Philadelphia library workers upset diversity training didn’t scapegoat white people

According to The Philadelphia Inquirer, diversity consultant Brandi Baldwin, who is black and got her doctorate from nearby Temple University, also informed participants to avoid “white privilege,” noting the concept is “one of the other myths out there.”

Such terminology, Baldwin said, “didn’t account for the fact that people of color, too, could cause harm.” She asked attendees to consider: “Are all the inequities you experience at the hands of white people?”

The presentation, courtesy of the group DiverseForce, “didn’t sit right” for the employees whom The Inquirer says “have been fighting for racial justice” at the library for some time. Things “came to a head” at the library last summer following George Floyd’s death, with the library director resigning and speakers cancelling appearances.

Library community organizer Fred Ginyard said the only reason the Free Library even had the diversity training was in the interests of combatting white supremacy and systemic racism. “I don’t understand how you can address the issue if you can’t even name it,” he said.

“Black folk, we are seriously suffering from PTSD from that [expletive] training, even thinking about it now, I just wanna cry,” said Andrea Lemoins, a Free Library community organizer and a cofounder of the Concerned Black Workers of the Free Library, which has led recent racial justice organizing efforts. “To say that white privilege doesn’t exist? That is a whole level of anti-Blackness and internalized racism for her that I just cannot fathom.”