by TAMURA LOMAX
I signed out of zoom, sat up straight, placed my elbows on the table, clasped my hands together, pulled them up to my mouth, closed my eyes, and sighed out loud from exhaustion. I’d been zooming back-to-back non-stop since 9:30am. It was now well past 5pm, and I’d yet to eat lunch or dinner. Emotionally and mentally drained and starved, I raced into the kitchen to make dunch, a combination of the two, then sat down in front of my computer and commenced to scoff down my meal as if it were my last, while scrolling mindlessly through Facebook in hopes of redirecting my energy for a moment – so that I might continue working. Why am I rushing? I paused and asked myself. Because 1) the work is never ending when you’re a Black woman, and 2) the kind of work we have to do is draining. At that very moment a meme flashed before me:
Pay black women for their labor instead of using them for diversity clout
Let me clarify so I can make it make sense to the people in the back. For those who may not know, DEI stands for diversity, equity, and inclusion. Diversity training began in the workplace in the 1960s in response to the civil rights movement and affirmative action and equal employment laws. The idea was to decrease discrimination and increase belonging and sensitivity (while providing protections against civil rights complaints and lawsuits) in the workplace through hiring, awareness, training, and education. Today, diversity initiatives are mass-mediated alongside twin powers: equity and inclusion, producing a range of vision statements, strategic plans, task forces, resources, ambitions, affinity groups, job opportunities, et al. across public and private sectors, mandating against not only racism but also sexism, heterosexism, transphobia, ethnocentrism, ableism, religious bigotry, and more.
To be sure, thanks to the DEI trinity our places of work and business look more closely like the world we live in. In academia, this means more diverse faculty, staff, administrative pools, students, curriculum, departments, programs, research, promotions, tenure structures and rules, programming, organizations, speeches and lecture series, and dishes during seasonal celebrations and office potlucks. Space, regardless of what that space felt and feels like, was made for historically excluded groups. This matters.
Now, let me say this from the bottom of my Black feminist heart: the trio – diversity, equity, and inclusion aka DEI – is not “giving what it’s supposed to give.” (This is a Hip-Hop reference. If you don’t get it, it’s okay. Read on.) Representation is neither equity nor inclusion. As Audre Lorde reminds us, diversity without structural change is tokenism and tokenism is tolerance, the latter of which is “the grossest reformism.” In other words, diversity is gradual accommodation. To make it plain/er, representation without radical, and particularly Black feminist, political analyses, organizing, and practice bent towards justice is assimilation. And this, she posits, is the opposite of revolution.
Feminist Wire for more