Editorial: dismantling structural racism in archives and recordkeeping practices in the UK

In the summer of 2020, during the Black Lives Matter protests that followed the murder of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis, USA on the 25 May 2020, UK email list discussions about the impact of systemic and structural racism on recordkeeping became heated and divisive.¹ The difficult and, at times, offensive conversation reflected long term conflicts, both overt and implied, about how to respond to the legacies of racism, slavery and colonialism that are embedded in archival institutions and practices.² While a vocal minority refused to acknowledge the realities of racism or its wide-ranging impacts, most contributors expressed a desire to learn and self-educate, to take action, to dismantle oppressive structures, and to work towards a more equitable and just archival field. An acknowledgement of the role of archives and archivists in perpetuating racism was matched by a conviction that recordkeeping and archiving could be transformative mechanisms of antiracism. As 'Renée Saucier and David A. Wallace have argued, archives are both ‘vital active sites of social justice and injustice,’ they ‘both constitute and enact injustices but also are central to justice.’³ But email list posts calling for action were not always matched by a clear sense of what such action should look like nor how to take steps towards it.

The last twenty years have seen unprecedented critical reflection and analysis of the operation of racialized power through and in archives and archival institutions. Most recently, Michelle Caswell has called archival studies ‘a field on fire,’ as scholars and archivists grapple with revealing, on the one hand, ‘how power is imbricated in archival theory and practice’ while, on the other, seeking ‘to create a transformative praxis that liberates rather than oppresses.’⁴ Ghaddar and Caswell have spoken of the ways in which ‘dominant notions of archives and the archival profession have been indelibly shaped by Western imperial and colonial ventures,’⁵ while Ishmael has demonstrated how ‘whiteness permeates the profession’ and is persistently reinforced through intellectual frameworks grounded in seminal texts such as Hilary Jenkinson’s A Manual of Archival Administration (1922).⁶ Jarrett Drake has further argued that even apparent efforts to diversify the recordkeeping professions, using the neoliberal discourse of inclusion, have enabled, rather than disrupted, white supremacy.⁷ Meanwhile, the work of James Lowry and Mandy Banton has drawn attention to the perpetuation of racial violence through the postcolonial displacement of archives.⁸ This special issue of Archives and Records is a contribution to the ongoing work of exposing and dismantling racism in recordkeeping practices in the UK. Our motivation as editors has been to provide a space for antiracist research and practice, with a specific focus on Britain and the legacies of empire, as well as exploring the decolonization of archival practice and perspectives overseas, through case studies in Kenya and Brazil.

The articles in this issue continue an established tradition of critical thinking and action in a UK context. The call for papers arose out of the immediate events of May and June 2020 but would not have been possible without the foundational labour of people of colour. We would like to acknowledge our debts. To the pioneering work of the Black Cultural Archives, the George Padmore Institute, and the Huntley Collection (now at the London Metropolitan Archives) in collecting, preserving, and providing access to archives of Black communities in Britain. To We Are Transmission, a collective of historians and archivists of African heritage, who are working to ‘support and build archives and heritage in and with African diaspora communities,’ including the ‘Decolonising the Archive’ project.⁹ To Jass Thethi, who established Intersectional GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums) and called out racism at the Archives and Records Association conference in Glasgow in 2019.¹⁰ To the archivists and recordkeepers who met to discuss and write the statement calling to ‘End Structural Racism in Britain’s Archive Sector,’ which received 1700 signatures on Change.org in 2020.¹¹ Discussions with the authors of the statement led directly into our call for papers. And to the many others who have been doing the work of dismantling structural racism on the ground and at grass roots level for decades. For an overview of recent antiracist action in the UK archival profession, we recommend the article “Against Whitewashing: The Recent History of Anti-Racist Action in the British Archives Sector,” published whilst this issue was in preparation.¹²

The first two articles offer case studies of archival interventions to make racism and colonialism visible in long-established institutions. Julia Prest and Miriam Buncombe outline a pilot project at the University of St. Andrews’ Special Collections which aimed to uncover more of Scotland’s slaving past by cross-referencing existing catalogue records with the Legacies of British Slave-Ownership database, then updating descriptions to reflect the involvement of individuals, families, and organizations. The practical complexities of the process led them to reflect on the epistemological limitations of re-cataloguing, and the ways in which it may further obscure or silence the enslaved. In their article Victoria Cranna, an archivist, and Lioba Hirsch, a researcher on antiblackness in global health, bring together their different perspectives to discuss similar challenges at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM). Taking the position that an institution created by the Colonial Office in the nineteenth century, with deep roots in oppression, cannot be wholly decolonized, they nevertheless argue that critical empathy and Black and postcolonial archival approaches can create spaces in which colonial and racist histories can be acknowledged.

Karen Macfarlane offers critical insights into perceptions of white supremacy amongst UK archivists, drawing on qualitative research conducted in 2020 for her postgraduate Master’s dissertation. Her work provides a basis from which to understand the response of the profession to the global movement for Black Lives — and the exchange on the UK Archives mailing list — reporting that a strong appetite for change within the sector may still be inhibited by the impact of ‘white fragility’ on individual and institutional actions.

