In honor of Tracie D. Hall having been named one of Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People of 2023, we are excited to re-release this conversation with Tracie from last spring. This is a recognition very well deserved, and we are so very thankful for the effort and passion Tracie exhibits daily to make libraries a welcoming and safe place for everyone.
In this episode, we talk with Tracie D. Hall, Executive Director of the American Library Association, about how diversifying library staff is essential to the future of the library profession and how individuals can advocate for themselves and find opportunities to work with mentors or to mentor others. Hall discusses how her own background and experiences have shaped her view of library work, as well as the critical role that history, the arts, and libraries play in our communities.
Date of interview: May 19, 2022
Hosts: Ericka Brunson-Rochette and Melissa Anderson
OLA EDI & Antiracism Toolkit: https://bit.ly/3qSMDF7
In honor of Tracie D. Hall having been named one of Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People of 2023, we are excited to re-release this conversation with Tracie from last spring. This is a recognition very well deserved, and we are so very thankful for the effort and passion Tracie exhibits daily to make libraries a welcoming and safe place for everyone.
In this episode, we talk with Tracie D. Hall, Executive Director of the American Library Association, about how diversifying library staff is essential to the future of the library profession and how individuals can advocate for themselves and find opportunities to work with mentors or to mentor others. Hall discusses how her own background and experiences have shaped her view of library work, as well as the critical role that history, the arts, and libraries play in our communities.
Date of interview: May 19, 2022
Hosts: Ericka Brunson-Rochette and Melissa Anderson
OLA EDI & Antiracism Toolkit: https://bit.ly/3qSMDF7
[Intro music playing]
Voiceover:
For Season Two, episode two of Overdue, Weeding Out Oppression in Libraries, we have decided to re-release a conversation with ALA Executive Director Tracie D. Hall, recorded in May of 2022. Every day is a great day to honor and celebrate the phenomenal work that Tracie is doing for libraries but in light of Tracie being recently named as one of Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People of 2023, we wanted to highlight this important conversation and echo our immense appreciation for everything Tracie does for libraries, library staff and the communities that we serve. Thank you, Tracie.
Ericka Brunson-Rochette:
Hello, and welcome to OVERDUE: Weeding Out Oppression in Libraries, a podcast produced by the Oregon Library Association's EDI and Antiracism committee. My name is Ericka Brunson-Rochette. I'm a Community Librarian at the Deschutes Public Library in Central Oregon.
Melissa Anderson:
And I'm here with Ericka today on the podcast. My name is Melissa Anderson and I am the Campus Engagement and Research Services Librarian at Southern Oregon University. We are very excited today to have Tracie Hall, the Executive Director of the American Library Association with us on the show.
Ericka Brunson-Rochette:
Yes. Thank you so much and welcome, Tracie.
Tracie Hall:
Thank you for having me. It's exciting to be here and I'm looking forward to our conversation.
Ericka Brunson-Rochette:
Wonderful. Are you ready to just jump right in?
Tracie Hall:
Let's go.
Ericka Brunson-Rochette:
Okay. We're going to start with an icebreaker question. So this one, wouldn't be fair to ask if you had a favorite Chicago library, but do you have a favorite Chicago bookstore, or maybe a restaurant, or a third place you love?
Tracie Hall:
That's really hard because I love so many things about Chicago and there are so many things that keep me here. I'd have to say if there was a third place for me, if I were really honest, I think it would be the many, many arts venues and arts spaces, the public arts, the arts institutions, not just museums, but also theaters and dance stages across the city. And a case in point, tomorrow and Saturday, I have the great opportunity to engage with organizations and with art investments that I have supported over the years because my career has spanned both libraries and arts organizations and arts administrations. So, tomorrow night, I, along with a few other Chicagoans, will be honored for our work supporting independent artists in this Chicago community by Elastic Arts, which is an amazing, very dynamic and scrappy arts organization that has really focused on outsider art, on performance, and also, too, cultural production by BIPOC artists and makers.
And then on Saturday night, I will be at the Logan Center for the Arts, which is on the campus of the University of Chicago. I will have the opportunity to talk with eight dance companies as part of a program called the Chicago Black Dance Legacy Project, which I initiated when I directed the program office at the Joyce Foundation where I was a director of culture programs. And so, seeing the work of those eight black dance companies previously and still very under-supported and under-heralded for their contributions to Afrodiasporic dance, seeing them take this major stage in front of a sold-out audience, is really going to be for me the culmination of what I was envisioning when it came to uplifting their work and making it even more visible. So, think for me, if I were to be asked then in Chicago, the arts is my third space.
