Its been almost two years since the college closed,
unfilled, the position of the coordinator of
Multicultural Affairs, citing
budget issues. We are now searching for
a Chief Diversity Officer, who will implement a Inclusion, Diversity an Equity
plan developed by a small group of passionate people that have been on campus
for various lengths of time, some who have benefited from advantages bestowed
upon them and realized that those with any otherness have to work harder to be
recognized as having the same base level of expertise.
Two years ago I shared a variation of this:
Access without support is not opportunity.
You never really understand a person until you consider
things from his point of view… until you climb in his skin and walk around in
it.
Atticus Finch to his daughter Scout in To
Kill a Mockingbird.
Those people who bear the brunt of oppression should not be
required to also take responsibility for eliminating it. At the same time, it is self-evident that
people in the subordinate group can take the lead in setting the world
right. For one thing, if people in the
dominant group had access to and were able to hold a perspective that allowed
them to change systems and patterns of domination, they would have done so
already.
In:
Love 2010. Developing a Liberatory
Consciousness.
In:
Readings for Diversity and Social Justice,
edited by Maurianne Adams; Warren J Blumenfeld; Carmelita Rosie Castañeda;
Heather W Hackman; Madeline L Peters,Ximena Zúñiga.
Routledge.
Promoting an environment of class/gender/race/etc neutrality
hasn't been productive. Nor has ignoring
privilege and advantage based on membership in majority or dominant group. Just opening the door a tiny bit and forcing
interested parties to push their way to the table isn't exactly a welcoming
invitation. It's also contrary to
millennia of conditioning that its downright rude to treat authority figures
that way (and unladylike.) And that when members of non-majority groups act
assertively, it often backfires--they are not seen as authority figures, as are
white men that demonstrate that behavior, but as "uppity" or "bitches" or .....
I'd much rather see inclusion, with the expectation of
multiple of ways of knowing, and appreciation for all types of
contributions.
Neutral has been melting
pot analogy--and there are so many of the majority view that they drown or push
away the wonderful flavors, and creative additions, that everyone else brings
to the table.
Can we bring back the
salad bowl?
Or consider an analogy where
each individual element is appreciated for its own flavor and texture, but also
for how they complement and contrast for a richer, deeper experience.
This isn't novel:
It sucks how the entire burden of making the classroom a
safe space can fall on the shoulders of queer students. I would think that a
classroom that feels like a safe space would be a more comfortable environment
for everybody. I don’t know whether my TAs and professors are scared of dealing
with this stuff or if they just have the privilege of not thinking about it.
And even our own internal climate report (Heffernan 1992) noted that
... while the
women students recognized a personal responsibility to establish the boundaries
of acceptable behavior [aka addressing chauvinism], they found this chore to be
unfairly distracting from their studies.
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