topographies of whiteness: mapping whiteness in

TOPOGRAPHIES OF WHITENESS: MAPPING WHITENESS IN LIBRARY AND INFORMATION SCIENCE

Gina Schlesselman-Tarango, Editor

LIBRARY JUICE PRESS SACRAMENTO, CA

Copyright respective authors, 2017 Published in 2017 by Library Juice Press Library Juice Press PO Box 188784 Sacramento, CA 95822 http://libraryj u ice press.com/ This book is printed on acid-free, sustainably-sourced paper.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Forthcoming

Chapter 2 INTERROGATING WHITENESS IN COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY .ARCHIVAL SPACES AT PREDOMINANTLY WHITE INSTITUTIONS

Nicole M. Joseph, Katherine M. Crowe, and Janiece Mackey Introduction College and university archives at Predominantly White Institutions (PWis) in many ways perpetuate a master narrative of whiteness, in large part due to foundational archival theory and best practices. It is critical that archivists in college and university archives understand how archival theory and practice supports whiteness in the historical record so that they can begin to address, problematize, and ultimately fissure whiteness in their work and their archives. This chapter will examine the cultural and historical context within which archives at many PWis and Minority-Serving Institutions (MSis)­ specifically Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs)-came to be. The following questions will be addressed: How do archives of PWls botl1 reflect and perpetuate a master narrative around whiteness? How do the archives of HBCUs and similar institutions create necessary counter-narratives that interrogate whiteness and white supremacy in the historical record? How can college and university archives at PWis actively work to support the development of inclusive and actively 55

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anti-racist archives by supporting and promoting awareness and access to the counter-narratives present in the historical records of their own institutions and those of HBCU archives? The authors will use critical race theory (CRT) and legal scholar Dr. Cheryl Harris's definition of whiteness as "the right to exclude" to examine the cultural context around which archives in the United States, particularly at PWis and HBCUs, were established and con­ structed as sites where this exclusion is perpetuated. 1 This chapter will include personal reflections from Ms. Crowe, who identifies as white, about her work as an archivist with a goal of creating a more inclusive, compositionally diverse, and actively anti-racist university archives at the University of Denver. The article will also draw upon Dr. Joseph's extensive experience as a researcher in the archives of multiple HBCUs, as well as her work with Ms. Crowe to document the history of African American alumnae at the University of Denver. Ms. Mackey, a doctoral student at the University of Denver, has worked with Dr. Joseph on research into the preservation of underrepresented narratives and his­ tories, using CRT to amplify the multiple realities of these (sometimes) shared narratives and histories between and among faculty, students, and staff at HBCUs.

Defining and Disrupting Whiteness at Work The disruption of whiteness at work in archives requires an exami­ nation of how the concept of whiteness and white privilege has been defined and discussed across the disciplines. This examination is critical, because scholarship and these definitions are predicated to some degree on the evidence present in (or excluded from) the historical record accessible to scholars. In addition, the concept of "counter-narratives" (i.e. narratives that challenge dominant or otherwise "authoritative" narratives), a major component of CR1: is also dependent to some 1. Cheryl I. Harris, "\'vhiteness as Property." Harvard L.LJJ/J Review 106, no. 8 (1993): 1714.

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degree on scholars' ability to draw from the historical record and/ or primary sources. If archivists at P\VIs do not examine, deconstruct, and disrupt archives' histories as sites of privilege and exclusion, the historical record is necessarily less inclusive, and scholars' work in these areas is circumscribed. Sociologists Eduardo Bonilla-Silva and Ruth Frankenberg's work on structural racism and whiteness as a social construct illustrates how whiteness and white privilege can contribute to dominance and exclusion in society and, by extension, within the historical record. Bonilla-Silva defines "racialization" as "the process of attaching meaning to a people," informing how "racism provides the rules for perceiving and dealing with the 'other' in a racialized society."2 Race, in Bonilla-Silva's frame­ work, becomes the '"organizational map' that guides the actions of racial actors in society ... [becoming] as material as the racial relations it organizes."1 Frankenberg's take is similar; she defines whiteness as "the production and reproduction of dominance rather than subor­ dination, normativity rather than marginality, and privilege rather than disadvantage."1 Bonilla-Silva also uses his structural framework to illus­ trate racialization and racism's influence on white/American Indian and white/Black relations in American history, as well as the "whitening" of Irish and Jewish immigrants initially perceived as not-white." In all of Bonilla-Silva's examples, he uses the lens of racism to show how the dominant group has used racialization of the subordinate group to justify further subordination or exclusion of any persons in that group who question the dominant paradigm.6 Legal scholar Cheryl Harris's definition of "whiteness" and white identity as a kind of property interest shows how, from a legal perspective, 2. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, "Rethinking Racism: "foward a Structural Interpre­ tation," Ametican So1iological B..evie111 62, no. 3 (1997): 472, 47 4. 3.Ibid. 4. Ruth Frankenberg, [17/Jite Women, Race Matters: The Soda! Got1s/mclio11 of LVhitmm· (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993): 236. 5. Ibid., 476. 6. Ibid., 473.