Ericka Brunson-Rochette:
Fantastic, that's wonderful. And congratulations on the recognition from Elastic Arts and thank you for your contribution to humanities and arts in Chicago.
Melissa Anderson:
So, I'm going to jump right in with one of our questions for you today here. So, you took over as executive director of the ALA at the beginning of 2020, a year that was marked by disruption and by trauma. From your vantage point, what lasting changes and lessons can we take with us as we try to navigate what comes next?
Tracie Hall:
There is a lot to say there in terms of what we should be taking with us. I think the number one thing I would say is accountability; understanding our role in contributing to systems, especially where there's systemic bias, where there are long-noted gaps [inaudible 00:04:12], et cetera. I think it's so easy to call out the system and to say, "It's the system's fault," or say, "Oh, it's this group of people. They're a part of this chain of oppression," without examining where we fall and how complicit we may be. And I'll give you an example. I hear lots of people condemning racism, but also at the same time, when you ask, where are people spending their treasure, where are they putting their time, et cetera, it still is oftentimes in ... I'll just say this, that the talk doesn't match the walk.
I think what 2020 has shown us is that it is really all about how you live. You have to be dedicated to justice. It can't just be an exercise on a committee from one to three o'clock on Thursdays once every month. It really has to be, how do you live? Are your friends reflective of your value system? Do you let small things go? Are you yourself responsible for, or playing into, or propagating, histories of microaggressions? A lot of this is really about, I think, interrogating ourselves because it is when we link up that we actually create and propagate systems. So for me, 2020, it has to start with self-reflection.
Ericka Brunson-Rochette:
Thank you for sharing that, Tracie. I do think that happens a lot, where people will pick up this work and say, "Oh, I'm doing anti-racism work. I'm doing anti-oppression work." And it's more of a hobby instead of a lifestyle. So, thank you for sharing that perspective. My next question for you is in the library profession, which is notoriously white, and although white women are overrepresented in librarian and paraprofessional roles, historically white men are overrepresented at the management level. As the first African American woman to ever serve as the executive director of ALA, do you have any ideas about how we can make sure that we are hiring diverse candidates at all levels?
Tracie Hall:
Yes, I think that there are a lot of studies that are out there telling us why almost maybe 30, even 40 years since we first began in earnest conversations about multiculturalism and about diversity and then diversity, equity, and inclusion, and now diversity, equity, inclusion, and social justice, why we are still at places where we are actually seeing poorer outcomes than we have seen previously. In the time that we've been having this conversation about inclusion and diversity and social justice, we have also seen the rise of mass incarceration as a phenomenon.
We have seen at least in the last few years, at least Black mortality increase and outpace that of their communities. We've seen, I think definitely as a result of the pandemic, how disconnected people are, especially BIPOC communities are, not only from the digital world, but also from public health in general. And now, a lot of times, we are seeing that just at least the access points to education and to employment and public health, many, many of those access points are mitigated through some type of online platform.
So, we've seen basically, I think, some material outcomes worsen, even as we've paid a lot of lip service, increasingly so, to notions of equity, diversity and inclusion and social justice. So, why, even as we talk and publish and read and form committees and working groups and task forces, why are these outcomes worsening? I just want to pause right there and let that tension sink in. One thing that I will say is that any kind of, form of, racialized capitalism always finds a veneer to hide behind. And one of the things that I really worry about is whether or not the reason why we have actually seen outcomes grow, widen, and calcify is in some cases we are talking about something that we, as a collective, are not fully committed to.
Now, when I think about research by people like Frank Dobbin and Alexandra Khalev on why diversity programs fail, many, many of those, that paper and many other papers like that say that they fail because no one actually does anything about the result, no one hires people of color, or they don't promote, or they allow the ogres that live under the bridge to still, in some ways, impair people's ability to cross and to really find a place of belonging in organizations, or they hold leaders of color, or managers of color, by different standards than they do their white peers. There are a lot of reasons why I think we're at a place where even in our sector, we have seen really a static return in the LIS community, even on programs that I think were meant to counter.
At this point, there used to be this conversation about, "Well, we have to invest in the pipeline," and I think and I want to commend the American Library Association for this, invested in the spectrum program, which I'm a beneficiary of, I'm in the first cohort, a program that was really meant to recruit people of color and make visible careers in that LIS community and to provide peer mentoring and mentorship by leaders in the field, especially leaders of color, to create this space of resonance and of belonging as people moved into the profession.
