This post is authored by members of the Racial Justice Working Group (RJWG). This serves to document our efforts, along with the evolution and status of a DCN ethics statement.
Many racial justice efforts were born out of the upheaval of 2020 and have since faded. The DCN’s Racial Justice Working Group (RJWG) persists and is evolving to be more durable and committed to long term work of transformation, education, and reflective process in the DCN. Our work thus far has largely consisted of understanding the enormity and scope of the task of addressing racial justice in the curation of research data, and in identifying strategies that balance actionable approaches within our capacities.
We think representation matters because our experiences shape our understanding and participation in research and academic organizations, as well as the larger social context of the DCN and the RJWG. DCN member institutions are predominantly white institutions (PWIs), and membership of the working group is largely also drawn from PWIs.
This fact illuminates one of the contradictions for white people in racial justice work: It is true both that “white people are a particular liability in racial justice movements,” and also, “white people have specific and critical roles in racial justice movements.”1 One challenge we have faced is whether or how the group could be accountable to data practitioners and DCN members of color without making excessive demands on their time and labor.2 The RJWG really appreciates the image below to help us all visualize the real contradictions in racial justice work:
RJWG Beginnings
The DCN had commissioned a report from consultant Dr. Faye Cobb-Payton in 2021 that identified multiple courses of action for implementing racial justice in the work of the DCN. Dr. Cobb Payton observed that where demographic diversity is missing, it is often for a reason. The RJWG wanted to assess the DCN internally about changes that could make the organization a more safe and productive space before attempting to recruit additional institutions or members with specific identities.
One concrete action identified in Dr. Cobb-Payton’s report was to develop a social impact statement. In the process of creating this, we recognized that a necessary first step was to create an organizational ethics statement. While this may sound like work for work’s sake, we think it is essential that all members of the DCN are aware of the organization’s ethics and what it stands for.
The DCN had already revamped the CURATE(D) steps to include suggestions for ethical considerations, but other actionable recommendations from the report were more involved. The RJWG reviewed the report and decided to conduct a survey of DCN membership in November 2022 to prioritize action items from the report. An ethics statement emerged as one of the top choices.
Looking back, the RJWG can still understand why this made sense — an ethics statement seemed like a natural and necessary precursor and guide for making other decisions and commitments in the realm of racial justice. After all, an ethics statement helps articulate how an organization is going to support its mission and act on its beliefs.
The RJWG had ongoing conversations on how to approach this process from the end of 2022 through mid-2023. We realized that while we ourselves had benefited from talking through the complex issues involved in making ethical commitments, we had not brought the rest of the organization along in this process. We came to understand that a top-down ethics statement would not connect individual members to ethical considerations at play in their own curatorial work. So, we drafted versions of potential statements and brought these to the 2023 All Hands Meeting for a participatory review.
Among the broad range of responses elicited, one member asked why the RJWG was the group taking this on, and if so, why the ethics statement was not explicitly focused on race? Working with the feedback, the RJWG agreed such a statement should instead originate from the same leadership group that generated the organizational mission and vision statements with input from organizational members. We also realized that an organizational ethics statement might need to be created in tandem with a bottom-up approach that encourages each member of the DCN to take ownership and reflect on their specific work. To learn more about our process consider viewing the report we shared with the DCN executive team.
RJWG Reflection
As we looked back at this entire process, we recognized that some of the same characteristics of white supremacy that we were hoping to push back against came up time and again within our own group’s process — they truly are difficult to unlearn! Although many readers may by now be familiar with this list, we felt it useful to detail a few of them here:
- Urgency — e.g., “We have to get something written down right now and on the website for all to see, or it doesn’t count.”
- But what if we pushed back and were realistic about the timing and work that is needed for this, and what if we emphasized engagement over speed?
- Quantity over quality — e.g., “We need multiple outputs in addition to something for our website — we must position ourselves as a leader and an expert in this work.”
- But what if we worked more to center our values, measure our process and encourage depth and substance?3
- Perfectionism -— e.g., “We are smart people, we can come up with this. We will have 27 drafts and ask for peer review within the organization to have the best most inclusive statement. And we can put off talking about the challenges until we have it figured out.”
- But what if we work on having a different mindset — what if we have appreciation for our growth; for where we started out and where we are now, and for all these mistakes and imperfections that are learning opportunities?3
We also want to highlight that we were, to a large extent, working within a best-case scenario, with an organization (and organizational leadership) that is interested in and willing to change, and a group that is fairly new and small enough to be able to shift and be responsive. So one of the things we want to emphasize for other groups still undertaking this work and struggling is that it will be challenging, and it will take time! We want to show what it can look like to try to engage sustainably in this messy and complex type of organizational change. This doesn’t mean it is not necessary or that the only products are visible ones.
As we learned from adrienne maree brown’s Emergent Strategy, “There is always enough time for the right work.”4 While the RJWG struggled with feeling the need to have a concrete “deliverable,” we also recognize the necessity and value of the conversations that have been held internally to date. Racial justice work requires real change and long-term structural shifts that are not necessarily product-oriented, but require laying a foundation of flexibility, relationship, and responsiveness. We can’t get to that destination without the journey, and the RJWG would rather work through this process with intention rather than rush to get a product or deliverable for its own sake. We are grateful to have an opportunity to rethink this work during a leadership change for the DCN. The RJWG is shifting its focus to bring more of the organization along on the journey by facilitating relevant readings, book clubs, and guest speakers. The ethics statement is currently at a pause, but we expect next steps to be determined by leadership with input from RJWG.
Post drafted by Wanda Marsolek (Minnesota) and Rachel Woodbrook (Michigan). The text has been reviewed and revised thanks to the contributions of Shanda Hunt, Scout Calvert, Kent Gerber, Brandie Pullen, Mikala Narlock, Katie Miller, and Shawna Taylor. The group is thankful for the support of the other RJWG members as well.
Foot Notes
- gracesmuggler. “Contradictions for White People in Racial Justice Work.” Smuggling Grace (blog), June 18, 2020. https://reneeroederer.com/2020/06/18/contradictions-for-white-people-in-racial-justice-work/. ↩︎
- Jennifer Brown, Nicholae Cline, Marisa Méndez-Brady, 2021. “Leaning on Our Labor: Whiteness and Hierarchies of Power in LIS Work”, Knowledge Justice: Disrupting Library and Information Studies through Critical Race Theory, Sofia Y. Leung, Jorge R. López-McKnight. (p. 95). ↩︎
- https://www.tc.columbia.edu/media/conferences/decolonizing-psychology/pdfs/Sullivan-Antiracist-Scholarship-Decolonizing-Conference-April-2021.pdf (24-25) ↩︎
- brown, adrienne maree. Emergent Strategy. AK Press, 2017. ↩︎