Anders Tobiason, an assistant professor and librarian at Albertsons Library, recently published an article, “Unpacking White language supremacy in the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education” in The Reference Librarian.
The ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education is a set of core concepts developed by the Association of College and Research Libraries to guide information literacy instruction and curriculum development in colleges and universities.
Tobiason’s article examines how the Framework for Information Literacy constructs the ideal information-literate individual through white language supremacy — the idea that standardized white English norms are superior, thus marginalizing other ways of speaking, writing, and communicating.
Tobiason poses critical questions: Who defines information literacy, and who is imagined as the ideal information-literate individual? The coding of the ideal information-literate person as white is not necessarily intentional; rather, it reflects the pervasive influence of white language supremacy as a systemic feature of academia. By articulating the use of white language supremacy in the framework, Tobiason suggests how to begin the process of deconstructing this pattern and allowing the framework to evolve.