And what we do see is that now the president-elect for the Public Library Association, Sonia Antoine, she is a former Spectrum scholar. The president-elect who will soon be president, Maria McCauley, same, is a Spectrum scholar, we've seen that happen, as am I of course, as I've mentioned. But now we see there is deep awareness of the program, but we still need to grow the support. And we still need to grow the replication by institutions that want to invest in people of color, moving into positions where they are librarians. I think that this is such an important question and it just doesn't have a quick answer, but I do think that one thing that we see as well in many of the studies that talk about workplace diversity, is that hiring and having a plan for not only recruitment but also retention, is really essential. And I think that that is something that we have to commit ourselves to. We can't just study the issue, we actually have to implement and we have to interrogate. I think the systems of exclusion that actually and definitely exist in most institutions in this country, and libraries are not excepted.
Ericka Brunson-Rochette:
You're so right about that.
Tracie Hall:
I guess one thing that I do want to say is that I think the question of diversity for me is always a question of genius as well. I think that it is really critical in libraries that we commit to hiring a diverse workforce because it is our responsibility to ensure that we're able to record, to connect, to disseminate, to make available, the full record of intellectual production in this country. I think that necessarily when we don't have a diverse workforce in libraries, it impairs our ability to do that thing which is the very basis of our job. And I think because of that, it actually impairs our credibility. And so for me, it isn't just about representation, although representation alone is important. It is about our ability to fully be the repository of intellectual production that libraries are called to be and have always been called to be.
Melissa Anderson:
I'm so glad you said that, Tracie, because I was going to ask you to explain or speak to our listeners about how important it is to diversify library staff and management for the growth and development of the profession. And you're talking about even more than future-focused development, but also about, really, the core values. I mean, the absolute foundation of everything that we do is. Is there anything else you'd like to say about diversification of staff and management and the development of the profession?
Tracie Hall:
Yeah, I mean, I think that when it comes to the American Library Association, we operate around 12 core values and that includes diversity. It includes intellectual freedom, social responsibility, et cetera, privacy, all of those things. I think that what we see in libraries is that there are times when libraries have really resisted the status quo and where you see libraries really clinging to the core values, that is where I think libraries have actually served as a bridge or really on the vanguard in terms of protecting our personal liberties. And you would see that now today in an era where, say for instance, censorship has far exceeded that of the McCarthy era. What we saw in 1952 in the height of the McCarthy era is librarians going to a convention that was convened by the American Library Association, looking specifically at intellectual freedom.
So, rather than just falling into the status quo of thinking about centering what was considered to be un-American books, titles like Robin Hood, or books by Langston Hughes or W.E.B. Dubois, or Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience, because it had become a primer for the early Civil Rights era, in terms of peaceful protest, you see all of those books that were being banned under these thinly veiled accusations that they were somehow Marxist or un-American, and you realize that many of those books were about integration or about our early ideas of equity. And where you see libraries or even the American Library Association countering that, we can point to those moments as a reason why we enjoy the right to read freely in this country today.
So, I think if we look at who was on the vanguard of those movements and specifically of that particular movement, even though we didn't have as many BIPOC librarians as we do today, many, many BIPOC librarians of that era really were crying out for intellectual freedom and for social justice. And so for me, having a diverse cohort or cadre of library leaders and workers in this country, I think ensures that we protect our human rights and that we recognize the humanity that exists in all of its diversity in the communities we serve.
Ericka Brunson-Rochette:
Absolutely. So Tracie, you spoke to this a little bit earlier about some of these efforts, quote unquote, of those who are in positions to hire and to recruit and to retain staff of color being more performative, or a lip service. So, we know that hiring people of color becomes a numbers game for some libraries. Does this relatively shallow view of EDI fail to create a culture of real inclusion? And if so, what can we do to make sure libraries are engaging with EDI issues more deeply?
Tracie Hall:
That's a great question. I want to ask you to say a little bit more about the notions of a numbers game.
Ericka Brunson-Rochette:
Yeah, so there's a lot of libraries that will do diversity hires just to say, "Look, we're trying to diversify our library." Look at the efforts that we're putting forth. Or there are instances of tokenism where they'll hire somebody and say, "Oh, we have communities in our libraries that we serve that speak Spanish. And look, we have this one librarian or library staff member that we hired that speaks Spanish, so that's going to fix that need," but we know that's not true and that's not how we really connect with our communities of color.
