Where You Sit Matters
Photo Credit: @michsole
Currently, there is a lot of energy and concern for the conditions and experiences of people of color in higher education. Student protests and demands, the Black Lives Matter movement, and the continued impact of Black men being killed by police officers keeps attention and focus on the experiences of people of color. As a result, many education institutions, and organizations more broadly, are critically assessing what structural supports or programmatic offerings they have available for people of color.
Through this work, a realization has surfaced: it is not enough to diversify an organization ensuring there is representation, one must also ensure that historically marginalized people are having an excellent experience in the organization. Admission to the fact that many higher education institutions were not founded with the needs or interests of people of color in mind, has turned the focus of many to the question: What is it really like for people of color in our organization? And unfortunately the answer to this question is often unknown as the only available data are connected to structural or formal interventions in place to assist and help people of color.
Early in my career, as a new staff member at a university with a historical legacy of exclusion, what mattered most to me was nothing formal. Instead, it had been everything informal. From my first day on the job, I was tracking who reached out to me, who I would see in the cafe for lunch, and how my everyday comings-and-goings would feel to me. In an elite environment that looked, felt, and presented in very hegemonic and dominant ways, I was most concerned with feeling apart through the company of and interactions with my colleagues. Looking back, possibly it was with intention that I sat next door to another Black man, and only one office down from a gay male colleague. Not to mention that there was one woman of color on my primary small workgroup. I’m not sure any formal program could have eclipsed the built-in good feeling of having myself reflected so close to my physical location and part of my everyday.
As someone who does diversity, equity, and inclusion work formally, often, I think about what really makes the difference in the experience of marginalized and minoritized people in organizations. Quickly, I think senior leaders jump to formal supports, without deeply considering the situatedness of people. You see, there is no formal structure that can really account for the morning conversation with my Black male colleague about how we keep our hair and shave. Nor can a formal structure really facilitate the impromptu lunch conversation about whether one, as a gay person, should participate in the institution of marriage. These type of encounters are both organic and necessary . Yet, often taken for granted by those who are normalized in spaces
The point here is that some of what it means to truly be and feel included is that who are you and how you are in the world is genuinely and authentically reflected, connected, and developed in your environment. And, yes some of this is tied to identity, yet all of us have the capacity to expand our own ways of being and containers of knowledge to be in identity spaces that are not our own. When we bridge to another by taking interest in the concerns, culture, and cares of someone who is different than us, we reflect them back; we hold up a mirror. Is there risk of co-opting and going too far, for sure. Will we get a it wrong sometimes, absolutely. And will we miss out on the deep knowing that comes from a lived experienced, of course. Yet, if we commit ourselves to cultivating knowing, feeling, and understanding that reaches beyond ourself and extends to the lives of others, particularly those that the most marginalized and minortizied, we will likely begin to shift the look, feel, and texture of our environments.
For leaders of organizations, a possible solution here is to assess the quality and frequency of interactions that matter to the people you are trying to include. Try answering the question: What do my people want and need to feel genuinely apart of this place? Of course, formal structures and programs are helpful and necessary. At times they are best ways to ensure that historically underrepresented groups of people have an opportunity to access power, tacit knowledge, unwritten rules and the rewards culture of an organization, all of which are necessary for success and upward mobility. And, the everdayness of one’s experience is built on who they interact with, the stories they share, the food they eat, and what they see as they do it all. If we really want to be inclusive we must understand, measure, and act on how people are situated.