I loathe the term “diversity” as a catch-all for the myriad issues the academy faces in doing right by identities they are, in practice, heavily invested in marginalizing. Much like Black cultural touchstones such as “bling”, “lit”, raising the roof (seriously, why do so many white women still insist on doing this?), and “woke”, whiteness has coopted, homogenized, repackaged, and now enthusiastically distributes “diversity” like Elvis Presley and The Rolling Stones did with Black music. “Diversity” now means everything and nothing. It is a term used just as often to obfuscate the actual culprits of structural harm, as it is used to pay lip service to making meaningful change.
The impetus to replay this common practice of whiteness is always the same; to dress an identity built on subjugation, dehumanization, and unspeakable violence in something more palatable the masses will accept while the violence continues. Thus, the lack of racial diversity that persists in the academy is more a product of people’s willingness to take up whiteness than any misfortune of circumstance or deficiency in the people who are “left out”.
Academia doesn’t have a diversity problem. The issue isn’t a leaky pipeline of Black scholars, ignorance of micro aggressions, lack of hiring of Black professors, lack of funding for DEI (diversity equity and inclusion) programs, lack of inclusion, ineffective DEI trainings, ineffective recruitment and retention, or any of the common excuses institutions and individuals offer while clutching their pearls or shedding white tears over how unjust things are. George Floyd was murdered on tape, institutions vowed change, Black Lives Matter was emblazoned onto some public roads and buildings, but nothing significant has changed in the academy. As a unifying explanation for why the academia remains staunchly hostile to Black people, none of what white academics have been comfortable enough to admit are the problems adequately explains why student, faculty, and curricula remain overwhelming white.
The problem with academia is whiteness. Any and all common explanations for why institutions can’t seem to diversify, despite how much they say they want to, all take root in an academic culture that rewards individuals who take up and weaponize whiteness. For example:
“Dr. Smith first desired to fix things with Dr. Hall in January, after DEI trainings and began to seek advice because [they] ‘wanted so badly to fix things with [Dr. Hall].’ [They] felt Dr. Hall was being ‘hostile and aggressive’ and ‘targeting’ [them].”
The above is a direct quote (name and gender changed) excerpted from a report of my complaint against a former colleague for their problematic behavior. Notice the pivot from benevolence and collegiality to the explicitly racist trope of “the angry Black man”. Absolutely amazing.
My former institution, after weeks of evidence gathering and (I assume) consideration of my robust rebuttal of accounts and interpretations (like the above quote) my colleague offered in their defense, ultimately ruled, per university policy and definitions of “Race Discrimination”, “Hostile Environment”, and “Harassment”, that my claims were “unsubstantiated”. They invited me to comment on this ruling, which I did, and I have not heard from a single person of authority at that institution since. Not after 5 emails or a phone call. Nothing but white noise.
The outcome, while disappointing, was not all that unexpected, though the shock of reading how easily Dr. Smith embodied and weaponized whiteness was significant. But then to have that embodiment interpreted as insufficient evidence for a racism taking place was kind of mind blowing. The blows continued as I read the report, and when I came across a quote from another colleague involved, I began to see through the haze of indignation to the roots of what was actually going on:
“Witness #2 [department colleague] stated their relationship with Dr. Hall has gotten ‘pretty rocky’ since the complaint about Dr. Smith. They believe it is because they did not address Dr. Smith’s comment to Dr. Hall’s satisfaction. Witness #2 said they did not address it was because in any other context they considered the complaint ‘frivolous’.”