Tracie Hall:
So, I think that the performativity there, I thank you for speaking to some of those examples, I want to ensure that we are, I think, honest. Emerson says, in the treatise on friendship, "Shall we not be as real as the things we see?" And I just want to be honest. I think that as long as we have those very narrow or stilted approaches to diversity in the field, we'll never get anywhere. Anyone who identifies someone as a diversity hire, really minimizes what that person brings to the table, or anyone who says that we are serving a population we have identified according to our last census, we have identified an uptick by 10% of ... Hold on, just one moment. I live in a train crossing and it's really—
Ericka Brunson-Rochette: I love the authenticity of the background noise.
Tracie Hall:
I live in Pullman; it historically has its own history of labor and race coming together. So, the backdrop of where I'm actually doing this, having this conversation with you, just feels like it's so apropos to the questions being asked, but I want to go back to this notion of diversity hires. I really reject that entire concept and if there is anyone today in 2022, that is willing to hire someone because they're a diversity hire, I think that is so shortsighted, as to really call into question whether or not the whole premise is a valid one.
Because I know that part of this conversation today is to ensure that we understand that we're not talking about equity, diversity, and inclusion, because it's altruism. We are really talking about equity, diversity, and inclusion because it's critical to the sustainability of this country, of our communities, and of the libraries that serve them.
So, to minimize anyone's potential contributions to a library by saying that they're are only hired because they're a person of color, or they're only hired because of their ethnolinguistic background, that to me is very egregious. And I hope that my saying that compounds the notion that there is no place in 2022, where we see genius rising from every area of this country, despite sometimes the opportunities that have been afforded individuals, for us to reduce the potential that someone can bring to a library by relegating them to the status of a diversity hire or of a short-term program intended to mitigate or mediate some other kinds of gaps or ills, I think not only is that problematic, but that has to stop immediately.
Melissa Anderson:
Thank you, Tracie, for saying that. I'm wondering if one of the ways to fight back against that mindset of the diversity hire is through mentorship? Research shows that BIPOC workers are consistently excluded from teams and from mentorship opportunities due to affinity bias, and the LA County Library director Skye Patrick talked about her lack of mentorship in a library journal interview back in 2018 that was celebrating her winning the Library Journal 2019 Librarian of the Year Award. And she said, "I have never had an active mentor. I have done it on my own. I have learned a lot from leaders, directors, and other people, but I've never had an active mentor-mentee relationship." So, knowing this, how can library leaders work toward changing this reality and develop both formal and informal mentorship opportunities so that when we do find, and recruit, and hire someone who's from an underrepresented group, they actually are cultivated and helped to reach their-
Tracie Hall:
Yeah, I think there's so much in what Skye said there. I know Skye very well. We had an opportunity to work together at Queens Library when we were both there and she's so deserving, I think, of that recognition, 2019 Librarian of the Year. But I do think that mentorship happens in different ways. I myself had an opportunity to have, I think, someone,--that we have coined the term, or maybe started to use the term--friendtor, Satia Marshall Orange, who is the daughter of A.P. Marshall, and A.P. Marshall is part of that founding history of the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. And Satia would go on to lead ALA's Office of Literacy and Outreach Services, OLOS, and I would say that she's been a lifelong mentor.
She was the one who recruited me to librarianship. I was working in a library, and there's a lot of research to bear this out, is that we do have people of color who, the largest segment of people of color, who work in libraries tend to work in administrative functions, but are not in the role of librarian. And there is such a divide sometimes between library staff and support staff that we need to address and to speak to. I know that at ALA, we're doing a lot of work to really honor the role of support staff. But as someone who started in libraries as a coordinator, who was not a librarian, I'm very sensitive to this, but I remember myself, no one talked to me about becoming a librarian. No one said I had the bachelor's degree. I actually had another master's degree, but no one mentioned to me, "Oh, you should think about librarianship." So, I think when Satia showed up at Seattle Public Library, she was actually going to give a talk. She came to my little office area and she said, "I've been hearing about you and about the outreach work you're doing in community, you should think about librarianship."
