Unpacking Black School Librarianship

As a Black school librarian in Texas, there's one set of rules for her colleagues and another for Jean Darnell. Here she shares the difficulty she has endured trying to empower students to become active and engaged citizens while challenging school traditions. As an educator and school librarian for almost twenty years, she hesitated to even join this opportunity because the engrained slights and negative experiences she has endured where she can nonchalantly be thrown into the category of "she's just a bitter employee" or "she's just an angry Black woman." But that right there is an issue. She is not allowed to be upset by intentional ugliness. She has had to consistently turn a blind eye to injustice. Writing this article threatens her entire career because she will more than likely be labeled "difficult" when she is really searching for equality in professional growth and job protection when she speaks up about sensitive topics like implicit bias and racism. So how does this history of oppression translate to her role as a school librarian? In several ways. She has had to create inclusive programs that address the setbacks to Black, indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) caused by predominantly white institutions (PWIs). These PWIs suffer an acute and debilitating lack of self-awareness and community for BIPOC students, regardless of whether they exist in the public or private sector, academic or corporate sector, or secondary or postsecondary education. These institutions are a blight across the board in America, no matter the setting.