Major University Whacks the White Supremacy of the Library of Congress

Have you been performing white supremacist web searches?

I’m referring to any probe performed via Google.

According to a recent online guide by the University of Minnesota, Googling is paramount to rubbing racist elbows.

The school’s Libraries page offers extensive instruction on “Conducting Research Through an Antiracism Lens.”

“This guide was developed,” the manual begins, “in response to librarians fielding multiple requests from UMN researchers looking to incorporate antiracism into their research practices.”

Antiracism, as you likely know, doesn’t mean being anti…racism.

Rather, it’s an ideology positioning whiteness as a problem and all nonwhites at the peril of paltry pigmentation.

Courtesy of UCLA Law Professor Kimberlé Crenshaw:

For white people, being antiracist evolves with their racial identity development. They must acknowledge and understand their privilege, work to change their internalized racism, and interrupt racism when they see it. For people of color, it means recognizing how race and racism have been internalized, and whether it has been applied to other people of color.

And as stated by the Smithsonian:

For white people, being antiracist evolves with their racial identity development. They must acknowledge and understand their privilege, work to change their internalized racism, and interrupt racism when they see it. For people of color, it means recognizing how race and racism have been internalized, and whether it has been applied to other people of color.

University of Minnesota claims Critical Race Theory’s cutting down on discrimination, but there’s more woke to do:

Conducting research through an antiracism lens is a long-term and ongoing process and must be considered as part of a complex system which oppresses people and groups in multifaceted ways (i.e., classism, ethnocentrism, capitalism, casteism, etc.). While some disciplines, mainly in the humanities and social sciences, have mitigated racism through a depth of understanding of Critical Race Theory, others have not.

The handbook boasts a curious Table of Contents.

Objectivity gets offed once while whiteness is wiped twice:

Decenter whiteness in primary research

Decenter whiteness in secondary research

Acknowledge that data is not objective

Acknowledge that scholarly publishing is racist

Acknowledge that search algorithms are racist

Acknowledge that library cataloging systems are racist

Moving onto #5:

Proprietary algorithms (e.g., Google) are customized to users and lack transparency, making it unclear why search results vary from person to person. For this reason alone, you may be missing important information unless you know to search specifically for it. Mitigate this problematic system.

Hence, you must “use inclusive search terminology on topics of racism.”

For the 411 on real racism — instead of what used to pass for it — the missive recommends employing contemporary keywords such as “BIPOC” (Black, Indigenous, and People Of Color).

Otherwise, you’re probably not getting to the hateful heart of the matter.

And not only are search engines racist, so is the Library of Congress:

When incorporating antiracism into research, it’s important to acknowledge the context in which information has been shared through library systems. Dewey Decimal, the Library of Congress, and smaller discipline-specific cataloging approaches were designed in a racist and white-centered system. In the case of the Library of Congress, the classification is built based on existing holdings and United States publishing output. This “literary warrant,” as it is termed, is a reflection of the white male dominance of American culture and publishing since its founding.

Given all I’ve gleaned from articles on colleges and universities, I think we should maybe just shut the whole thing down.

Not education, but the world.

If I understand accurately, nothing is objective, and everything is racist.

That last part is — it should be made clear — objective.

For now, if we can only shutter secondary ed, maybe that’s a start. I vote for colleges being reclaimed for community softball.

But for those who don’t reckon society’s reached Strike Three, if you’d like to search for information, U of M has a few useful tricks.

For one, “Recruit BIPOC people and communities for inclusion in studies.”

Also, “Search for BIPOC scholars.”

Lastly, here’s an acronym to make things easier:

Evaluate whether your research is WEIRD

Most published research is not representative of the majority of populations because it was conducted with WEIRD societies: Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic. WEIRD can be applied to behavioral research based on cultural, environmental, and socioeconomic factors, but has also been critiqued for not acknowledging values and research practices informed by whiteness, not including race and ethnicity, and not addressing diversification of contexts as well as samples.

You’re good to go.

Follow the university’s antiracist instructions, and whatever else occurs, at least you’ll know you aren’t WEIRD.

Back to Google, it’s a shame they couldn’t keep from being KKK-ish; the company was really trying hard to go the other way:

Harvard Hosts a Shakespearean Extravaganza — but Only for Black People https://t.co/UfYFhmea5k

— RedState (@RedState) October 28, 2021

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