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whiteness can function as a social (in her case, legal) construct that allows for power, beliefs, acts, and decisions to permeate society in a manner that is unconscious and often unquestioned. 7 Harris argues: Whiteness is not simply and solely a legally recognized property interest. It is simultaneously an aspect of self-identity and of personhood, and its relation to the law of property is complex. Whiteness has functioned as self-identity in the domain of the intrinsic, personal and psychological; as reputation in the interstices between internal and external identity; as property in the extrinsic, public, and legal realms.R

I-Iarris's definition of whiteness within this legal framework of prop­ erty rights focuses on whiteness's "right to exclude,"'> for "whiteness has been characterized, not by an inherent unifying characteristic, but by the exclusion of others deemed to be 'not white."' 111 In this way, "possessors of whiteness were granted the legal right to exclude others from the privileges inhering in whiteness; whiteness became an exclusive club whose membe.rship was closely and grudgingly guarded. The courts played an active role in enforcing this right to exclude - determining who was or was not white enough to enjoy the privileges accompany­ ing whiteness." 11 The ramifications of this "right to exclude" are clear in the history of HBCUs and PWis-HBCUs have historically existed in opposition to and apart from P\v'Is-their existence is predicated upon this exclusion and the corresponding decision by the Black com­ munity in dejure segregated states to create its own system of education in response. Scholars in multiple disciplines have also examined race and white privilege as inextricably linked to other aspects of identity such as class and gender. Legal scholar Kimberle Crenshaw coined the term 7. Harris, "Whiteness as Property," 1714. 8. Ibid., 1725. 9. Ibid., 1714. 10. Ibid., 1736. 11. Ibid.

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"intcrsectionality" to illustrate this concept in a 1 989 article in which she discussed the impossibility of discussing issues of race separate from gender. Crenshaw's writing on this topic is specific to Black women's experiences in the legal system and public policy. She writes: "Black women are sometimes excluded from feminist theory and antiracist policy discourse because both are predicated on a discrete set of experi­ ences that often does not accurately reflect the interaction of race and gender."12 Bonilla-Silva has also written about how race interacts as a part of the "systemic matrix of the social system," with "class, gender, and race . . . as elements" of this matrix that ultimately favors "the interest of the dominant race/ class/ gender."11 Historian Darlene Clark Hine, when asked why she sometimes refers to herself as a "womanist" and sometimes as a "feminist," said: "feminism . . . can sometimes obscure

the racism that some white women direct against black women." 1 1 The

poet Audre Lorde brings sexual orientation and gender identity into the conversation; in her "biomythography," Zami: A Ne1v Spelli11,g q/ lv[y Nc1me, she recounts her experiences as a Black lesbian moving through a predominantly white lesbian community. In her remembrances she describes encountering several white lesbians who are quick to proclaim that, because they are all part of a marginalized group, their experiences of oppression are the same as Lorde's-an idea that Lorde flatly rejects.1.1 These scholars' definitions of whiteness are foundational to an understanding of how race, privilege, and powet work in the world. By extension, this work is also critical to an understanding of how power,

1 2. Kimberle Crenshaw, "Dcmarginalizing tllc:: Intersection of Race and Sex: Toward a Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory, and Antiracist Politics," University qf 0Jicago Legal Forum 1 , article 8 (1 989): 140, http://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/uclf/vol1 989/iss1 /8. 13. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, "Rethinking Racism: Toward a Structural Inter­ pretation," Ctmte,Jor Research 011 Social Orga11izatioll: IF'orki11c� Papers Series no. 526 (1 994) : 3, http:/ /hdl.handle.net/2027.42/S1 290. 1 4. Roger Adelson, "Interview with Darlenc Clark Hine," Historia11 57, no. 2, (1995): 273. 1 S . Audre Lorde, Zami: A New Spelling �/ My Name (Trumansburg, NY: Crossing Press, 1 9 82), 225.

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privilege, and exclusion manifests in foundational archival theory and best practice, which in turn manifests in the historical record present in college and university archives. Scholars' explorations of whiteness in the historical record are to some degree contingent upon the evidence present in or excluded from that record. Additionally, at times one's ability to locate "counter-narratives"-stories that challenge dominant or otherwise "authoritative" narratives-is also dependent on the ability

to draw from the historical record. 1 1' Therefore, if archivists at P\Vls do not examine, deconstruct, and disrupt archives' histories as sites of

privilege and exclusion, the historical record is necessarily less inclusive and scholars' work in these areas is circumscribed.

