Why Most DEI Efforts Fail

“Change happens at the speed of relationships” - Rue Mapp, founder and CEO of Outdoor Afro

About halfway through listening to The MeatEater podcast with Steven Rinella, their featured guest, Rue Mapp, made this statement and it kind of knocked me on my ass. For the longest time I had been trying to articulate my frustration with the lack of progress I had observed and experienced in trying to dismantle white supremacist culture in academic and professional spaces. This frustration stems from much of the talk about around Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) being rooted in (mostly) white people trying to get more non-white people into white spaces. This kind of DEI is useless if the whiteness of the space is not confronted and changed.

Rue’s words on this podcast struck me because what I had been thinking since actively confronting whiteness at my previous job was that it was more important for the white people in spaces they say they want more non-white people in to confront whiteness, than it was for them to figure out ways to get more people of color into those spaces. I found myself, after listening to Rue’s words, wanting to ask white people,

“What’s your relationship with whiteness and how do you account for your whiteness in spaces you say you want more non-white people?”

If change happens at the speed of relationships, then what relationship do the white folks who say they want DEI have with themselves and with the identities they observe to be absent? How would a white person define and describe whiteness?

Then I went to a research conference and had my mind blown again (partially because of the amazing food).

Over the years, I’ve become less enthusiastic about conferencing; primarily because conferences are such overwhelmingly white spaces. The Raptor Research Foundation conference in Albuquerque, NM was just that; white AF.

The moment I walked into the room for the opening social I felt exhausted.

Three-hundred people in attendance and fewer than 10 visually coded non-white people. Yes. I counted. I always count. Every time. There was one other Black person there. We found each other on the second day and talked about research, but mostly we talked about how hard it is to be Black the raptor research community.

My mind was blown attending the Indigenous plenary, where three Indigenous panelists spoke about Indigenous raptor and land conservation. All three presentation thoroughly articulated what it meant to be a member of their people; the values, the practices, the stories, the responsibilities, the history, and the hopes for the future.

Aimee Roberson and Tiana Williams-Claussen’s presentations were particularly informative about the arc of their respective peoples’ history with the land, conflict with settler colonialism, and how they are working towards a better future. What I loved most about their presentations was that whiteness was front and center as the source of conflict, struggle, and suffering. The overwhelmingly white audience didn’t seem to balk at what was being said, but they also didn’t terribly unsettled.

Then, the inevitable question of “what can I/we do as scientists (white people) do” was asked. I hate this question.

Without fail in any discussion that explicitly touches on white supremacy, some well meaning white folk is compelled to ask this question - pretending out of ignorance mostly - that there aren’t centuries of worth of literature that answers their question. It’s not people of colors’ job to instruct each white person we talk to about the challenges of being non-white what said white people can do to tone down the white supremacy. If for nothing else, our people already told y’all what you can do.

But beyond this frustration, I thought to myself: “How many white people in this room could get on stage and talk for 20min about whiteness like these Indigenous folks talked about their identities?”

How many white people are able to articulate the core values of whiteness? The long arc of history of whiteness, how it was established, what conflicts arose from the formation of this identity, and what the future of whiteness is or what they hope it would be? I think 1% of the room then would be a wildly generous wager.

It strikes me as fundamentally unfair for people of color to be asked to share what it means to be of their people in white spaces that say they want DEI, when those same white people aren’t asked to articulate whiteness. Not even to themselves in their own minds.

One of things that frustrated me about the MeatEater podcast episode with Rue Mapp - and this is no shade to her because she was amazing - was how little Steven Rinella was asked to articulate whiteness. Whiteness was never named as the agent of exclusion, which to me signals a fundamental lack of consciousness in his mind and the minds of so many other white people I’ve interacted with, that the problem with lack of DEI progress is whiteness.

(And don’t worry, Steven and the MeatEater folks are going to get this work in a newsletter post this month. These dudes had 45 Jr. on their podcast TWO EPISODES AFTER having Rue Mapp on. For Who, For What?! Yeah. I got some thoughts on that f*cksh*t.)

In a recent faculty meeting where we were explicitly discussing DEI goals, the facilitators asked a final question: “In 5 years if you’ve not achieved the DEI goals you’ve outlined in these meetings, what will be the reason(s) for that failure?” Other things were said by other people that I don’t now remember. What I do remember was the last thing said, which were the words that came out of my mouth:

“We will fail in our DEI goals if we fail to confront whiteness.”

The facilitators really liked my comment and said it was a great way to end the workshop, but the overwhelming majority of my colleagues were less effusive. Lots of silence, discomforted body language, and, to this day, no sustained discussion of what I said.

But let me say it again.

Most DEI efforts fail because white people haven’t or refuse to fully define whiteness and their relationship with it. Those failures have nothing to do with how white people in white spaces make said spaces more inclusive, but how they as white people confront how whiteness makes themselves and the spaces they create and cultivate hostile to non-white people.

It’s not us, it’s y’all. It’s whiteness. And most of y’all have no idea what whiteness means.

You can’t hope to be a good intimate partner with someone if you have a poor relationship with yourself and are unwilling to reveal yourself to others. It’s selfish to request others share themselves without reciprocity, yet every time I hear a non-white person speak on issues of DEI I get nervous and am ultimately disappointed when subsequent discussions and/or non-discussions reveal that the white folks there haven’t done close to the same level of work to understand their whiteness that said person of color has done to understand context and their personal relationship with their racial identity.

Change happens at the speed of relationships, and perhaps the reason why DEI change is happening so slowly is because most white folks refuse to have a conscious relationship with whiteness.

What’s in my pocket

I bought a camera! So I’ve been recording a lot of my YouTube content on my iPhone, which has been an incredibly frustrating experience. Getting the content off my phone to my computer through iPhoto on a phone with limited storage was not it.

I did a fair amount of “research” on what was a good entry-level camera for an aspiring content creator and decided on the SONY ZV-E10. It comes with a basic kit lens that’s not the best lens, but, with enough light, gets the job done just fine. I added a Small Rig camera cage which makes the camera much more comfortable to hold AND will allow me to trick out my rig in the future for high quality video.

I love this little camera and plan to use it for a long time.

• Sony ZV-E10 Video Camera

• Small Rig Camera Cage

If you’re in the market for such, check out the links above. Purchasing through this affiliate link will earn me a small commission and is a great way, at no extra cost, to support this newsletter.

What’s in my ear-hole

Janelle Monáe’s latest album is an absolute treasure. There’s really not much else to say. Go listen to it if you haven’t already.

What’s on my brain

I struggle with consistency in a lot of things and recently I’ve come back to something that’s helped; making time to plan out my weekly schedule in fine detail. This has been especially helpful now that this hobby of content creation requires a fair bit of my time. One of things I like most about creating a detailed weekly schedule is that it forces me to explicitly account for how much time I have and then prioritize the things I say I want to get done.

So, I’m doing more of that and making time for the things I can explicitly name as important. Wish me luck!

Announcements

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I’ll talk to y’all next Sunday.

Cheers,

Jonathan