There she was, this Black woman who was a librarian. I remember saying to her, "I've been thinking about getting a PhD, tell me why I should be thinking about librarianship." And she talked about her own history and all of the various things that she had done. And I think by the time she finished the conversation, I was ready to sign up for anything that she wanted me to do because she took the time and she saw something in me. So, when we go back to what Skye is saying here, many times we don't mentor. We don't say to someone, especially people of color, "I recognize the work you're doing and I think you have a future in this field." Or, "I recognize the work that you're doing and I would love to talk to you about my own experiences," but it goes two ways because I'm a big believer in personal agency. It wasn't Satia that made herself my mentor, I made Satia my mentor.
I followed up, I let her know that I was following up. I got her email and I would reach out to her from time to time and she would do the same. I remember I moved across the country to another library. She was actually giving a lecture, being recognized for giving a lecture in Connecticut, where I moved to, and she invited me to be her guest. So, we began to do something that we call friendtor, friendtorship. So, in addition to mentorship, she just began to talk about her experiences as a Black woman, who was a leader in this profession. And that began in some ways to set, if you will, even like benchmarks for me. Gave me permission, first of all, to imagine that a lot of the change that I had hoped to create in the world around social justice, that I could do that perhaps through librarianship.
So, I want to say that, I think that while I think that we don't think as deeply as we should about mentorship, I do think that mentorship is a two-way street. And in fact, for The Black Librarian Revisited, a book that was just published, it is a series that was started by E.J. Josey, who was credited as founding the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. Satia Orange and I wrote, actually, an article about mentorship, wrote a chapter on mentorship for that book. So, this is something that I think that we do need to be intentional about in a way that I think Skye is suggesting, but I want to say to folks, be proactive, identifying someone in community, it doesn't even have to be a librarian.
If you are reading the newspaper and there's someone who opened up a bookstore, or opened up an arts venue, or has started a small business and you think that there's someone that could mentor you, or maybe you want to ask them questions, take them out, buy them coffee. I used to do that. I used to, whenever I was reading about someone who was doing something interesting that inspired me, I'd sometimes figure out how I could get in touch with them. So, mentorship would happen in different ways. I could be mentored just through a coffee date. I could be mentored by taking someone out for dinner. I could be mentored by going to hear someone lecture and Carla Hayden, who is our librarian of Congress, I have to call her out because she is definitely a mentor of mine. We met in the most inauspicious way.
We were both at an ALA convention and I was still making my way. I remember seeing her and she was so stylish and just so put together and not even fully understanding she would later become president, elected president of the American Library Association. But I remember seeing her and being so taken just with her personhood that I said something like, "I like ... " whatever, your scarf, your jacket, your hair, whatever it is. I remember she asked me, "Well, who are you? And tell me a little bit more about yourself." And our relationship, as her being mentor and me being mentee, which continues to this day, it started in that very moment. And that is because I was willing to reach out.
So, I just want to say I'm a big believer in agency. Don't wait, honor your ambitions and your feelings. And if someone isn't willing to come to you and say, "Hey, can I mentor you?" If the programs don't exist and aren't offered, haven't been built by your institution, pick your own mentor and let them mentor you from up close or afar. I think that I can speak in attest to having done that and it has really served me well.
Ericka Brunson-Rochette:
Thank you, Tracie, that was phenomenal. I love that phrase that you and Satia coined, the 'friendtor', 'friendtorship'. I'm going to have to use that. And when we're thinking about things like taking on the initiative or the self-agency to own the responsibility of establishing these mentor and mentee relationship, outside of that, do you have any advice for BIPOC library workers who face a lack of institutional support when it comes to mentorship in professional development?
Tracie Hall:
Yeah, create your own, create your own. And I'll say this, in arts administration, I notice that again, the conversation that we're having about librarianship is really true of almost any profession in the US, unless there has been a really an overt attempt at intervention. Spectrum is one on the level of moving people into a degree. I think that we have many other ways that we are trying to do this within the field through special institutes. I just came back from the Black Caucus, they had a leadership institute for library school students and early career professionals in Durham, and really placed some of the most evocative and dynamic speakers, really at the same table and everyone was exchanging emails and really moving from becoming mentees and mentors, to a group of people sharing and exchanging together.
But in arts administration, I noticed also that there was a big gap between people who were maybe doing programs, or doing outreach, or at the education level of arts organizations and those who were really in the lead administration roles of executive director, artistic director, or director of programs. And really inspired by my own experience at Spectrum, I worked with Americans for the Arts to actually create that program. But what we saw is that we were meeting people who had done versions of that on a level themselves, arts administrators in Boston, arts administrators of color here in Chicago, who really took it upon themselves to try to create that thing that they felt was missing.
