Cultivating collective praxis for scholarly transformation and racial justice: The Critical Race Theory collective’s introduction to the special issue

Abstract

This special issue launches from the challenges of white supremacy within Library and Information Studies (LIS) and the demonizing of Critical Race Theory (CRT) within American and British societies. To address these challenges through a commitment to practice as well as theory, a special editorial team for this publication was formed to tackle head on how racialised knowledge justice issues can also manifest in scholarly publishing spheres. This team is the Critical Race Theory collective (CRTc): an international community of scholars, practitioners and activists working at the intersections of race, libraries, archives, information and education. This extended introduction is split into two parts that describe respectively the process and the product of the special issue. Part One charts the national contexts of CRTc praxis in the US and the UK, and outlines the community-building, restorative and pedagogical principles and lessons that have (in)formed the CRTc editorial and developmental process. Part Two outlines the papers that constitute the product of the special issue: contributions from American and British authors from interdisciplinary backgrounds who apply CRT frameworks to LIS discourse and practice. Together, these two parts demonstrate the scholar-activist underpinnings of CRTc to address, challenge, resist, interrupt, and ideally reverse the pushback against all forms of culturally conscious justice, especially racial justice.