Educating for Whiteness: Applying Critical Race Theory’s Revisionist History in Library and Information Science Research: A Methodology Paper

Stauffer, Suzanne M.

doi:10.3138/jelis.61.4.2019-0042

Cited by 9 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 16 publications

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“…The literature analysis also supports the adoption of CRT within LIS curricula, equipping the domain's scholarship and practice for contemporary social justice expectations. The nascent presence of CRT in the domain, and its alignment and suitability for LIS analysis (Stauffer, 2020), particularly given librarianship's adjacency to education, supports this. In this study CRT was found to be an appropriate and helpful LIS framework for synthesis, enabling interdisciplinary literature and the research to be drawn together and analysed for an informed examination of the roots, structures, and effects of systemic racism in healthcare information.…”

Section: Conclusion and Recommendationsmentioning

confidence: 81%

Health information equity: Rebalancing healthcare collections for racial diversity in UK public service contexts

O’Driscoll¹,

Bawden²

2022

EFI

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COVID-19 illustrated health disparities experienced by racially minoritised people, with heightened risks faced by Black and South Asian communities lending the issue transparency and urgency. Despite efforts to decolonise medical education, deficits in racial representation in research and resources remain. This study investigates the potential and imperatives for healthcare information services to contribute to health equity through their collections. The literature analysis explores collection management, decolonisation, social justice in librarianship, and Critical Race Theory (CRT) as a framework for change in information contexts. A survey of UK National Health Service (NHS) librarians provides a snapshot of awareness of health information inequity. Semi-structured interviews explore information professionals’ experiences of anti-racism in the system. The findings indicate strong engagement with the need for equitable resources but highlight some barriers to success. Opportunities identified include potential for addressing systemic racism in collection policy, capability of information services to influence, or engage in, authorship and publishing to address gaps, and the need for race-based data standards in healthcare. Synthesis of the findings through a framework of CRT tenets illustrates the relevance and utility of CRT as a tool for pursuit of equity in information practice, scholarship, and education.

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Section: Conclusion and Recommendationsmentioning

confidence: 81%

Health information equity: Rebalancing healthcare collections for racial diversity in UK public service contexts

O’Driscoll¹,

Bawden²

2022

EFI

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“…2. See Bowers et al. , 2017, Dunbar (2006), Dunbar (2008), Dunbar (2021), Furner and Dunbar (2004), Hall (2012), Hughes-Hassell and Cox (2010), Hughes-Hassell (2013), Kumasi (2012), Kumasi (2021), Leung and López-McKnight (2020), Matthews (2020), Snow and Dunbar (2022), Stauffer (2020) and Walker (2015) as a non-exhaustive list.…”

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Every information context is a CRiTical Race information Theory opportunity: informatic considerations for the information industrial complex

Dunbar

2023

DTS

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PurposeThis paper is an extension of a panel presentation delivered in response to a joint call for panels by the Social Informatics and Information Ethics and Policy Special Interest Groups for the 2022 Association for Information Science and Technology conference. The purpose is to introduce critical race frameworks and tenets as a lens to develop, assess and analyze the social informatics (SI) within information science (IS) research, professional discourse, praxis and pedagogical paradigms. This paper spotlights one of the presentations from that panel, an iteration of Critical Race Theory (CRT) designed specifically for information studies: CRiTical Race information Theory (CRiT).Design/methodology/approachJust as importantly, using SI as part of the context, the paper also includes a discussion that illustrates research and theory building possibilities as both counter and complement to the technocratic advances that permeate society at every level (macro, mezzo and micro), which can also be reasonably framed as the information industrial complex. Thus, CRiT joins other forms of critical discourse and praxis grappling with deconstructing, decolonizing, demarginalizing and demystifying the influence and impact of information technologies. While CRiT has global intentions and implications, this specific discussion has an extensive American focus.FindingsIf we consider the rapid pace in which techno-determinism is moving toward the vise grip of techno-fatalism controlled by frameworks generated from the information industrial complex, we can reasonably consider that humanity on a global basis is living within a meta-large technocratic crisis moment. This crisis moment is both acute and chronic. That is, the technocratic crisis is continuously moving quickly while simultaneously worsening over an extended period of time with no remedies and few responses to substantively address the crisis.Research limitations/implicationsPart of the nature of information and data is measurability. Thus, identifying compatible nomenclature connecting the descriptiveness of intersectionality (a seminal CRT tool) as a qualitative research method to the measurability of data connected to quantitative research, a mixed method approach moves from possible to plausible. Additionally, within IS, there are often opportunities to measure human engagement, such as social media content, search engine use, assessing practices of categorizations, and multiple forms of surveillance data as a short list. Hence, the descriptiveness of intersectional qualitative research “mixed” with the measurability of quantitative research within information settings implies exponential methodological possibilities.Practical implicationsCRiT is multilayered, on the one hand, with the intention of being a discipline-specific, information-specific form of CRT. On the other hand, CRiT theory building is interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary based on information as omnipresent phenomena. An ongoing challenge for CRiT theory building is identifying and working within a balance between, practitioners who typically throw anything and everything at practical problems, while scholars often slice problems into such small segments that practical understanding is severely limited. Embracing and integrating the dynamic interplay between developing ideas and using them is the key to evolving CRiT within the social sciences.Social implicationsThere is plenty of room as well as a need for additional narrative discussing or challenging the use or appropriation of information from a technocratic approach, a counter to the information industrial complex.Originality/valueCRiT is emerging and cutting edge in discussion that addresses the technocratic determinism found in most scholarly discourses.

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“…The post-2020 global unrest inspired other critical race theoretical LIS works, notablyStauffer's (2020) critique of LIS's propensity toward "educating for whiteness" in which they applied a revisionist historical and critical race theoretical method-ological lens to LIS research along with Leung and Lopez-McKnight's edited, open access book on "Knowledge justice: Disrupting LIS through critical race theory." In it, forty-five writers confront LIS norms by critiquing social constructions of race.…”

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confidence: 99%

Space, story, and solidarity: Designing a Black MLIS student organization amidst crisis and tumult

Ndumu

Walker

Burns-Simpson

et al. 2022

EFI

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According to LIS research, the U.S. library and information science field reflects more than 135 years of white racialized, monocultural pedagogy. Critical race theory helps us understand why Blacks remain on the margins of the LIS profession. Armed with critical racial knowledge, the Black Caucus of the American Library Association embarked on a three-year project to assert Black culture in a profession that has historically overpowered other ways of knowing. This article chronicles how BCALA leaders gleaned from Black-centered pedagogical traditions, data on Black MLIS students’ needs, and the critical race theory tenet of counterstorytelling to scaffold a national, online Black MLIS student organization that exists autonomously from mainstream U.S. LIS programs.

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Educating for Whiteness: Applying Critical Race Theory’s Revisionist History in Library and Information Science Research: A Methodology Paper

Cited by 9 publications

References 16 publications

Health information equity: Rebalancing healthcare collections for racial diversity in UK public service contexts

Health information equity: Rebalancing healthcare collections for racial diversity in UK public service contexts

Every information context is a CRiTical Race information Theory opportunity: informatic considerations for the information industrial complex

Space, story, and solidarity: Designing a Black MLIS student organization amidst crisis and tumult

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