So, what I would say is that if you are in a place where there's a lack of institutional support, or there isn't some sort of railroad track that's already been laid in terms of not just mentorship, but even thinking about professional development more broadly, think about that, introduce that, create that. If your institution won't support you, create it outside of your institution. I don't think that it would do any disservice to go back and to look. I'm always looking at what was happening in the 19th and 20th century. What were Black people, and indigenous people, and people of color more broadly, what institutions were they creating in the face of a lot of times, a lot of racial terror? But a lot of times these organizations that were being created and then would come to make all of the difference, they were created by communities themselves. We don't have to wait for someone else to sanction or to set up. We can do it ourselves.
Melissa Anderson:
Thank you so much for that answer, Tracie. Along those lines, I was wondering if we could of think about this from the manager's perspective. And so, if you're the manager of an underfunded library, or you're the director of a library that is really interested in trying to provide some of these opportunities to people, what can they do as managers or directors to provide professional development opportunities for staff, particularly as it relates to EDI training?
Tracie Hall:
At the American Library Association, and definitely I think there isn't an LIS institution, or there are very few, that have actually prospered during this period of the pandemic. Most LIS institutions have taken a huge hit. So, I came into ALA, into this role at ALA just two weeks before COVID-19 was declared a worldwide pandemic and, like every other leader, being faced with having to make really difficult decisions about budget. But one thing that even in the face of that was important to me, it was ensuring that every single staff member had at least a small professional development alloted, because that to me is the most critical investment that we can make in institutions to invest in people and to set the expectation that the organization is a learning organization and that all who work for it are really expected to learn, and to grow, and to set goals that they need and then exceed.
So, I think that one thing that we can do is to first of all, look at where there are opportunities and you can be as innovative as you can for professional development. The other thing is to routinize training. I think that we all, all of us, really, even this conversation in some ways I'm imagining, is being had, because we want to remind people of some things about the value of EDI. But in other cases, we also want to assert the importance of a certain level of EDI competency. And so, that's what training does, is that it begins to standardize a level or an expectation around EDI competency. I think that also has to be routinized and that budget really needs to be interrogated to say, "Okay, how do I support professional development? And also how do I begin to routinize training?" Do we make sure that every member of the staff is trained every two to three years?
At ALA, we made that commitment and we have--we're just in the midst this month of a staff-wide, all staff accessibility training, and then we'll continue, training around racial diversity, training around in general EDISJ training. So, I think that it really starts looking at the level of budget because I think if you really want to see what an institution stands for, it really can be shown in how they spend their resources. So, these things have to be built into the budget. I think the other thing in terms of EDI training is that a lot of people in any institution have a lot of lived experience.
So, listen to those who have that lived experience when they're making suggestions. There are other things that can happen, create a reading list, playlist. It could even be a video list, if it's open source. There are many, many ways that we could be inventive and even budget conscious when it comes to creating a baseline of education. Reading a book, everyone reading a book, [inaudible 00:33:53] libraries, inviting the author, or looking at videos of the author talking about the book, and then having those discussions. There are so many ways that we can routinize conversations about EDI training and professional development.
Ericka Brunson-Rochette:
Tracie, can you tell me what your vision is for how national organizations like ALA, ACRL, and others can support and encourage EDI initiatives and that competency building around those topics that you were talking about on a local level? So, how can those larger or national organizations help smaller libraries?
Tracie Hall:
Yes, absolutely. So, one thing that the council of the American Library Association did this year was to adopt a diversity, equity, and inclusion scorecard for library and information organizations that was actually created by the committee on diversity, in our Office for Diversity Literacy and Outreach Services, ODLOS. And that scorecard has five areas. And first is the embeddedness of EDI into the culture and the climate of the organization. And that's ensuring that EDI is an articulated priority, so that if you go to the website of an LIS organization, or if you talk to the staff, or you look at how time is spent and how money is invested, you see those values reflected.
The second is of course, what we just talked about, a commitment to training and education, professional development, and routine training. The third area that was called for was intentional recruitment, hiring, retention, and promotion to ensure that there was a mechanism, not just for recruiting quote unquote “diversity hires,” but ensuring that at the end of that, we have a diverse management and leadership staff.
