Diversity and Inclusion Allies blog: “to persist in doing wrong extenuates not wrong”
In this blog, Philip Milnes-Smith, Chair of ARA’s Diversity and Inclusion Allies, reflecting on some recent events and publications, shares an update about the work of this group, following the first meeting under his leadership. At a time of global pushback against Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, the Archives and Records Association continues to advocate for all three, as well as the hoped for outcome of Belonging. The work of the Allies is to offer ‘critical friend’ support to meet those aims.
In the beginning, there were archive practices theorised in the age of European empires, where the default human beings were white men. Archives were good at ensuring the voices of the powerful have lasted into the present, but there was no consideration of who was missing and what their perspectives could offer. Even men not conforming to the limited characterisation of the default human have been marginalised in posterity as in life. But to the likes of Jenkinson, given the way the world worked in the era of his upbringing and education, a woman was unlikely either to be the creator of a record, a researcher, or, excepting as a conservator, to be employed in the profession. Although the number of women in the sector has increased, practice has not evolved well enough to ensure women’s records mattered and were consistently discoverable in the 21st century. Simply diversifying the people qualified to enter the profession, it appears, may not be enough.
In 2020, ARA had been party to a joint statement on anti-racism in UK Heritage. This recognised that discrimination and racism continued to exist, and that passively waiting for them to go away by themselves was not a strategy that was working. It called not only for debate and discussion, but the questioning and challenging of practices, including the development of both a more diverse profession and more diverse collections. ARA asked for volunteers to become Allies against this backdrop. Although some of us have lived experience of belonging to a community that has been marginalised in recorded history and in real life, the term Ally is important because it shares the responsibility for evolving practice with others.
Back in 2020, with many staff furloughed or freed from usual duties by the pandemic, there was an initial flowering of action and commitments were made on deliverables from different working groups. As, the ‘new normal’ hit, progress slowed, meetings became less frequent and Allies were simply less free to volunteer their time. I want to take this opportunity to thank those whose changed circumstances have required them to step back. Our work has been kept going and resources of various kinds (including this blog series as well as workshops and training events) have nonetheless been produced to raise awareness, to usualise discussions of marginalised histories in the sector, and to help professionals reflect on practice. Less publicly, but importantly, Allies have supported individual members, including in dealings with ARA. New Allies are welcome – as each of us has only limited reserves of time and energy, the more of us there are, the better.
Having taken on the Chair role, I am stepping down from leading the Accessibility Working Group. I am pleased to announce that Iida Saarinen has agreed to take on that work, and I look forward to continue working with her and Victoria Cranna (who leads the Inclusive Cataloguing Working Group). The Allies have now had our first meeting in a while, and we are looking to start holding online sharing webinar style events over the next year. It would be good to partner with other national, regional and special interest sections of the ARA for some of these. I also hope to be meeting some of you in person at this year’s ARA Conference, and other events.
The archive sector bears some responsibility for the public not yet understanding that colonial and migration history is our history, and that black history, queer history, women’s history, and disability history, for example, are not niche interests but everyone’s history. As Bridget Malley argues,
“to continue one’s current archival practices unaltered is to continue… erasure… and to construct an inaccurate, incomplete mirror of society as it was, as it is, and as it is becoming. This results in what Michelle Caswell terms “symbolic annihilation,” saying, “[t]o be symbolically annihilated is to be an eternal outsider whose very presence is presumed an impossibility. In the wake of this absence, marginalized communities fail to see themselves or their places in the world.”
There were some in the profession opposed to disturbing the status quo, perceiving ‘institutional capture’ and politicisation – particularly around the word decolonising. But what was being proposed was not so much the abandonment of impartiality as the strengthening of it – offering a broader perspective in archival description, for example, than merely parroting that of the records creator. Beyond archival description, and providing physical and digital access to our collections in ways that meet user’s needs (e.g. tactile surrogates, WCAG compliant catalogues, alt-text for images, and materials and guides available in Easy Read formats), there is additional work to be done. This includes work with ‘communities’ (not just offering access to our collections but building relationships and helping them meet their own aims and archive themselves) and collections development (shaping policies and practices that do not serve only the Jenkinsonian default human). What can you do to help?
You can find out more about the Diversity Allies here.
Contact them here: diversityandinclusion@archives.org.uk