The University of Washington-Bothell and nearby Cascadia College have set up a new program to provide “social justice” training for its librarians. Attending librarians and other staff will learn to learn how to check their privilege, interrupt microaggressions, and learn how to apologize when called out. The program, administered by the library Equity, Diversity and Social Justice Team stretches across six workshops.
In one of the workshops, based on the modern feminist concept of “intersectionality,” staff explore differences in gender, race, and class, and recognize the “everyday power dynamics” that shape their interactions with others. The idea behind “intersectionality” is that no single social category can be understood in isolation to another.
There is also a workshop dedicated to the concept of privilege. In this one, staff must become intimate with the personal lives and history of their colleagues and determine how their privilege plays a part in all of it. They are expected to explore the lives of fellow staff, library users, and where they fit into the “larger structures of society.”
Staff who undergo training in the “Interrupting” workshop will learn how to properly apologize to anyone they may accidentally offend. The workshop offers a document online replete with examples of “good” apologies and “bad” ones.
Another class teaches staff about microaggressions — inoffensive actions and words that are neither overt nor intentional but may have the potential to offend. For example, asking someone about their “exotic” accent is a microaggression, because it makes the person feel like an outsider. The term “exotic,” too, is a microaggression due to the term’s historical connotations in regards to race.
A final class exists to teach staff how to interrupt microaggressions in progress, training them to identify potential offenses and “interrupt oppressive situations.” In other words, librarians are expected to police their colleagues and others in the library.
During the library training, attendees are provided with a list of scenarios to play out— one of which describes a female employee requesting help from a male employee when she realizes he’s being condescending. Another asks employees to deal with a student who reports that an individual “of Middle Eastern descent” has left a suspicious bag and departed the building.
Participants are expected to guide their responses through an intersectional lens, recognizing the privilege of players in the scenario, the presence of microaggressions, and what staff need to do to interrupt them. The training leads one to worry about how the staff’s preoccupation with microaggressions and social justice could prevent them from reporting a serious crime, much less a terrorist attack.
The University says that the workshops are not mandatory, but more than one of the worksheets describes the diversity program as “all staff.”
Ian Miles Cheong is a journalist and outspoken media critic. You can reach him through social media at @stillgray on Twitter and on Facebook.
