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A lot of (white) academic institutions -- colleges, departments, centers -- are putting out statements affirming their commitments to "diversity" and "inclusion." Some are going as far as to say that their anti-racism work is enhanced by faculty/student "expertise." (1/?)
PSA: Calls for "diversity" and & #39;inclusion" almost always work *against* #abolitionist demands and other radical anti-racist, anti-capitalist organizing.
For example, corporate "diversity" initiatives -- think Coca-Cola teaching the world to sing while poisoning water sources and murdering union organizers -- develop in direct response to Black freedom and anti-imperialist movements in the 1960s.
Corporate multiculturalism (including its forms in schools and universities) is effectively a rebuttal to Black and Third World demands: stop being so "extremist" and learn to peacefully coexist with people different from you (i.e. white people, i.e. bosses, i.e. gentrifiers).
These moderated calls for "inclusion" offer select, token access to the structures of institutional terror that already exist. That there is some concession shows the efficacy of radical movements, no doubt, but this is also a moment of capture.
Anti-racist politics get reduced a CV line, glossed with the question "How many articles have you written?" and "What HR boxes can we argue that you check?" instead of the question, "Who are you building with, and how?"
The commodification of "diversity" punishes and exploits Black and brown radical scholars most of all.
It colludes with cultures of academic celebrity that secure the status of a select few stylized mavericks who perform "resistance" while 70% (and counting) of their colleagues are scraping by on the gig economy and constantly facing termination if they piss off the wrong people.
On the above, go read Nick Mitchell& #39;s "Summertime Selves" right now. https://thenewinquiry.com/summertime-selves-on-professionalization/">https://thenewinquiry.com/summertim...
Do it, especially, if you are connected to a university that is asking its instructors to double and triple their labor in preparation for fall, at which point many will be asked to quite literally risk death for their employer& #39;s bottom line.
You already know which academic workers will be on the line first: graduate teachers, contingent faculty, and new PhDs. This cohort has significantly more Black and non-black POCs than any other subset of academe. So tell me again who "inclusion" is working for here?
Go read @SaraNAhmed& #39;s book *On Being Included* for smart analysis of the racialized, feminized labor entailed in "diversity work."
https://www.dukeupress.edu/on-being-included">https://www.dukeupress.edu/on-being-...
https://www.dukeupress.edu/on-being-included">https://www.dukeupress.edu/on-being-...
Go read "Abolitionist University Studies" by @abbieboggs, @EliMeye, @nerdosyndical, and @touchfaith on how critique and nostalgia operate within higher ed discourse (among other things).