The specific event with Dr. Smith was an alleged disparaging comment they made about my choice of lab name. Dr. Smith, allegedly, made this comment while teaching the intro grad course in the presence of a graduate student I had just recruited to work in my lab. Said student was understandably upset, but waited a year to bring Dr. Smith’s comment to my attention because of the power dynamics and fallout they understood might follow. Did I mention that Dr. Smith also served as associate chair at the time? Nevertheless, I thought it necessary to raise my concern with the current associate chair (Witness #2, I believe), if for no other reason than to attempt to staunch Dr. Smith’s problematic behavior towards me. A 2 hour conversation with this colleague where I presented and eventually pleaded my case for Dr. Smith to be held accountable wasn’t enough to move them until a follow up and strongly worded email moved them to forward my concerns to the chair. Dr. Smith’s comment was eventually corroborated by a 2nd student in the class and filed in the same report HR used to rule my case “unsubstantiated”.
The events that followed my attempts to hold Dr. Smith’s accountable is a set of all too common protocols one can observe 24/7/365 in academia and beyond. These self-proclaimed white allies, liberals, progressives, fair-minded and “objective” academics were clearly deeply uncomfortable having to account for something they believe themselves to be totally beyond. Racism. At the end of the day, my defense of my dignity, professionalism, and right to a non-hostile work environment was met with racist tropes, dismissiveness, flat out lies (the chair, in a meeting with the dean, head of HR, and associate dean of social justice claimed I never expressed my specific issues with Dr. Smith, my experiences with racism in the department, or what outcome I wanted from Dr. Smith’s alleged comment despite direct communication with them on these very issues), deliberate misunderstanding of reality, and litigious rhetoric. By bringing my concerns and receipts to light, I forced my colleagues and institution to face a set of racisms they were directly responsible for. But rather than admit such harms took place and attempt to make things better, those white colleagues decided to lean into the culture of and their own internalized whiteness, close ranks, and label that troublesome negro hostile, aggressive, frivolous, and incompetent.
What’s truly wild about this situation is the space some white folks can hold, seemingly appreciating their Black colleagues for their willingness to confront whiteness, while also violently refusing responsibility for the racist harm they cause. Check out this email I received from Dr. Smith over the winter holiday, after the chair had informed them I was contemplating a formal complaint against them. Sit down before your read this, because it’s truly one of the most bonkers things I’ve ever personally experienced from a white person in the midst of them doing a racism:
“I am writing to express my gratitude to you for all your contributions to [our department and university], and our wider community. The work you do to help us recognize systemic racial injustices and to move towards rectifying institutional racism and microaggressions at [university] is of the utmost importance and value...Thus, it is my hope and intention in writing this letter that our colleagues across the department, college, and university will recognize that your work on racial justice issues is often difficult to measure, but is deeply impactful and benefits white people and our white institution; the exact people and system that have always benefitted from white supremacy and privilege.” -Dr. Smith
By the time the university ruled on my case, I had already accepted an offer to join the faculty at another university. I had also communicated said decision including my letter or resignation. The reaction and response from my department colleagues was somber, but congratulatory. Some, however, were particularly interesting given the context of my complaint against Dr. Smith:
“I feel that your addition to the [department] faculty was one of the very best things to happen while I was chair, but I trust you will find rewards and happiness in you new position.
The department will miss you. I will miss you.”
“Your growth has been reciprocal, and you have catalyzed our department to grow in many significant ways that I hope will continue in the future. “
“There’s no adequate words to express my sincere gratitude for your effort and energy that you brought to everything you have done here, but here’s a few that hopefully come close. Your remarkable talent, that combines your intellect, dedication, humor and values, elevates the operation of the world around you to a higher standard, to the benefit of everyone around you. [Your new institution] will be lucky to gain you among its faculty.”
In all honesty, I really appreciated these emails, but the nearly 10 years of white nonsense I experienced colored (ha!) the gratitude I was able to feel. Within the context of my ongoing battle against the department’s culture, I read these comments as coming from people that do not need more trainings to understand how whiteness functions in their department. My colleagues who could speak about my impact on the department’s culture was possible precisely because they understood, at least at a basic level, said culture as hostile towards Blackness. But these were also comments from white people who, now that I was leaving, felt safe to admit that the culture of the department was positively impacted by someone who, they witnessed from the sidelines, spent years trying to change. I was leaving and so was the driving force of accountability around issues of race. Time to celebrate, give Jonathan his flowers, and get back to the work of whiteness.