Next was budgeting for DEI. As I said, you tell me an organization's mission, a library's mission, the first thing I'm going to ask is let me look at the budget and see if it's reflected there. So, ensuring that it's not just platitudinal, but we're actually making concrete, palpable investments in building a culture of belonging and in ensuring that there is commitment to EDI. And finally, data practices. Ensuring that an organization is tracking diversity and accessibility and inclusion in its workforce, that is collecting and analyzing and dissemination, disseminating, making visible, information about the communities that it serves and its reach, et cetera. And that it's its ability to respond to all of the various kinds of diversity that might exist in community.
At ALA, we've started to look at and track, and it's not ... and we've always done this, but really with the idea of ensuring the increase of EDI in our workforce. So, we have in the last two years, been very intentional and we have actually increased BIPOC diversity in our workforce by 7%. And we have a long way to go and we have to do that because the American Library Association is headquartered in Chicago. We have offices also in Philadelphia, and DC, and in Middletown, Connecticut, each of those communities and regions are diverse. So, we don't have full diversity reflected in our staff. We're not tapping the full talent pool and we know that. So, I will stop there to say that I think that scorecard, which council actually adopted, preside over the association and the board also too supported to preside over ALA operations, has been a compass for me at the American Library Association and offers, I think, a compass for all libraries across the country.
Melissa Anderson:
That's really helpful Tracie though. So, that scorecard sounds like it could be useful really to anyone on any level. We have one final question for you today and it's a readers advisory question.
Tracie Hall:
Yes, of course.
Melissa Anderson:
Because we're librarians, right? So-
Tracie Hall:
Right, we have to talk about information and we have to talk about books.
Melissa Anderson:
That's right. So are there any EDI, and anti-racism resources, like books, or articles, or trainings for libraries and for librarians that you'd like to recommend?
Tracie Hall:
I'm going to say this because it's really true and it's probably maybe a different kind of answer, but I'll say this in various iterations of my own career, formally directing which is now ODLOS, the Office for Diversity, Literacy and Outreach Services. Those two offices came together to become even stronger at ALA, but I've also done a lot of diversity consulting at some point in my career. And one thing that I will say today in terms of my evolution and where I am today, I still go to primary source materials.
So I now, in terms of thinking about EDI and anti-racism, I'm spending a lot of time looking at things like the slave code laws and how the slave code laws in the 1800s forbade reading and even the teaching of reading to Black people, I'm spending a lot of time going back in and reading early documents related to what was happening in terms of the ADA, the American Disabilities Act. I'm really going back and I'm trying to look at some of the narrative and some of the first-hand accounts around Stonewall, et cetera.
So, I'm going to say that the thing that is inspiring most in terms of EDI today, is looking at the narratives, and the lived experiences, and the histories and historiographies of how certain movements were born, because it's so illustrative in terms of what we must do today, because it's easy to feel powerless today. It's easy to wait for institutions to respond to you, or to acknowledge you. It's sort of like walking down the hall and waiting for the clique that is so obnoxious, but also very snobby, to say, "Oh, that's a cute outfit." That's never going to happen.
What we have to do today is really about agency. And I'll have to tell you the thing that has really, I think been one of the most generative recent experiences that I had, was I was at the Schomburg and I got a chance to see the chapter from The Autobiography of Malcolm X that was actually sort of struck by Alex Haley, who was Malcolm X's editor for that book. And in that chapter, that chapter is so incredible and also explosive, he talks about, Malcolm X does, the ways in which he sees Black folks fighting for integration, but waiting for larger institutions to acknowledge them or to let them in.
And one of the things that he says is that we are waiting to hold our quote unquote “Negro conventions,” which was the term then, at these big hotels, with the money that we are spending to the few hotels that are letting us in, and sometimes with very poor treatment and all of that. We could buy hotels, we could buy hotels that would be actually contributing to our communities. And there's something at this point in my age, and maybe because I am beginning to feel more and more just how finite life is, the idea of waiting for others to acknowledge your humanity is something that I totally reject.
We have to see the humanity in ourselves and in each other. We have to see that we are worth it. And in libraries, we have to understand the capacity that libraries have to actually be places that are radical places of belonging and resonance and utility in communities and just not wait. So, I'm looking for every story, every history, every account, every firsthand experience, that just gives me the tools that I need in this position. And as someone who is alive at this time, to do whatever I can to make change and to work for justice.
Melissa Anderson:
I love that answer. That's inspiring, really, to all of us.
