The whole idea that institutions would need committees to create diversity to me shows that there is a will to control rather than to “open-up” and be more accepting. It also makes the institution less genuine about wanting to be diverse in the first place. That is how I see the brick wall that Ahmed speaks of. Ahmed states that “the wall might become all the more apparent, all the more a sign of immobility, the more the institution presents itself as being opened up.” Therefore “doing diversity work” would be hard because there is a lack of interest to really change. Automatically placing the people or color on the “diversity committee” makes diversity something that only people of color want leaving the rest of the institution free to accept of refuse any plans to change. Why should the people that has been left out be the ones to work to get in? Addressing the lack of diversity can only be meaningful if it is with the full involvement of all races. Unless there is a unified desire to change, the resistance of the brick wall will forever be present in “doing diversity work.”
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Keshia,
Your question, “Why should the people that has been left out be the ones to work to get in?”, is such a powerful one. I wonder if you could please be sure to raise it in class and, perhaps, to help guide the class through responding to it. I say that it’s a powerful question not only because you pose it so well but because it’s a question with a long history, one that seems to (need to) be asked over an over again. I’m thinking of Audre Lorde’s formulation of the question in “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House,” where she writes: “Women of today are still being called upon to stretch across the gap of amle ignorance and to educate men as to our existence and our needs. This is an old and primary tool of all oppressors to keep the oppressed occupied with the master’s concerns. Now we hear that it is the task of women of Color to educate white women — in the face of tremendous resistance — as to our existence, our differences, our relative roles in our joint survival. This is a diversion of energies and a tragic repetition of racist patriarchal thought.”
Matt