Time for change
Time for change, however little they will be... but little nothings are better than nothing right? Trying to go in the right direction.
I went to hear a wonderful lecture the other day. It was organised by Dr Michael Abecassis, Senior Instructor in French at Oxford University and who I am lucky to have as a next-door colleague at the Language Centre.
Michael invited Lilian Thuram, an ex-footballer who was in the world cup winning French team. I do admit I wasn't that chuffed to go at first but I always like to give encouragements to the wonderful extra work Michael does in inviting guests from the Francophone world. I'm very happy I went because it changed my life. I can truly admit that I've never been to a talk that has made me reflect so much. I remember spending some time after in Waterstone's, looking at all the books on display there, and seeing the world upside down.
Ways to do this? Take a world map, and put it upside down. Comment...
Ways to do this? Think about the first time you heard about black people at school. Comment...
Ways to do this? Lilian's mum, from Guadeloupe had to learn through the French curriculum that her ancestors were "les gaulois" (the gauls). Comment...
Ways to do this? There are post-colonial studies. But are we in post-colonial times? Or just colonial?
Lilian Thuram comes from Guadeloupe and after an international career in football, he creates the Lilian Thuram foundation against racism in 2008. He is a UNICEF Ambassador since 2010.
He not only fights against racism but is also a feminist and defends the cause of LGBT+ people.
He's the author of Mes Etoiles Noires: de Lucy à Barack Obama
and co-author, with Jean-Christophe Camus and Sam Garcia of Notre Histoire, a graphic novel in two volumes. Needless to say I have since purchased these three books for the library!
Then a few weeks later I went to talks on diversity at work where I learned that my department is pretty bad at recruiting BME candidates. I was hardly surprised in fact. I just added, looking at the audience, that there was no non-white there. Not one. And we were quite a few! There is some work done, of course, but we.are.not.there.yet!
And that old chestnut about positive discrimination about recruitment, should or should we not help more for the recruitment of BME? And that old - and so annoying answer - of people worried that perhaps the recruited candidates would not be as good. I heard this twice for members of the public, once at Lilian Thuram's talk, about the recruitment of women in managerial jobs, and about the recruitment of BME in my work place's talks.
I'd like to attempt to quote the wonderful reply from another member of the public at Thuram's talk (who happens to be a University Professor):
"I'll be happy the day when they will be as many incompetent women in power as they are incompetent men".
Perhaps we should transfer this also to BME?
However, the tactics are unfortunately different as Reni Eddo-Lodge explains in her wonderful book
Why I'm no longer talking to white people about race
As a librarian, I'm trying on the small scale, by avoiding to get materials (books, DVDs, graphic novels) that could be seen as offensive.
For example why would I buy Tintin au Congo as a graphic novel? There are other ways to learn French (yet Tintin in Congo should find its place in any library dealing with colonial history). Why should I buy Black Hawk Down where Somalis are hardly portrayed as human beings? (again this would be a good resource to discuss racism and US imperialism and should be in a specialist library)
Yet some other times I've had also to get difficult material. How can you get materials on African-American languages such as Gullah without speaking about slavery? Same with so many of our creole and pidgins collection. And if the only resource I could have for the Somali language were available from the film Black Hawk Down, I would purchase it. Fortunately there are other resources!
There are also groups appearing in Oxford that can help us and they already are. OUP, as part of its wonderful project Oxford Global Languages is looking for dictionaries from Ghana (Akan, Twi, Fanti, Ewegbe, Ururimi, Ga. Just in case you know please contact me!) and we received an enthusiastic email from Oxford University Africa Society
One of our Language Centre Tutor is also working on a project to rethink the curriculum. It's true that when I was a student (high school and university) the canon was almost exclusively composed of white men. Time to change that too!
I'm lucky my library classification system cannot be perceived as racist. After all it could be argue that the Dewey system, created in the nineteenth century by a white man, has issue with it. One: it would offer very long shelfmarks for the "unusual" ie for example less commonly taught languages. Two: for the particular section of Francophone, Anglophone literature, it would have to be completely separated. Not ideal. At last my system, which is also used in other important language centres (Cambridge, Glasgow) is alphabetical. There is somehow a bias, it's the name of the language in English, or rather its ISO code, but at least all languages are classified with a two or three letters code, all languages are given their chances and it's hopefully easy to find for someone with visual disabilities or dyslexia.
Hopefully things will change and there's no such thing as small change, when you add it all up, it amounts to something! (and maybe I'll offer the book by Reni Eddo-Lodge to either my boss or the library, or both!)
