This year, North Carolina Library Association’s Roundtable for Ethnic and Minority Concerns (NCLA REMCo) is offering a speaker series titled “Cultural Conversations. For their final installment, I was invited to discuss an intriguing piece of emerging data on from my study of low morale in racial and ethnic minority librarians: something I call deauthentication:
… a cognitive process that Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) traverse to prepare for or navigate predominantly White workplace environments, resulting in decisions that hide or reduce aspects of
- the influence of their ethnic, racial, or cultural identity, and
- the presentation of their natural personality, language, physical and mental self-images/representations, interests, relationships, values, traditions, and more,
to avoid macro- or microaggressions, shaming, incivility, punishment or retaliation, and which results in barriers to sharing their whole selves with their colleagues and/or clients. (Kendrick 2018)
Thanks to Jewel Davis for the invitation and for moderating the webinar and discussion.
Works Cited
Kendrick, K.D. (2018). Considering: Deauthenticity in the workplace. Renewals. Retrieved from https://renewalslis.com/2018/03/21/considering-deauthenticity-in-the-workplace/
