“Only once did she mention race. There was no anger or finger-pointing.” was part of the “positive feedback” I got after a recent keynote. Yikes.

1) someone assumed I was an angry Black woman stereotype
2) Y’all want to hear our voices only if we cater to your white fragility

The fact that the university even sent that crap to me thinking it was a good reflection on their school just screamed so many red flags. I would never work there and I will never speak there again

My talks are rarely even centered on race like. Like... my talk had NOTHING to do with race AT ALL. This person really just up and wrote this about a talk that had nothing to do with race.

Look at the contrast. This is someone else’s positive feedback for the same talk I gave:
“even more important seeing someone like me in the room”

If you didn’t understand how badly we need DEI action in higher education, remember that these two people most likely are COWORKERS

Imagine person #1 who doesn’t feel like hearing about race or feelings pertaining to race working on a team with person #2 who feels underrepresented and just grateful to see someone who looks like them. With no effective DEI support. Just imagine the trauma and microaggressions.

My speaking fee just went up. Don’t ask me why my fee is $3mil. Y’all are going to have to pay me more coins to put up with this. I’m super serious. Because y’all want to bring in “diversity” and don’t know how to treat us. You’re gonna pay a tax for that. And that’s real.

PS: I’m a happy soft and kind Black woman but we are definitely allowed to be angry and have every right to be. Look at our world. You listen and learn. If I want to show up that day and talk about my Blackety Black life and be mad, you would most certainly have to deal with it.

Me writing this thread: I am laughing. I’m not upset, trust me, I’ve absolutely received worse microaggressions. This is not a pity me thread. I really just need everyone to SEE what I’m seeing here. Just LOOK

And now I need to send them a reply email letting them know about the red flags I’m seeing and that they need to hire a third party DEI consultant to investigate their workplace I’m not letting it slide

Also, this event was organized by women in STEM, FOR women in STEM. Please see the issue here. This is a women in STEM group on a university campus, sending me this. Just think about that very deeply for me, okay?

Further clarification: The UNIVERSITY group of faculty members collected these responses from the attendees (I think there were at least 120) and emailed it to me in a bulleted list thinking that this was actually something that wasn’t embarrassing for them.

"Raven was very charismatic and fun to listen to her life story in science. It was not female or black specific, so EVERYONE could get the same take-away as to "Be yourself"! Only once did she mention race. There was no anger and finger-pointing."

YIKES. YIKES. YIKES.

Their department's DEI office sent me this email I'm laughing but this is a VERY serious problem. Very very serious.