How Does the Experience in a Library Differ for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color

Abstract

Many public and academic libraries have been showing that they may not be as welcoming to all of their students as previously thought. As a space that should be inclusive of everyone, a number of libraries across the United States still center their mission on the needs of white people. Creating space for black, indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) youth and undergraduates has not been a priority in these libraries and that impact is felt in significant ways from not seeing enough BIPOC representation in library staff to libraries not prioritizing adequate space for youth of color to feel comfortable enough to utilize library resources. There are two primary aims of this paper. The first aim is to determine whether librarians who serve youth and collegiate contingencies consider the needs of BIPOC as patrons and if those patrons can access and utilize library resources without being unfairly policed or surveilled. The second aim is to examine the possible steps that can be taken to build trust between BIPOC and their local library branches. We will take a closer look at several public and academic libraries that serve a large population of BIPOC patrons and examine the role of the library in their thoughts and attitudes.

Introduction

The library as an institution should be a safe and welcoming space for all who utilize its services. Marginalization of people of color within a library’s walls should be a relic of the past, but the unfortunate reality is that discrimination and a lack of belonging is alive and well even in the year 2023. As publicly-funded libraries were built nationwide in the early 20th century, black people were excluded as state and local racial segregation laws denied them access to public facilities with the majority of this denial occurring in the Southern part of the United States. In 1896, the Supreme Court upheld the “separate but equal” facilities as constitutional in Plessy vs Ferguson, which justified the creation of segregated public spaces including schools and libraries. In practice, these segregated spaces were inferior and underfunded compared to those available to white people. Black students only had access to certain reading rooms within a white library or bookmobiles that provided service just one day a week (Brady and Abbott, 2015). 

When pondering the prohibition of African Americans from participating in library resources, one cannot help but think of it as another tool of disenfranchisement following the laws set against people of color learning to read or obtaining a formal education in the early twentieth century. Even by 1946, fewer than a third of public library systems in the South reported providing any form of services to black people. Outside of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), libraries remained segregated until the Civil Rights Movement and largely integrated due to the Supreme Court’s ruling in Brown vs Board of Education and the passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Ossom-Williamson et al., 2021). The latter is the outcome of coordinated, non-violent protest where Black students attempted to utilize libraries similarly to lunch-counter and courthouse sit-ins across the Deep South. One such protest occurred in Greenville, South Carolina where eight black students, known as the Greenville Eight, refused to leave the whites-only main library until they were arrested. One of those students was the Reverend Jesse Jackson and it was in part of his efforts that finally integrated the Greenville public libraries (Eberhart, 2017). 

Unfortunately, numerous libraries were desegregated on paper only and as with voting rights, there would be consistent obstruction, such as no cards given to black residents, no books for them to read, and no furniture for them to use. Local governments directly contributed to the obstruction of African Americans' use of the library with arrest and violence, some of it deadly. Even the American Library Association has a questionable track record when it comes to advocating for equal access to libraries during this era. Black attendees of the ALA’s 1936 annual conference in Richmond, Virginia were forced to be segregated as per the laws of the state. African American librarians were not allowed to stay at the conference hotel, eat at the dining sessions, visit exhibits, and if they attended a session, they were forced to sit in a certain section of the conference hall and were not able to freely move around the space. In addition, over the coming decades, the ALA provided little support to activists attempting to desegregate libraries (Preer, 2017). Even with the release of the “An Apology for Segregated Libraries” at its 2017 Annual Conference, there is a need for recompense for the pain and suffering endured all those years in which BIPOC people of all ages did not have the ALA’s support.  

Looking back on the history of exclusion of BIPOC Americans from libraries, as well as the overarching systemic racism that’s still abundant in society, it is imperative to inform and frame the conversations of today’s challenges with these attested lessons. As 88% of librarians and 73% of library assistants are white, with three-quarters of librarians as white women (Government Alliance on Race & Equity, 2018), there is still a long journey toward meaningful inclusion and institutional change. It’s a priority for those who are not BIPOC to continue to explore their privilege and how they might unknowingly exclude BIPOC patrons based on their own inherent bias. Although, most white people will never personally experience discrimination that does not mean that it is not happening to marginalized groups. Becoming open to diversity, equity, and inclusion helps a person to recognize that injustices are occurring in the daily lives of BIPOC whether someone who is white witnesses it or not. The more empathy and awareness that librarians who serve marginalized communities can build, the more that they can ensure that the library is a welcoming and inclusive space for everyone and not the privileged few. 

