Reparative and ethical description of Race and Ethnicity

Overview

In keeping with Schlesinger Library’s goal of diversity and inclusion in collections and descriptive practices, this section will address reparative work related to race and ethnicity. Based on the collaborative input of curatorial, archival, audiovisual, reference, and cataloging staff, this section describes issues and offers examples of the kind of reparative work necessary for many of our legacy collections. These issues and examples reflect the long-term impact of colonialism, world wars, racism, and xenophobia on past collecting policies that resulted in harmful and offensive language that contributed to the marginalization and erasure of racial and ethnic groups while perpetuating the status quo of libraries as a tool for the wealthy and powerful. Our primary purpose in using reparative descriptions for race and ethnicity is to “challenge the de facto presumption of ‘whiteness’ prevalent in library resources, which include finding aids, catalog records, photograph captions, and other public facing documents.”

Naming whiteness

Many collection finding aids describe African American creators, Asian American creators, etc., with their identities but do not describe white creators as white, thereby making white the presumed default and privileging this identity. The University of North Carolina Libraries recently began a project to proactively name whiteness in their collection descriptions to remedy this. Schlesinger staff (as part of the next stage of this work, combined with mapping and scoping possible reparative work on a larger scale) will be determining whether we would also like to do this, and what the implications are for reparative work as well as future practices.

Definition and background

Although race and ethnicity are often used interchangeably, in this discussion the term race refers to groups with a shared set of physical traits and ancestry, including skin color, hair texture, facial features and other cultural markers.

Ethnicity is being used to describe groups of people who share national origins, or religious, linguistic, and cultural practices.

We recognize the fluid and sometimes complicated nature of multi-racial and multi-ethnic identities, the diverse ethnicities that exist within racial groups, or preferences that are contrary to physical appearance, but these issues are beyond the scope of this guide

In recent years, social justice issues, and greater diversity among users and the archival profession, have underscored the need to create radical change in archival repositories and libraries, particularly at predominantly white institutions (PWIs). Dismantling the dominant white supremacist narrative, as well as addressing the historical erasure of marginalized groups in archives, has taken many forms and fueled the efforts of a diverse range of groups. White archivists in consultation with archivists of color, formed A4BLiP “which encourages white archivists and non-Black archivists of color to deconstruct the white supremacist values that permeate American society, and by extension, the archival repositories.” Across the nation, the efforts of curators, archivists, catalogers, and reference librarians to engage in reparative work and more inclusive practices are underway. We are thankful for their efforts and best practices which have helped to guide our work.

Issues and examples

Archives

Legacy finding aids offer primary examples of racial and ethnic descriptive terms that are harmful and/or outdated. Select examples, recommendations and guidelines for using reparative language are described below:

Harmful, offensive, and outdated terms

The word “slave,” is an example of harmful language found in library collections and often included in the descriptions provided by dealers offering historic documents, e.g., bill of sales. Until recently, descriptions of enslavement tended to valorize the creator or collectors while devaluing the humanity of men, women and children captured and transported from Africa. To counteract this language several members of Schlesinger’s staff developed a guide that recommends replacing slave with “enslaved” to accurately reflect a condition of subjugation. This bill of sale is one of many examples:

The Bill of Sale for Phillis, Lizzy, Jenny, Laura, Esther and Leah, enslaved women, and girls, consists of a handwritten receipt documenting the sale of six enslaved African American women and children: "Phillis, Lizzy, Jenny, Laura, Esther and Leah the first being about forty-nine years old the second about twenty-three the third about two the fourth about five the fifth about three and the sixth about one..." The receipt states that the women and girls were purchased from James Pouncey by Isham Watson for $1125. The sale occurred in Marlborough District, South Carolina, on February 22, 1833. Includes signatures of two witnesses.

Other recommendations included the addition of subject headings that provide a fuller picture of these enslaved individuals.

Esther (Enslaved person), approximately 1819-

Renaming and restoring original identities

Other issues associated with race and ethnicity include the agency of renaming, or in some cases, reclaiming original identities to provide accurate reflection of group identity and culture. If known, this practice should be incorporated in description whenever possible. Harvard fellow Sarah Kang describes how words like “Oriental,” “Asiatic,” and “Chinaman” were used to portray Asian Americans as a menace to American society in popular culture and public discourse. This stereotype was forged in the perceived threat of Chinese immigrants competing with whites for jobs and can also be attributed to European colonialism and the erroneous Western view of Asia as economically underdeveloped.”