Archives, Archivists, and White Supremacy in the Historical Record If you want the history of a white man, you go to the library. If you want the history of black women, you go to the attics, the closets, and the basements. 17 -Alta Jett, project coordinator for the community-focused Black IJ:omen in the Middle J,J:est archive s project

The above statement encapsulates the issue of archives as sites of power and privilege, exclusion and erasure, specific to gender, class, and particularly race and whiteness. The early foundational texts of modern archival theory (Muller, Feith, and Fruin [1 898], Jenkinson [1937], and, to some degree, Schellenberg [1965]) are built around the assumption that archives should consist entirely of official government or other corporate or business organizational records, leaving "private and per­ sonal archives to the purview of libraries and librarians." 1 8 In this way, 16 . Delgado and Ste fancic, Critical Race Theo�y, 212. 17. Paul E. Bushnell, "The Black 1¥/ome11 in the Middle 1¥/est Prqject: A Comprehen­ sive Resource G11ide, Illinois and Indiana by Darlene Clark Hine," Illinois Historical .fo11ma! 8 l , no. 2 (1988): 152. 18. Samuel Muller, Arthur H. Leavitt, and R. Fruin, Ma1111alfor the Arrange­ ment and Desc1iptio11 qf' Anhives (New York: 1 'he H.W Wilson Company, 1940);

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according to archivist and historian of archival theory and practice Terry Cook, "those in power decided who was allowed to speak and who was forced into silence, both in public life and in archival records . . . indeed, archives had their institutional origins in the ancient world as agents for

legitimizing such power and for marginalizing those without power." 1 'J Despite this distinction in the professional literature about what "archives" should be and what they should not collect, many college and university archives at both P\Vls and HBCUs have chosen to collect "historical manuscripts" (i.e. personal papers and other materials that are not official organizational records of the institution) in addition to the official records of the institution. 20 However, the archival theories espoused by Jenkinson and Schellenberg continue to inform archivists' conceptions of their professional roles as "the professional preservers, the keepers, the handmaidens," rather than "interpreters, mediators, or co-constructors" of social memory. 21 Beginning in the 1 970s, propo­ nents of the "new social history" began to challenge archivists on their attempts to remain "neutral" and "objective." 22 The most notable early example of this was the historian Howard Zinn who, in a speech given to the Society of American Archivists in 1 970, noted several examples of the real impact of "objectivity" on the racial diversity of archival collections, in particular: "Recently I came across a list of letterpress publications sponsored, assisted, and endorsed by the National Historical

Hilary Jenkinson, A Manna/ of Archive Administration (London: P. Lund, Humphries & Company, Ltd: 1 93 7); T. R. Schellenberg, The Management �/' Archives. Columbia University Studies in Library Service 1 4 (New York: Columbia U niversity Press, 1 965); Terry Cook, "What is Past is Prologue: A History of Archival Ideas Since 1 898, and the Future Paradigm Shift," Archi­ van·a 43, no. 1 (1 997), 27 1 9. Cook, "Past is Prologue," 1 8. 20. N icholas C. Burckel and J. Frank Cook, "A Profile of College and Uni­ versity Archives in the United Sta1 es," American Archivist 45, no. 4, (1 982): 41 1 . 21 . Terry Cook, "The Archive(s) is a Foreign Country: Historians, Archi­ vists, and the Changing Archival Landscape," American Archivist 74, no. 2, (201 1), 615. 22. Dale Mayer, "The New Social History: Implications for Archivists," Americ,m Archivist 48, no. 4 (1985): 388.

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Publications Commission of the General Services Administration. The papers of thirty-three Americans are being published. There is one black person on the list, and that person is Booker T Washington."20 Compounding the issue is the relative lack of racial diversity within the archival profession as a whole; of the 5,133 archivists who responded to a 2004 survey of the profession, 87.8 percent identified as "White/

Caucasian," and only 2.8 percent identified as African American.2+ The relative racial homogeneity of the archival profession has been a subject of some discussion in the professional literature as well. In 201 5 , Mario Ramirez's article "Being Assumed Not to Be" critiqued the profes­ sion's continuing emphasis on a "benign discourse of 'diversity"' over an interrogation of the "predominance of whiteness."20 The archivist Mark Greene, a primary subject of Ramirez's critique (which was aimed at the profession generally, but singled out a particular article written by Greene), in many ways supported Ramirez's arguments about the profession's "resistance to self- refl exivity" by pivoting the bulk of his response away from both substantive self-critique and critique of the profession's approach to addressing race and inequality, focusing instead on colleagues of "at least three different races and an unknown number of faiths" who had assured him that Ramirez's article "did descend to [ad hominem] personal attacks."2..perie11ces at Bryn Mmvr College. Accessed August 1, 2016. http:/ /blackatbrynmawr.blogs.brynmawr. edu/ about/. Adelson, Roger. "Interview with Darlene Clark Hine." Historian 57, no. 2 (1 995): 258-74. Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo. "Rethinking Racism: Toward a Structural Interpretation." Centerfor Research 011 Social 01��anization: IPorking Papm Series no. 526 (1994): 1-64. http:/ /hdl.handle. net/ 2027.42/ 51 290. - - -. "Rethinking Racism: Toward a Structural Interpretation." American Sodolo��ical R.evieiv 62 no. 3 (1 997): 465-80. Brait, Ellen. "Princeton Students Demand Removal of Woodrow Wilson's Name from Buildings." The Guardian, November 23, 201 5. https://www.theguar