This paper aims to discover what kind of approaches and strategies have been used to create an atmosphere of comfort and welcome for people not of a Caucasian background, as well as what strides still need to be taken to move away from the grips of systemic racism and the lingering shadow of Jim Crow laws and segregation in libraries. For example, can middle and high school students access and utilize library resources and services without being unfairly policed or surveilled? In what ways or to what extent do librarians consider the needs of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) patrons? Using databases such as Library Literature and Information Science Full Text (H.W. Wilson), ERIC, Google Scholar and queries such as ‘systemic racism in libraries,’ ‘BIPOC experience in libraries,’ and ‘Black or BIPOC people in libraries’ for this review, we will look at BIPOC youth from ages twelve to eighteen in a public library setting and Black undergraduate students ages seventeen to twenty five in a university setting within the United States and Canada. We will also consider several user-centered approaches, including focus groups, interviews, and surveys. Finally, we will look at the possible steps that can be taken to build trust between BIPOC and their local library branches and what some libraries might already have in place to create a welcoming place for all its patrons. 

Literature Review

Belonging and Welcomeness

Drawn from the Oxford English Dictionary, Stewart et al. (2019) adopts the definition of “welcomeness” as “gladly received” and feels “allowed/invited to” make use of a space without microaggressive acts from staff and fellow library users. Using a national survey to answer two questions: (1) To what extent do black college students experience a welcoming environment in academic libraries? (2) What factors are most influential in black college students’ perceptions of academic libraries?, Stewart et. al explored whether black college students view academic libraries as welcoming spaces in what is, to their knowledge, the first national investigation on black collegiate information behavior in North American college libraries. Participants were not just students who passed through the library here or there, but frequent library patrons which helped the investigators’ of this study to see that libraries are not neutral sites of reading but cultural spaces that reflect the mores of their users (Stewart et. al, 2019). This is in contrast to the majority of African American undergraduates, albeit a smaller sample size, who participated in the Duffin and Corrigan (2023) study via survey and then a following focus group. These participants indicated that the library is a place where they felt safe and welcomed, although the library felt to some like a neutral space rather than a place that actively supported them. 

Generally, of the black students who responded to the Stewart et. al (2019) survey, the majority felt welcome in American academic libraries and felt that their information needs are satisfied, but an interesting correlation occurred. If students’ perceived their campus as rife with racism, they also perceived that the library was less welcoming. It was the same if a student perceived their campus as inclusive, then they felt more comfortable in their campus’ academic library. This suggests that libraries are not exactly safe spaces that can escape a larger hostile campus climate and that the overall environment has an impact on students’ views of the library. Thus, the staff of an academic library must work together with their college or university to actualize and continue to grow a welcoming campus environment (Stewart et. al, 2019). 

Another compelling detail of the Stewart et. al (2019) survey is that when campuses that are or have been largely white institutions and where the library staff  are primarily white, the priority that is shown to BIPOC students is that the university leadership does not strive for diverse representation among their employees. Similarly, participants in the Duffin and Corrigan (2023) noted the lack of diversity among library employees detracted from feelings of welcomeness. In turn, by not valuing diversity, equity, and inclusion, this lack of representation contributes to an atmosphere in which black students may not feel as welcomed and supported as white students. As noted in the introduction, the historical framing of the academic library, as well as the public library, as a segregated or predominantly white space can still be felt today. 

With regard to BIPOC youth experience at their local libraries in North Carolina, participants in Gibson and Hughes-Hassell (2023) study expressed in their focus groups that library staff created rules, set behavioral expectations, and decided who belonged and who did not. When participants felt that library staff liked them personally, they talked about libraries as being “for” them and as necessary institutions and they appreciated how library staff made them feel welcome, safe, and appreciated their creativity. However, when participants felt as though library staff did not care for them, they would discuss how they did not need the library, how they did not fit in, and that they perceived a librarian treating them disdainfully. Lastly, the participants defined ‘meanness’ in the realm of over policing with actions such as chasing youth out of the library, shushing, disrespecting them and their property, or talking disrespectfully of them (Gibson & Hughes-Hassell, 2023). 

Policing and Surveillance

When someone speaks about the library, most people can conjure up just how they need to behave and act while inside. However, what is not thought about is the fairness of the rules or norms that can exclude or silence vulnerable communities. A well-known story of Challenger astronaut, Ronald McNair, is the trip he took to his local library at nine-years-old to check out science books while living in South Carolina in 1959. While the library was public, it was segregated and was not “public” for Black people in the South. McNair tried to check out the books he wanted to read and the librarian called the police, as well as his mother. The story has a happy ending as the police officer convinced the librarian to let McNair check out the books and thus, moved him along on his lifelong journey of becoming an astronaut (NPR, 2011). However, it is most likely only one of very few stories that ended so positively. 

