[Text of screenshot: As four white women, we recognize that the editorial team can only offer a limited viewpoint on these issues and we are working proactively to engage a diverse set of perspectives. [Bolded text] We aim to provide space for those with different work experience such as non-tenure track librarians, technical services librarians, and library workers without the librarian title, as well as those with different lived experiences, such as librarians of color, non-binary, and LGBTQ+ folks.]
Last month, a team of early-career librarians tweeted the arrival of a new online community for library researchers. They presented themselves as an inclusive group, committed to social justice, and judging from Twitter commentary, other librarians agreed. Were they as inclusive as possible?
I am also a white female librarian, but I belong to the one-fifth of all adult Americans who have a disability—in my case, multiple disabilities, all non-visible. For this post, I’ll focus on a cluster of chronic musculoskeletal injuries, acquired thanks to a combination of short stature and a working lifetime spent in ergonomically inappropriate settings. As a disabled person who can and does hold a job, my “different lived experiences” include not only pain, fatigue, and restricted range of motion, but also unsupportive and even openly hostile workplaces.
Unless or until the current U.S. government severely undercuts the Americans with Disabilities Act, most library worksites are required to provide “reasonable accommodations” so that I can perform my job. Sounds good, but it’s the employer that gets to define “reasonable.”
Standard office chairs leave my feet swinging in mid-air, as if I were a child, and strain my lower back. Yet during my first year at one library, management did not consider even a cheap footrest to be “reasonable.” Instead, administrators helpfully directed me to the mailroom, where I had to rummage for used cardboard boxes of just the right height to support my legs. Sometimes I could make do with a box for an entire month before it sagged too much to serve. I finally obtained a footrest—but only after writing a formal request explaining that recycling boxes was not a permanent solution.
In another job, a manager ordered me to repeatedly reach overhead and pull heavy books from the topmost shelves of the stacks as part of a weeding project. This action inflamed both of my already-injured shoulders, so I requested a few hours of student employee assistance. On hearing of this, an individual in my chain of command informed me that pulling those books was a “professional” responsibility. Getting help from somebody else was not “reasonable” accommodation until I obtained a note from my primary care provider—explaining I would not grow taller before deadline. Getting that note, of course, required payment at a clinic—an installment of the “crip tax” constantly levied on disabled people.
Library employees who do not share my experiences may wonder why I didn’t turn promptly to workers’ compensation in both of these cases. For readers blissfully unaware of how that system operates: when you report a work related overuse injury, you must account for ALL your life activities involving the afflicted body part(s), not just the actions you perform at work. Cooking, housework, hobbies like playing the piano or knitting—according to workers’ compensation staff, those are the reasons I develop pain that keeps me awake at night. Without fail, gatekeepers tell me to buy meals instead of preparing them myself, or to hire someone to clean my home: more crip tax.
Furthermore, workers’ compensation offers minimal treatment and rehabilitation. As the designated physical therapist told me during my last go-round, the objective is to move employees just far enough towards recovery so that they can return to work full time. If I want to be able to do anything utterly frivolous—like cook my own dinner or push a vacuum cleaner around, without pain, after a day at work—I need to visit clinics outside the system, paying still more crip tax.
If you are truly interested in diversity or social justice, don't assume that middle-aged (or as my officemates say, “old”) white co-workers have no unique insights or experiences. We may not feel comfortable revealing one or several disabilities, especially if you are constantly informing us how “privileged” we are. Disabled people are everywhere, including the library. And you’re not very inclusive if you won’t even acknowledge that we exist.
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