In April, I joined the Visual Resource Association’s (VRA) Equitable Action Committee (EAC). This group evolved from the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee in fall of 2019, and is now tasked to:
“Advance and support an equitable, diverse, accessible, and inclusive association. With critical reflection and a steady eye on the future, this committee seeks to strengthen the association’s membership by welcoming, embracing, and supporting historically marginalized people, voices, and narratives. The committee also aims to educate and empower the association’s membership on issues of accessibility and disability inclusion opportunities. This committee will advise the Executive Board on creating equitable and inclusive practices.”
I wanted to join the committee because this work is critical, and I wanted to do this work outside my workplace. MASS Action and the fairly newly formed Equity Working Groups at the museum have been great opportunities for staff to push for necessary change and support each other through our individual learning and growth. I wanted to find a similar community outside our institution’s walls, especially given the limited capacity in which we’ve been able to do this work since the museum shuttered in March. This group has been really amazing in all those and so many more capacities. The co-chairs and other members are all wonderful, kind, and dedicated folks working in the broader visual resources field.
The committee has organized a set of regular online discussion forums called community hours, in order to support professionals working in the field. Since April 2020, they’ve hosted community hours around topics including: employee and student privacy during the pandemic, setting remote work boundaries, examining gaps in support, critical cataloging, and professional development. These have varied in format from more traditional presentations and Q&A to looser discussions with some guiding prompts. Folks in VRA and beyond have been welcomed to come as they’re interested and available, and community-generated notes are available for all on the EAC’s website. Feedback has been positive for these events.
Given the mission of EAC, after the murder of George Floyd and resulting uprisings, the committee decided that we wanted to address racial equity in the visual resources field. The proliferation of racial equity statements coming from museums, archives, and libraries seemed like a good place to start. So we opted to organize two community hours around these statements: one looking at the responses of institutions from a communication perspective, and a second looking at concrete action that has or has not come from supposed commitments to racial justice.
I gathered readings, developed prompts, and co-moderated these sessions, with the support (housekeeping announcements, screen and closed caption sharing, note taking) of our co-chairs. I’m not comfortable speaking in front of more than a couple of people, so I’m thankful to have worked with other members of the committee on this. Given the need for conversations around racial equity, and holding our respective institutions accountable, I knew I needed to set my discomfort aside to contribute to these community hours.
Both of the sessions drew around 20 participants, largely VRA members, and there was good dialogue and discussion. It was helpful to learn what other museums, archives, and libraries were or were not doing, especially to discover whether public statements were aligning with concrete anti-racism actions. The sessions provided space for folks to bring issues they were facing at work, and for resources to be shared around racial equity and anti-racism broadly and in our professional field.
The first conversation started with some guiding prompts as a jumping off point for further discussion. For the second session, we opted to turn some of the discussion prompts into poll questions to allow those joining to participate in a different format. We recognized that some joining may not have felt comfortable adding to either the chat or speaking up - even though these sessions are not recorded for the privacy of attendees - based on fear of voicing criticisms of their employer, discomfort in talking about racism and white supremacy, and/or discomfort in participating in group settings (or something else altogether!).
I struggled during both sessions - with long pauses between written or verbal comments, with finding the “right” words and being an “effective” co-facilitator, and with wanting the sessions to be meaningful and helpful to those joining. I recognize that a lot of this is wrapped up in my own perfectionism (a characteristic of white supremacy culture), white fragility, and white silence. And I also recognize that my own desire to support tangible change and brainstorm plans for action are driven by urgency (again, a characteristic of white supremacy) and a general need to “fix” problems rather than to sit with difficult feelings. Since these community hours are community-driven, participants steered the conversation towards holding space for one another. And that’s ok, and it’s ok that I struggled.
More than anything, I hope those who attended got something out of the sessions, that those who looked at the shared notes gleaned something from them, and that folks feel perhaps a little more empowered to do what they can to dismantle racism and white supremacy where they find it, including in our workplaces. We’re all learning and growing together, and sessions like these are just one step in that process.