Similar to McNair’s experience in 1959 is what Congressman John Lewis experienced when he was sixteen years old and some of his brothers, sisters, and cousins were going to the public library to get library cards and were told that the library was for “whites only (Flood, 2016).” It took another sixty years for Congressman Lewis to set foot into a library, but when he did, it was to accept the National Book Award for his graphic novel series about the civil rights movement entitled March. In today’s day and age not much has changed, Black, Latine/x, and immigrant youths are much more likely to be surveilled, arrested, harmed or physically removed from libraries across the country than youth of the same age who are Caucasian (Gibson & Hughes-Hassell, 2023). 

In speaking about libraries being a safe space, many participants in the Gibson and Hughes-Hassell (2023) study did not feel that having an armed police officer, resource officer, or armed/unarmed security guard was effective and in fact made them feel less safe. Older participants and less often patrons of the library typically framed police as a threat or hindrance, while younger participants and often users of the library typically framed them as protectors and were more open to the idea of police or security patrolling outside, rather than inside the building. When asked to describe specific incidents they had seen between police and library patrons, the teens described incidents of disruption, usually excess noise, standing outside the library, and eating (Gibson & Hughes-Hassell, 2023). 

Getting too comfortable, expressing joy, talking to others or anything too “out of control” were grounds for an interaction with security or a uniformed police presence as rules and expectations changed depending on which staff member was on duty. This especially occurred in libraries where a teen-focused area was not prioritized or was squeezed in among other “quiet” areas on the same floor or in the same room. This causes anxiety within BIPOC youth because increased contact with police leads to increased discipline and incarceration for age-appropriate behaviors among BIPOC youth. Even when they were convinced that injustice had occurred, there was a tendency to anticipate white defensiveness and second guess their experiences with racism (Gibson & Hughes-Hassell, 2023). For these youth, accepting institutional racism is just part of everyday life (even though it should not be) and the researchers would not have been able to ascertain these findings without speaking to the participants. In addition, when libraries use expulsions, suspensions, and bans as a means of behavioral control, they produce an environment that pushes out youth of color. The unfortunate side effect is that BIPOC youths accept it as a necessary factor to create a quiet library environment. This combination of social and institutional practices creates an opportunity for the persistent marginalization of many BIPOC youths and teaches them to accept that racism is just a part of their lived experience. These youth are therefore more likely to duplicate these social inequities in the future (Gibson & Hughes-Hassell, 2023).

After the mass protests of police violence against black people in 2020, the Toledo-Lucas County (Ohio) Public Library (TLCPL) announced that when it reopened after its COVID-19 shutdown that the majority of the security staff members in its branches would no longer carry arms or wear uniforms. In addition, the TLCPL announced that it was forming a public safety working group that would attempt to untangle complex questions about what safety means, who is a perceived as a threat, what individual biases that employees bring to expectations about public safety, and how they could ensure the current public safety practices were advancing positive outcomes for staff, customers, and the community (Balzer, 2021). This type of approach is one that should be considered at public and academic libraries across the country, as it can become an intellectual freedom issue. If a person who is in a library is someone who is targeted by police because of their skin color, that person can never feel free to be themselves in a library’s space. 

Building Trust Between BIPOC and their Libraries

In some way shape or form, each study synthesized in this paper shares results that BIPOC students, whether in middle or high school or at the university level, all experience microaggressions whether they come from library staff or other library users, as well as center white history and culture. While some universities and libraries cannot change the fact that these are historically white spaces, they can strive to ensure that all students’ voices are heard and aim to make library spaces, services, staff, and resources welcoming and inclusive to everyone (Association of Research Libraries, 2021). To address this feedback at the staff level, the Staff Development Committee at the Eastern Illinois University Booth Library, as featured in the Duffin and Corrigan (2023) study, organized a staff retreat on privilege to facilitate a discussion on the unique position of the academic library in students’ lives. 

Similarly at Oakland Public Library, microaggressions was an identified topic for training for staff and managers to which a tailored presentation on equity was arranged, as well as a series of staff discussions on the topic. In 2016, the San Antonio Public Library dedicated its annual manager’s training to the topic of diversity, equity, and inclusion providing 50 managers with the course. For many managers, it was the first time learning about racism and equity with opportunities to work in groups to analyze case studies, discuss implicit bias and explicit bias, and identify examples of individual, institutional, and structural racism. Since then, the city’s library department team continues to build on the training they received and continue to examine barriers to access and identify how to amend policies and procedures to become more amenable to racial equity (Government Alliance on Race & Equity, 2018). 