In the case of Indigenous groups, we are remediating our records to incorporate recommendations outlined in the Indigenous Peoples: Language Guidelines who advise using traditional names if known. Terms such as Indians, Native, and Aboriginal are considered a holdover from the colonial era.

They further explain “The term ‘Indian’ can still be found in use today, but in general, it is an archaic term with very negative connotations for many and should be avoided in most contexts, unless it is part of a historical reference, part of a legacy term or used in reference to government policy.”

This issue is also prevalent in many photograph captions, described below.

Legacy terminology

Outdated or legacy terms such as “Negro,” or “Colored,” present a different kind of challenge. Popular from the 18th to the mid-20th century, these terms were once considered part of the politics of respectability and were widely used in the titles of organizations and publications named, organized, or published by African Americans, including the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the National Council of Negro Women, etc. Because these legacy terms hold a place in history, we recommend adding a processing or contextual note to finding aids and other public facing documents. Below are two examples that include these outdated terms:

EXAMPLE: The Lydia Pinkham Company records

This collection includes documentation of advertising in what were then known as Negro newspapers: https://hollisarchives.lib.harvard.edu/repositories/8/archival_objects/2481648. Wishing to keep the existing folder titles, an archivist added a scope note to all folders with related titles to further describe the contents – and to ensure that a common current search of “African American” would pick up those folders.

EXAMPLE: Papers of Shirley Graham Du Bois

In this example a folder in Box 44 of the collection is titled:

Negro Women's Emancipation Committee, 1960-1961, n.d

Because individuals used the term “Negro” in the early 1960s as a means of self-expression and pride, the folder title was unchanged.

Controversies in naming

Umbrella terms, formerly used by the Latino community-- Latino/Latina/Hispanic—have also come under consideration by some and rejected by others in favor of Latinx, described as a gender-neutral term for people of Latin American heritage. National Association of Hispanic Journalists concludes that “For those who identify with two or more Latin American cultural or racial identities, Latinx is a term that is all-inclusive.”

Photographs

Legacy photograph captions represent a critical though often overlooked aspect of reparative work. They include many harmful, offensive, or outdated terms and sometimes reflect the bias of the photographer toward their subjects. Schlesinger’s photo cataloger, in collaboration with on-campus committees, is currently in the process of identifying harmful and offensive terms that need reparative work and providing various forms of remediation to titles and subject headings.

Remediated descriptions

The racist description in the photo below is offset by a remediated title description provided by the photograph cataloger: “Two girls standing outside on a dirt road next to a picket fence, barefoot. The eldest child holds an infant girl on her back. The three girls are probably sisters.” The revised description utilizes a human first description, including the addition of subject headings that accurately portray them as African American children.

Inscription: Verso: “pore lil’ pickininnies {Florida, 1900-1901}.

Part of Jessie Tarbox Beals Photographs. http://id.lib.harvard.edu/images/olvgroup1002231/urn-3:RAD.SCHL:285341/catalog

The original photo caption offered a reductive description in comparison with the fuller, remediated title below: “Group portrait of four traditionally dressed Kickapoo and Cheyenne Native American men standing inside an earth lodge with one male fairgoer. Kickapoo man on the far left holds a bow and arrow, the Cheyenne man second from left a tall, decorated spear.”

Inscription: “Group of Western Indians.” (Indian Reservation of the Anthropology Exhibit, Louisiana Purchase Exposition/1904 World's Fair.)

Part of Jessie Tarbox Beals Photographs. Folder: Professional Life: Ethnic groups at World's Fair

Controlled vocabulary and free text

In addition to beginning with donor self-identification, our goal is to be as specific as possible when describing ethnicity. For Asian American collections, for example, Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) offers a number of options that aren’t perfect and we must choose what’s best for an online searching / co-location environment.

EXAMPLE: Mira Nair Papers

The Hollis record for the Mira Nair papers use the LC terms “Panjabi Americans” as well as “South Asian American women” - both used to describe her identity, but the broader term used for those searchers who might be searching more broadly and/or not know to use Panjabi.

Some collections may have LC headings that describe the creator’s identity, while the creator themselves may use an alternate term.