White academics don’t have nearly as much trouble understanding whiteness as they have trouble letting go of it when caught and called out weaponizing its power.
No amount of funding, training, and/or programing is going to change a culture that specializes in colonizing concepts that threaten their supremacy. And so much of that work is done by white academics on a semi-conscious level. I honestly think Dr. Smith believes, to this day, that I was being unfair to them; maybe even a little “reverse racist”.
I left my former institution and department precisely because inclusion was what was asked of me. They wanted a co-conspirator in playing diversity, rather than actual accountability and change. Progress at the pace of white comfort and I was to be their Black co-signer.
Recently another white colleague at a different institution sent me an email expressing their views and thoughts on racism in the academy, along with an article from a Blackacademic on their experiences with racism. It took me a month to answer this colleague’s thoughtful and well-meaning email, but in the end I only skimmed the article they sent. I appreciate any Blackademic’s willingness to share their experiences and be vulnerable as an important tool for change, because that’s exactly what those accounts are, tools that can be used for change. What I’m sick of is those accounts being used to continue to talk around the root cause of the harms Blackademics experience with monotonous regularity. The locus of what’s harming Blackademics is always a matter of tweaking this system, reading Dr. Kendi’s “How to be Antiracist”, and having a foods from around the world potluck.
Give me a room full of white academics of all ages, backgrounds, political affiliations, geographies, and the one thing that room will almost certainly agree on is that the system, though flawed, is fundamentally sound; and that any meaningful change should occur slowly to allow everyone to adjust, even, for example, an emeritus professor who sends an email on the department listserv, apropos of nothing, about the evolution of skin color (yes, that actually happened). This room will grossly underestimate their individual contributions to cultures of whiteness, if they see such contributions at all, and they will almost certainly see their racially homogenous lives outside of academia as having little to no impact on their ability to be “good allies”. They will have little to no positive reciprocal relationships with Blackness, but insist they can do “diversity” because they are “good people”.
This ubiquitous white academic archetype is due to whiteness almost never being explicitly named - by white academics (that part is really important) - as the source of academia’s dysfunction. Why would it. It’s hard to carry on the tradition of white supremacy when the people these institutions were built to privilege are made explicitly aware that their academic acumen and accomplishments are amplified by the oppression and exclusion of non-white peers. Fundamental change requires fundamentally different actions that come from a fundamentally different world sense. So much of mainstream diversity work is about adding colorful sprinkles to what most academics consider to be a perfectly acceptable (vanilla) cupcake.
Academia is broken, not because it lacks chocolate sprinkles, it is broken because it’s missing essential ingredients AND because the pastry chefs (academic power brokers) insist on deluding themselves with the idea that a sugarless cupcake is the only kind of cupcake worth making. Racial diversity isn’t optional for success, it’s essential.
If academia wants to be fixed, you’ll know it by a collective admission from white academics that whiteness is indeed the problem. This hasn’t happened because doing so risks so much of what so many white academics understand and value as their identity and livelihood. Naming whiteness risks something I believe many white people cannot imagine themselves living without, that essential thing that they depend on to make sense of their lives and make sense of the world; white supremacy. But not the overt kind of white supremacy that carries torches, wears hoods, or blurts the n-word (this happened twice from two different former department colleagues), but that quietly reassuring white supremacy that makes whiteness the default, minimizes pangs of guilt, zeros any sense of collective responsibility for harm, invites a rejection of self-reflection, and mobilizes righteous and violent indignation against any call for accountability. Comfort as white supremacy.
But equity demands white academia risk their identity, livelihoods, and power monopoly in order to enact the change so many claim they so desperately want. Why must white academics risk themselves for the equity they seek? Because Blackademics do so just existing in spaces built for and maintained by whiteness.
Thanks for reading. I really needed to decant all of those thoughts.
Now, to decide if I should publish this before or after I go up for tenure…