In 2019, the Assessment and User Experience Department at Duke University Libraries worked with black students to better understand their experiences in the libraries and on campus to identify things that the library could change to increase positive experiences within Duke University Libraries for them. This research resulted in 34 recommendations to address the issues study participants and survey respondents raised which included dedicating library space to black culture, history, and scholarship, increasing visual representations of people of color in library spaces, and investigating easy to provide curricular support for faculty who wish to include more diverse scholarship in their course materials. Implementation of the recommendations began in the Fall of 2020 with efforts underway as of the writing of the article in 2021 that included creating resources to diversify curricula, researching and proposing a library space dedicated to black history and scholarship, developing clear policies and a mechanism for reporting harassment in library buildings, and identifying ways to use materials from special collections to increase visual representation of BIPOC in Duke library spaces (Association of Research Libraries, 2021).

Participants in the Duffin and Corrigan (2023) study shared similar recommendations to make their library feel more welcoming to African American students included hiring and retaining racially diverse employees to improve visible representation and ensuring that employees are trained on topics of diversity and equity to increase their self-awareness of their own privilege. Although libraries are typically viewed as open and progressive spaces, it turns out that 81% of librarians are white and with that current library practices such as collection development policies, rules of library usage, library programming, and views about what constitutes literacy are constructed for and by white people (Gibson & Hughes-Hassell, 2023). Thinking about BIPOC youth in a library space, this means that white people are the assumed audience for books displays or promotional signage, rules, and norms. 

Elteto et al. (2008) surveyed students’ perceptions of the physical library as a welcoming space at their urban university and found that students of color felt less safe than their white peers and were less likely than white students to ask for specific improvements to the library. White students would repeatedly request coffee and food vending machines, color copiers, and printers, where technology and technical and writing assistance were of more importance to students of color. With regard to physical factors investigated in Elteto et al. (2008), students of color rated and mentioned natural light in a library space as being very important, more so than white students. For the libraries that had them when discussing BIPOC youth in public libraries in North Carolina, the teen areas were entirely too small, distinguishable only by signs, and often connected to adult spaces, such as in one instance where it was connected to the community historical collection and the only computer lab in the building. This sends the message that these particular spaces were not meant to encourage talking and collaboration, rather used for quiet and focused work. Even the libraries that had designated “teen” spaces were not welcoming as the youths interviewed stated that they had to use their “library voices,” stay seated, and not disturb the adults working quietly in the rest of the library (Gibson & Hughes-Hassell, 2023).

Conclusions

For those who are privileged, the thought of the local library as the heart of a community providing a warm, welcoming, and safe environment for all is something that we like to believe is true. The unfortunate reality is that for BIPOC people of all ages this is more than likely not the case and the narrative, itself, is harmful. Through the focus groups discussions, interviews, and surveys, participants at both the middle-to-high school level and the collegiate level gave insight to several problematic themes that occur at the different libraries in which they patronize. For example, while Black and Native American middle-to-high school participants in North Carolina described conditions that were recognized as outcomes of structural racism, many of the participants shrugged off the inequities as the necessary cost of creating “good libraries.” The findings highlighted indications of dysconsciousness where several youth discussed “respectability politics' ' blaming themselves, their friends, and their family members for conflicts with library staff and police (Gibson & Hughes-Hassell). This is unacceptable. 

It is up to the librarians of the twenty-first century to continue to break the mold of the ingrained institutional racism whose legacy is still having impacts today. Having space for not just non-BIPOC youth, but all youth, and their different needs should be a no-brainer and they should not be squeezed in among other sections that require a quiet atmosphere. Providing programming and representation in the library that reflects BIPOC youth and undergraduate students is bound to help them feel themselves reflected within the institution. The more that BIPOC youth feel valued, the more likely they are to return and not write off their library experience. The same goes for librarians letting police interact with those youth rather than handling situations themselves to prevent the potential of possible violence or arrest. Those students need to grow up to be the next Ronald McNair or Congressman John Lewis, and they require the space and resources in which to do so. 

BIPOC students, no matter the grade level, need to have a feeling of connectedness while visiting their public or academic libraries. Those students, at either level, who do not feel welcome in a library space will be at a constant disadvantage both academically and socially, and may not have the same opportunity as others if they do not feel comfortable using a library’s resources. Different ways to achieve this goal is to involve students in a library’s planning process to give a voice to the desires and unmet needs of their BIPOC patrons, as well as faculty and employees educating themselves on how to recognize and confront their own inherent bias. Campus and public library initiatives must provide meaningful social connections that foster a welcoming environment, as they have been shown to help students develop their sense of belonging and community influencing persistence in both academic and personal achievement. 

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