Ericka Brunson-Rochette:
Yes, thank you. Thank you for this wonderful discussion and for all of your engaging answers, Tracie. We were so honored to have you on the podcast today and I'm hoping that our listeners out there are ready to make that commitment to intentionality around diversifying their libraries and eradicating some of those oppressive practices when it comes to hiring, retention, mentorship, training, development, and all of those really important concepts that we talked about today, specifically as it pertains to BIPOC workers. So, thank you so much for offering your knowledge and just your wealth of experience and perspective with us.
Tracie Hall:
Oh, thank you so much for the great work you're doing and keep doing it.
Melissa Anderson:
So for me, one of the most interesting takeaways from Tracie's comments on the podcast and answers to our questions was how diversity really isn't a new thing. It's also not an add-on, it's not even really an initiative. It's something that's actually woven into the core of what librarianship really is and what libraries can be in communities. And once you start looking at it in that really comprehensive way, you see that it's everything that we are and everything that we do, it's about access, it's about all the core values of librarianship and people who are seeing it from a much more shallow perspective where it's a one and done, and it's a new initiative, and it's something that you're going to try out. That's really the wrong way to be looking at it and to be going about it.
Ericka Brunson-Rochette:
Absolutely, Melissa. I also really took away a lot from that conversation and those just general ideas of who are your friends and who do you have in your life? And does that reflect the work that you do? I really felt that that spoke to our committee and to the work that we were doing as well. So, something that I really enjoyed and really resonated with me from our conversation with Tracie, was the idea of having that personal agency when it comes to mentors in your life.
When I started as a library professional, I didn't really know any other librarians of color. I'm a very passing librarian of color, so there were a lot of situations and things that came up when I started, that I didn't know who to talk to. So, really taking that initiative to find people in your life, even if they aren't necessarily in the library profession, but those people who inspire you, who help you grow, and really being an advocate for yourself and being proactive.
Melissa Anderson:
She spoke so powerfully about that. I think that was a really important point.
Ericka Brunson-Rochette:
Absolutely. So, I'm going to challenge our listeners out there. I want everyone to take a moment to think about who you have in your life. What personal connections do you have, who inspires you and who could make a good mentor? Is there anyone around you or in your life that you could reach out to, and maybe just buy that cup of coffee or have that conversation and really create those 'friendtorships'that Tracie talked about?
Melissa Anderson:
I love that. And I also think that while you're looking around at who inspires you and who could possibly be a mentor for you, it also would be a great moment to look out and say, "Is there somebody that I could actually mentor? Is there somebody that maybe has reached out to me in a more friendly way that I could maybe take it to that next level and really help in a professional context or as a mentor?" I think that it's a great moment to look in both directions, look behind you and look forward too.
Ericka Brunson-Rochette:
For sure, Melissa. I love that.
Melissa Anderson:
Another thing I'd like to challenge our listeners to do is to think a little bit about all the things Tracie was saying about history. She talked a lot about history throughout the podcast, and I thought something that we don't maybe do enough is look at the history of our own institutions, our own communities, our own libraries, and look at places where we maybe haven't lived up to all the things that we could be, where our library hasn't maybe always lived up to those core values, and how our practices, and our policies and our outreach hasn't maybe quite been right up there. And then think about what could you do to remedy that, so you can start a history that's moving in a more positive direction?
Ericka Brunson-Rochette:
Definitely. Well, it sounds like we have a lot to look around for and look out for. And I'm just so thankful that we had this opportunity to really tap into Tracie's expertise and knowledge. And I thank our listeners out there for taking on time to reflect and to challenge themselves as well.
Melissa Anderson:
Yes, thank you.
Voiceover:
OVERDUE: Weeding Out Oppression in Libraries, would not be possible without the generous support from the Oregon Library Association and the State Library of Oregon, whose mission is to provide leadership and resources to continue growing vibrant library services for Oregonians.
Voiceover:
We would like to take time to acknowledge historical injustices. We recognize Oregon was established as a white sanctuary state with the intent to exclude African American and Black people on ancestral lands stolen from dispossessed indigenous peoples. We recognize and honor the members of federally recognized tribes and unrecognized tribes of Oregon. We honor Native American ancestors, past, present, and future, whose land we still occupy. This acknowledgment aims to deconstruct false histories, correct the historical record, and disrupt genocidal practices by refocusing attention to the original people of the land we inhabit, the slave trade enforced labor that built this country, and to the oppressive social systems interwoven into the fabric of our national and regional heritage. We ask that you take a moment to acknowledge and reflect as well.
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