Likely Passage

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danah boyd’s[1] What World Are We Building is mostly about the ways man-made tools reflect man-made biases. Big Data is her primary concern, looking at the ways our digital worlds remain rooted in the physical, or maybe it’d be more accurate to say the ways the digital landscape reflects our social, psychological landscape. As a lead-in, she highlights work she did traveling around the U.S., interviewing teenagers about their understanding of and relationship with technology.

A common theme in these interviews was teens’ percpetion of the class and race differences between users of the two, at the time, most prominent social media sites, Myspace and Facebook. The former was considered “ghetto”, “lower class”, and less sophisticated than the latter, which was for more “mature”, more “cultured” users. The language used by the teens in the direct quotes provided largely relate to class, primarily hinting at lower economic status and stunted education levels. For one of the two white teens quoted, a young woman, it’s clear, at least in boyd’s retelling, this is coded language to avoid appearing racist. The teen eventually relents and explicitly states black people use one, white people use the other. But the other white teen quoted, a young man, doesn’t seem to express any kind of racial aspect to this division. It’s purely a socio-economic divide[2]. When considered against the young woman’s use of hip-hop, the young man’s use of jazz as a marker of sophistication suggests race is secondary to class. So, I found it odd that though she recognized the ways “our country’s struggle with class and race got entwined with technology” and the language she quotes reflects the ways class and race are themselves entwined, boyd more or less drops the issue of class completely from the rest of the article. Race takes center stage.

I don’t think this is necessarily wrong. Racism is a major issue, distinct from class. One that requires special attention and focus to root out inequality, inequity, and injustice. And her later points about the ways we need to be conscious of the ways our own biases undermine the social value of our technologies and institutions are all correct. But the way class is dropped so quickly and easily in the setup of this particular article, to hone in on one aspect of a very large problem, opened my eyes to something I hadn’t really noticed. In a lot of the literature I’ve encountered in my library related studies, the authors are often much more comfortable discussing race over class. I recognized the same move again in Christian Lauersen’s 2018 keynote speech at the UX in Libraries conference.

The digital divide and homelessness are two topics where class is discussed more directly. But in these areas the focus is usually on how a library’s services and programming can fill gaps. Class is presented as a condition, not an identity[3]. It is rarely, if ever, considered in discussions about diversifying the workforce or reaching members of the community who do not or only rarely use the library’s services.

To be clear, when I talk about class status, I’m not just talking about the lower class. Look again at the teens in boyd’s piece, they not only express a preference for why they use Facebook, they articulate the reasons they don’t use Myspace. Take a glance at the general rhetoric surrounding social services in this country and the bizarre aversion to “handouts” on both sides of the political aisle[4] and you can see how this might affect a libraries relationship to the communities they’re hoping to serve. I’m not sure if there is research to directly support this, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a little bit of the young woman’s “the people who use Myspace are a little bit ghetto” buried beneath some non-library users’ perception that the library is not for them[5].

Now, I’m not saying we need more upper-class representation in the library in response to this. Especially because this perception cross class boundaries. Many people feel uncomfortable admitting they have a low income and need public assistance. But this does open up new points of departure when planning outreach, based around the question: How can the library promote a general shift in the public’s perception of social services?

And looking behind the scenes at the organizational structure of the library, it will be very difficult to realize the dream of the Hyperlinked Organization if we fail to properly acknowledge the way class affects staff members’ perception of their role within their library. Their sense of agency, power, and freedom to contribute and criticize equally. Diversifying the workforce based on race, gender, and sexual orientation will only get you so far. If a staff member is living paycheck to paycheck and always playing financial catchup, they’ll be less likely to do anything that could be perceived as rocking the boat. And if the gap between the salaries of the upper and lower staff is wide enough to start collecting commas it doesn’t matter if the managers are using inclusive language or not, everybody will be well aware of their place in the hierarchy.

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[1] On her website, boyd explains her decision to eschew capitalizing her own name in what’s in a name?

[2] Though, you can possibly glimpse some sexism buried in his view of what qualifies as cultured and uncultured in his dismissal of “bubblegum pop”.  

[3] All this brought to mind a quote from Stuart Hall, “Race is…the modality in which class is ‘lived’, the medium through which class relations are experienced, the form in which it is appropriated and ‘fought through’.” From Race, articulation and societies structured in dominance.

[4] Conservatives lambast liberals, accusing them of wanting everything for free. And liberals do all they can to assure the greater public their proposed services are in no way  “communist” or “socialist”, that these handouts are not really free. There is a cost, even if it’s not financial. Despite the fact that everybody likes free stuff.

[5] This also cuts the other way, of course. As a cultural and educational institution, many believe the library is only useful for book worms, amateur eggheads, and academics. This problem has been well addressed in the literature though, which frequently highlight the many “practical” services libraries provide.