to acknowledge the work and networks outside the United States of on-wiki communities, information activists, academics, independent scholars, and communities who often go unrecognized. This chapter explores how the system of white supremacy is a part of libraries and archives and Wikipedia; how Black-led shared knowledge information activists are circumventing the system; and suggestions for a more inclusive path forward.
Keywords
Black Wikipedians, White supremacy, Wikipedia, Libraries and archives.
Introduction
There is no way to talk about liberational value if you don’t address the needs communities are facing. LGBT and black and indigenous communities—we need to have them as central. We need to center on justice and not be afraid of politics. Archives have never been neutral—they are the creation of human beings, who have politics in their nature. Centering the goals of liberation is at the heart of the issue.—Jarrett Drake (“Archives Have Never Been Neutral,” 2017, para. 7)
“While we are in the same STORM, we are not the same BOAT” (Barr, n.d.). Some, especially Black and Indigenous people, are facing other storms on top of two pandemics: systemic racism and COVID-19. Just a week after George Floyd’s death on June 3, 2020, the Wikimedia Foundation’s executive director Katherine Mayer and the chief operating officer Janeen Uzzell released a statement titled, “We Stand for Racial Justice” where the Foundation committed to supporting Black community members, readers, and editors and the movement for Black Lives (Maher & Uzzell, 2020). However, editors, especially Black editors, have been critical of the statement since they had not received this kind of public support prior to global protests for Black lives and in light of other corporations and institutions capitalizing on releasing statements tied to the Black Lives Matter movement. There were questions surrounding this statement: Will systemic change be addressed in the foundation and the Wikipedia movement? Will Black
