Merit = Prejudice

 I'm in a diversity workshop for librarians and almost immediately one of the older white women asserts that we shouldn't announce the race or gender of the author when we promote author talks, because we don't do that for white, heterosexual authors. And we should read books based on their MERIT. This is my absolutely favorite fall-back position of white privilege - now that others are getting attention and being seen as valid, now they want all the choices to be based on merit. The implication is that we don't have to make up for the past, when nonwhites were never rewarded for their merit.

Of course, no one pushes back because we don't do that here - the discussion moves on after her comments without any of the facilitators responding.

She is making the case against her argument in the way she is phrasing it. White heterosexual authors have been massively overrepresented in libraries for centuries. You don't have to tell the audience the author is white and heterosexual, because they always are.

We announce when they aren't because we want to alert anyone who would like to know there will be representation from other types of authors. And to acknowledge that we have made assumptions in the past that are not going to be made anymore.