EXAMPLE: Maria Elena Lucas Papers

The Hollis record for the MarÍa Elena Lucas papers uses the LC term “Mexican American women” but the Bio text refers to Lucas as Chicana, as she called herself in an oral history we hold.

Be as specific as possible with LC terms for race and ethnicity, and describe racial and ethnic identities further in free text fields.

When encountering a document with offensive and/or outdated racial views or terminologies, add a descriptive note to alert researchers

Be alert to terminology that may have changed between when documents were created and present day. The above section on reparative description is helpful to review before approaching collections with outdated terminology or oppressive viewpoints.

Updating Library of Congress subject headings

The work of SACO Funnels has helped to introduce and remediate many of the harmful, offensive, and outdated Library of Congress subject headings.

Ther African American Subject Funnel Group, formed in 2000, works collaboratively with the Library of Congress Program for Cooperative Cataloging. It provides input and guidance on terminology that more accurately reflects the African American experience and access to subject classifications for information and resources in the field.

. The following examples underscore people first language and the addition of broader concepts to LOC subject headings:

Adding the concept of people first language
- Blacks replaced with Black people
- Slaves replaced with Enslaved people
Concepts associated with African American experience
- African American--Reparations
- African American--social reformers

- Environmental racism
- Night riders
- Sundown towns

Alternate cataloging descriptions

Locally devised headings can sometimes provide alternative descriptions. The African Studies Thesaurus: http://thesaurus.ascleiden.nl/ contains subject headings about Africa and African people, including languages and the names of ethnic groups. For example, catalogers point to its inclusion of the subject heading “Black women,” which LOC does not. They also indicate that alternative thesauri offer descriptions than LOC. This subject heading is formulated with 650_7 $$2 ascl, the second indicator displays the code for the African studies thesaurus vocabulary.

Punctuation Matters

There are conflicting views held by librarians, catalogers, journalists, and others about whether to capitalize the terms associated with race and ethnicity. In this guide we have followed the current practice of capitalizing terms such as Black, Indigenous, Asian, and other racial or ethnic identities.

White is also considered a race, but some argue that when describing white communities or individuals the term should not be capitalized unless it is part of a formal organization, book title or legacy description. This opinion stems from the practice of white supremacists who capitalize “White” to advance racist ideas and actions.

The National Association of Hispanic Journalists, recommends that whenever a color is used to appropriately describe race then it should be capitalized, including White and Brown. Since there are many opposing views on this topic, repositories will need to make individual decisions about capitalization and using racial identifiers as adjectives rather than nouns.

Although decisions concerning the complexity of racial and ethnic identities will require research and input from donors and colleagues, the following recommendations and guidelines reflect informed decisions about where, when, and how to apply reparative edits or to add contextual background for greater clarity.

Recommendations

Strive to be as specific as possible when describing race or ethnicity.
Always query and adopt the preferred language or identity used by the donor.
Recognize that donors of a specific race or ethnic group are not monolithic and may choose to self-identify in various ways.
In general, use descriptive language that emphasizes a people first perspective.
Retaining outdated or harmful language in archival description can be considered under the following circumstances: The term 1) is part of an organization name or title; 2) reflects meaningful historical and/or contextual value; 3) aligns with the preferences of the creator or donor and/or; 4) facilitates discovery and access. Archivists will add contextual notes to the finding aid to explain why they may be keeping this type of terminology in the description.

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Resources:

African American Subject Funnel Project - SACO - Program for Cooperative Cataloging (Library of Congress) (loc.gov):

Archives for Black Lives in Philadelphia (2019). Anti-Racist Description Resources. Retrieved from https://archivesforblacklives.files.wordpress.com/2019/10/ardr_final.pdf

Georgetown University (2020). Anti-Racism Toolkit. Retrieved from https://guides.library.georgetown.edu/antiracism/glossary

Harvard University (2020). https://harvardwiki.atlassian.net/wiki/display/hmschommanual/Style+Guide. Retrieved 3/14/22

Lellman, Charlotte. Guidelines for Inclusive and Conscientious Description: https://harvardwiki.atlassian.net/wiki/display/hmschommanual/Guidelines+for+Inclusive+and+Conscientious+Description . Retrieved 3/14/22

Society of California Archivists (2020). SCA Statement in Solidarity with Black Lives Matter. Retrieved 3/14/22 from https://calarchivists.org/9033338