James Lowry and Riley Linebaugh expand our perspective to consider the operation of structural racism at national and international levels in their article, “The Archival Colour Line.” They use Du Bois’s concept of the ‘colour line’ to describe the current status quo whereby European nations retain custody of archives after decolonization which, ‘recapitulates the racism of the imperial project.’ Using the case study of land ownership records in Kericho, Kenya, they outline the formation of the ‘colour line’ through the archival principles of provenance, appraisal, and custody, arguing that the dispossession and displacement of records ‘fortifies a global racist order.’

Finally, Aldair Rodrigues, Mário Medeiros, and Paulo Ramos offer an international perspective on the relationship between archival institutions and anti-racist action, reporting on the development of participatory approaches to archiving Black social movements in Brazil. They reframe the incorporation of Black-led community records into the archives of the State University of Campinas (UNICAMP) as a process of historical recovery, grounded in the archival legacy of Black historian and activist Arthur Schomburg. They argue that antiracist action and behaviour require a transformation not only of collections and archival practices but of archivists and the managers of archival services. We did not have enough space to print a sixth article, Stanley Griffin and Scott Timcke’s analysis of the impact of colonialism on recordkeeping practices in Jamaica and South Africa, but it is now available online and will be printed in our next issue.

Together these authors respond to Michelle Caswell’s challenge for us to ‘both tear down and build up,’ to dismantle structural racism and at the same time to ‘build a liberatory now.’¹³ They join the upswell of critical thinking and action which continues to gather momentum within the recordkeeping field.

This issue is not a finished piece of work. There are many more areas of research which could have been covered, such as developments in conservation practice and records management. We hope authors will continue to submit manuscripts for consideration on similar themes and topics. That the majority of the authors in this issue are white challenges us as editors to keep interrogating how we can address structural racism within the academic publishing field as well. We hope the issue will prompt discussion and ideas for change within the profession. To that end, we welcome feedback, and we aim to organize a roundtable event to create one opportunity for ensuing discussions.

At the same time, we publish this issue in the context of an increasingly constrained environment for scholars and practitioners engaged in antiracist and decolonization work in Britain. On 22 September 2020 Oliver Dowden, then Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport for the UK government, sent a letter to major museums, galleries and arms-length heritage organizations including The National Archives and The British Library, as well as major funders such as Arts Council England and the National Lottery Heritage Fund.¹⁴ In it, he wrote that he expected organizations’ ‘approach to issues of contested heritage to be consistent with the Government’s position,’ instructing that ‘as publicly funded bodies, you should not be taking actions motivated by activism or politics.’¹⁵ The letter implied that future funding may be predicated on adhering to government-sanctioned narratives. This, along with the rise of ‘culture war’ rhetoric¹⁶ and recent legal action taken against the National Trust in response to its ‘Colonial Countryside’ project,¹⁷ demonstrates how urgent and necessary action is, how difficult it is to undertake, and why there is still much to do.

Notes

1. The originating post (‘thinking about statues’) was made on 10 June 2020, with over 50 responses within 48 hours. The exchange can be accessed via the mailing list archives on the ARCHIVES-NRA Jiscmail home page, https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A0=archives-nra. The ARCHIVES-NRA mailing list is one of the primary means of communication between records professionals in the UK.

2. Ishmael, “Reclaiming History.”

3. Soucier and Wallace, “Introduction,” 4, 6. Italics added for emphasis.

4. Caswell, Urgent Archives, 12.

5. Ghaddar and Caswell, “Toward a Decolonial Archival Praxis,” 78.

6. Ishmael, “Reclaiming History,” 270.

7. Drake, “Diversity’s Discontents,” 272.

8. Lowry, “Displaced Archives;” and Banton, “Displaced Archives in The National Archives.”

9. TRANSMISSION, https://wearetransmission.space/; Decolonising the Archive, https://www.decolonisingthearchive.com/.

10. Intersectional GLAM, https://intersectionalglam.org/.

11. Change.org, “End Structural Racism in Britain’s Archive Sector,” https://www.change.org/p/archvists-end-structural-racism-in-britain-s-archives-sector, accessed 11 October 2021.

12. Chilcott, “Against Whitewashing.”

13. Caswell, Urgent Archives, 10, 13.

14. The letter was sent to the British Film Institute, British Library, British Museum, Churches Conservation Trust, Historic Royal Palaces, Horniman Museum, Imperial War Museum, Museum of the Home, The National Archives, National Gallery, National Museums Liverpool, National Portrait Gallery, Natural History Museum, Royal Armouries, Royal Museums Greenwich, Royal Parks, Science Museum Group, Sir John Soane’s Museum, Tate Gallery, V&A Museum, and Wallace Collection. The letter was also copied to Arts Council England, Charity Commission, Historic England, National Lottery Communities Fund, and the National Lottery Heritage Fund.

15. DCMS, “Letter from Culture Secretary.”

16. Duffy et al., “Culture Wars in the UK.”

17. “Charity Commission Finds National Trust Did Not Breach Charity Law,” 11 March 2021. https://www.gov.uk/government/news/charity-commission-finds-national-trust-did-not-breach-charity-law, accessed 11 October 2021.