I went to hear a wonderful lecture the other day. It was organised by Dr Michael Abecassis, Senior Instructor in French at Oxford University and who I am lucky to have as a next-door colleague at the Language Centre.
Michael invited Lilian Thuram, an ex-footballer who was in the world cup winning French team. I do admit I wasn't that chuffed to go at first but I always like to give encouragements to the wonderful extra work Michael does in inviting guests from the Francophone world. I'm very happy I went because it changed my life. I can truly admit that I've never been to a talk that has made me reflect so much. I remember spending some time after in Waterstone's, looking at all the books on display there, and seeing the world upside down.
Ways to do this? Take a world map, and put it upside down. Comment...
Ways to do this? Think about the first time you heard about black people at school. Comment...
Ways to do this? Lilian's mum, from Guadeloupe had to learn through the French curriculum that her ancestors were "les gaulois" (the gauls). Comment...
Ways to do this? There are post-colonial studies. But are we in post-colonial times? Or just colonial?
Lilian Thuram comes from Guadeloupe and after an international career in football, he creates the Lilian Thuram foundation against racism in 2008. He is a UNICEF Ambassador since 2010.
He not only fights against racism but is also a feminist and defends the cause of LGBT+ people.
He's the author of Mes Etoiles Noires: de Lucy à Barack Obama
and co-author, with Jean-Christophe Camus and Sam Garcia of Notre Histoire, a graphic novel in two volumes. Needless to say I have since purchased these three books for the library!
Then a few weeks later I went to talks on diversity at work where I learned that my department is pretty bad at recruiting BME candidates. I was hardly surprised in fact. I just added, looking at the audience, that there was no non-white there. Not one. And we were quite a few! There is some work done, of course, but we.are.not.there.yet!
And that old chestnut about positive discrimination about recruitment, should or should we not help more for the recruitment of BME? And that old - and so annoying answer - of people worried that perhaps the recruited candidates would not be as good. I heard this twice for members of the public, once at Lilian Thuram's talk, about the recruitment of women in managerial jobs, and about the recruitment of BME in my work place's talks.
I'd like to attempt to quote the wonderful reply from another member of the public at Thuram's talk (who happens to be a University Professor):
"I'll be happy the day when they will be as many incompetent women in power as they are incompetent men".
Perhaps we should transfer this also to BME?
However, the tactics are unfortunately different as Reni Eddo-Lodge explains in her wonderful book
Why I'm no longer talking to white people about race
As a librarian, I'm trying on the small scale, by avoiding to get materials (books, DVDs, graphic novels) that could be seen as offensive.
For example why would I buy Tintin au Congo as a graphic novel? There are other ways to learn French (yet Tintin in Congo should find its place in any library dealing with colonial history). Why should I buy Black Hawk Down where Somalis are hardly portrayed as human beings? (again this would be a good resource to discuss racism and US imperialism and should be in a specialist library)
Yet some other times I've had also to get difficult material. How can you get materials on African-American languages such as Gullah without speaking about slavery? Same with so many of our creole and pidgins collection. And if the only resource I could have for the Somali language were available from the film Black Hawk Down, I would purchase it. Fortunately there are other resources!
There are also groups appearing in Oxford that can help us and they already are. OUP, as part of its wonderful project Oxford Global Languages is looking for dictionaries from Ghana (Akan, Twi, Fanti, Ewegbe, Ururimi, Ga. Just in case you know please contact me!) and we received an enthusiastic email from Oxford University Africa Society
One of our Language Centre Tutor is also working on a project to rethink the curriculum. It's true that when I was a student (high school and university) the canon was almost exclusively composed of white men. Time to change that too!
I'm lucky my library classification system cannot be perceived as racist. After all it could be argue that the Dewey system, created in the nineteenth century by a white man, has issue with it. One: it would offer very long shelfmarks for the "unusual" ie for example less commonly taught languages. Two: for the particular section of Francophone, Anglophone literature, it would have to be completely separated. Not ideal. At last my system, which is also used in other important language centres (Cambridge, Glasgow) is alphabetical. There is somehow a bias, it's the name of the language in English, or rather its ISO code, but at least all languages are classified with a two or three letters code, all languages are given their chances and it's hopefully easy to find for someone with visual disabilities or dyslexia.
Hopefully things will change and there's no such thing as small change, when you add it all up, it amounts to something! (and maybe I'll offer the book by Reni Eddo-Lodge to either my boss or the library, or both!)
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