Race in Higher Education
I am in my tenth year as a higher education professional, and there is a significant amount of attention (or lack of) dedicated to the trendy discourse of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. DEI work had become more prevalent since the so-called racial reckoning during the summer of 2020 when the police murdered George Floyd. This “racial reckoning” that began in the summer of 2020 has offered an opportunity for employers, including institutions of higher education, across the nation to create positions focused on the performative aspects of DEI work. Equity initiatives are essential, especially in a public university where the majority of the students and surrounding community are people of color, and the administrators are still majority white. However, I have questions about the role of these strategies and initiatives. Do DEI positions and work get to the root and cause of racist practices? Or are we covering up racist practices and policies with the DEI band-aid approach and having no intention of engaging in discourse that gets at the foundational ideologies of racism?
I aspire to become a higher education administrator with decision-making responsibilities and transform the work of DEI. My intersecting identities of being Black and a woman have allowed me to suffer in silence and have hope, with a vengeance, within higher education. My role is the Director of a first-generation student advising program, and I lead a team of several people of color, whom none identify as Black. As I reflect on what it means to be a Black woman professional in higher education, I have noticed something worth mentioning here. For example, my supervisor is a white woman. When she decides to speak at one of my staff meetings, the team listens attentively. Most of my agenda items continue to be questioned or refuted with intensity. White people take my ideas with no credit to me. My supervisor is a high-level administrator. Instead of elevating my position as a director to a team that views me as invisible by presenting ideas and efforts in collaboration, she gives them as her own, starting every sentence with the phrase “I decided.”
Many white women will never understand the various nuances that encompass a Black woman’s life experiences, especially within a professional role. I believe DEI should be providing topics on race, or they can have a fireside chat with white people who benefit more from supervising Black people. The interest convergence makes the DEI work so frustrating, providing Black people and other marginalized populations a resource that does minimal in promoting equity. However, the university still benefits from this shiny resource. It enables families and other stakeholders to hear the university say “look at what we are doing to promote diversity and equity on our campus”! Not exactly.
The work of DEI is not here to understand how and why racism exists, the life experiences of people of color, or the policies and practices so profoundly rooted in the systems of whiteness. DEI is here to appease people of color, more specifically Black people. Many times, work in the name of equity is aligned with whiteness to perpetuate the systems of racism and keep the racial hierarchy in place. Race is at the center of all that we do in Higher Education, including research, policy, and practice. DEI work needs to understand that holding cultural days, understanding the use of pronouns, although important, is not enough. Being race-conscious and centering the narrative around people of color’s life experiences should be the work of all educators committed to transforming educational institutions into trying “anti-racist” environments. If we do not center Black people’s experiences and change the dominant narrative, our Black students and professionals will continue to be “othered” and kept on the margins.
To social justice warriors, co-conspirators, and allies doing the DEI work, stop using the language of appeasement and color-blind analysis of higher education practices and policies. It is time to become race-conscious, critically aware of the intentions behind DEI work that could be hurting people of color more than helping.
