of what it states—promoting homogeneity and alienating difference. Diversity—the state of being diverse—in and of itself does not create a pathway to equity, and while inclusion of folks hitherto excluded seems like exactly what we are attempting to accomplish, inclusion elides the power dynamics in the phrase itself, leaving them unaddressed.

The “house party” analogy is a favorite of mine to elucidate the problems inherent and unchecked within “diversity and inclusion” rhetoric. You can throw a party at your house specifically to build relationships with neighbors you do not know. You can put up signs welcoming any and all who want to join the party; you can create an inviting atmosphere; and you can stand at the door with a radiant smile to personally welcome and see to the needs of your guests. People may arrive in droves and have a wonderful night at the party. However, none of your efforts to be welcoming, supportive, and inclusive changes the fact that it is your house. Your inclusion of others does nothing to change, say, the layout of your house, which is structured to fit the needs of your way of life and your perspective on what is comfortable. When our institutions discuss being inclusive of diversity, we fail to question or challenge the power structures that situate some groups as “owners” with the power to include (or exclude) and other groups as “guests.”

A house party is all well and fine for a metaphor—more background of its applicability to students of color in higher education can be found [End Page 47] in Cooke (2017), Turner (1994), and Daniels (1991)—but consider also an example fairly typical of actual library institutional rhetoric: “the seat at the table” conceptualization. Whose table is it exactly? Whose practices and perspective governs the table proceedings? Who decides which fork is used for what? The table and its available seats is a metaphor that even appears in previous publications about diversity in LIS:

The goals of diversity education are to enhance awareness of the diversity of characteristics each of us brings to the “table” and to develop tools for incorporating these diverse characteristics into practical application to the benefit of the organization. This “table” is the library’s organizational culture.

(Jones 1999, 10)

Just as being invited to someone’s house has no impact on one’s status as a guest, being invited to the table does not mean that one feels they belong there or has any power to influence change. Scholars of color like Nicole Cooke (2014) have discussed coping strategies that include “occasionally and temporarily excus[ing] [one]self from the table from time to time in order to regroup, reconstitute, and renew” (47), and Debbie Reese (2017), a Nambe-Pueblo-enrolled Native scholar and educator, objects to the entire conceit of institutions as tables at which underrepresented folks require a seat because “it centers whiteness. Being at that table means [marginalized people] need [an] invitation to be there.” Indeed, “give X group a seat at the table” is a phrase that not only alienates people by immediately invoking paternalistic leadership structures and presupposing the universality of table gatherings as an analogous cultural symbol, but also reinforces hegemonic power dynamics by framing the dominant group as bestowing a gift—one perhaps just as easily rescinded as given.

In an opinion piece on misconceptions regarding the implications of meaningful integration of racial diversity in institutions, Ernest Owens (2017) outlines what exactly the institutional presence and full participation of people of color entails. “Those who take up the bulk of the resources, opportunities, and space (i.e., white people) will have to give up a generous amount of that power to those it was kept from (people of color)” (para. 4). What Owens describes here is an intentional redistribution of power—a shift in the disparate power balance produced by and constitutive of inequity. He also acknowledges that in our past and current institutional discourse about diversity, when we discuss an objective of equitable service or the library profession’s commitment to enacting equity, we tend to frame these goals in cumulative terms. “Diversity and inclusion” or “a seat at the table” imply an expectation that efforts to address the currently privilege-dominated library world will be a simple matter of addition. But oppressive ideologies are pervasive and persistent; they cannot be reversed by the mere existence of oppressed people in our institutions. White supremacy, for example, is not suddenly solved by throwing black and brown people at the problem—a practice that Peterson (1999) [End Page 48] calls the “interior design theory of diversity that an environment is improved by the addition of color” (25)—but instead requires a redistribution of white-held institutional power to nonwhite groups in order to begin to dismantle the library as a white institution. “Because the terms of diversity [objectives] are currently set by [privilege-dominated] institutions and power structures, the priorities are often skewed” (Owens 2017, para. 5). However, we can shift our institutional language and re-frame our equity objectives to include a focus on dismantling hegemony by relocating power from privileged groups to marginalized groups.

Concluding Thoughts

Given that three decades of discussion of the urgent need for diversity in our field in order to make good on our professional ethics and commitment to equity has nonetheless yielded little direct action or change, it is worth mentioning Mayr’s (2008) point that the use of language to prioritize conversation rather than action with regard to systemic change is perhaps the most effective deployment of power (13). That is, existing power structures and systems of oppression are never actually challenged when we are focused instead on the conversation about the need to challenge them—a lot of talk and little action. By interrogating how our institutional language contributes to the inequities we seek to address, we effectively move the discussion into the realm of action.

This is not to say that our discussions of diversity have been entirely fruitless. Thirty years of conversation may have proven not to be fertile ground for direct action, but it is certainly fertile ground for ideas and reframing efforts. E. J. Josey (1994) articulated two imperatives that we are only just beginning to explore more than twenty years later: 1) organizations must “begin to urge the employees to value diversity and provide staff awareness training to sensitize and change the mindset of the library workforce” (8); and 2) “it is imperative that the formal education of future librarians should include the importance of cultural diversity” (10). Regular and adaptive antioppression training for library staff as well as embedding tenets of diversity and equity in LIS education program outcomes and accreditation standards are not only good action-oriented initiatives, but also spaces in which the interrogation of language can also be specifically introduced and practiced.

Another more recent example from outside library and information science is Dafina-Lazarus Stewart’s (2017) outline of some of the insufficiencies of “diversity and inclusion” rhetoric that provides an excellent starting place for our language interrogation practices.

Diversity and inclusion rhetoric asks fundamentally different questions and is concerned with fundamentally different issues than efforts seeking equity and justice.

Diversity asks, “Who’s in the room?” Equity responds: “Who is trying [End Page 49] to get in the room but can’t? Whose presence in the room is under constant threat of erasure?”

Inclusion asks, “Has everyone’s ideas been heard?” Justice responds, “Whose ideas won’t be taken as seriously because they aren’t in the majority?”

Diversity celebrates increases in numbers that still reflect minoritized status on campus and incremental growth. Equity celebrates reductions in harm, revisions to abusive systems and increases in supports for people’s life chances as reported by those who have been targeted. Inclusion celebrates awards for initiatives and credits itself for having a diverse candidate pool. Justice celebrates getting rid of practices and policies that were having disparate impacts on minoritized groups.

(para. 12)

Normalizing this practice of interrogating language as a tool that conserves power and reinforces oppressive systems is not an easy transition to make. Because we must use language to interrogate language, the practice of critically asking what our language is doing as well as saying is almost infinite in its self-reflexiveness as we must also interrogate the language we use to interrogate. But revealing what our language is doing, specifically with regard to the deployment of power and reproduction of oppression, is essential not only to identify how the way we use language stalls our transition to action with regard to diversity but also to ensure that true equity and disruption to systems of inequity become as naturalized within our institutional language as oppression is now.