Category is…INCLUSION
That is a RuPaul reference for those who are deeply uncultured and entertainment deprived.
What is it called when an entire week of your life falls under one theme? Serendipitous? Happenstance? Not quite. Perhaps I am reaching when I say my entire week has been themed, but in more ways than I can explain, this week has been all about inclusion — the effort of bringing people on the outside of a structure, in. Other related buzzwords: diversity, exclusion, integration.
Allow me to explain.
This week for class we read an article that summarized the problem with inclusion as an attempt to challenge a current structure, without doing anything to change the very structure that excluded people in the first place. The author, Laurenellen McCann, goes on to explain that the familiar inclusion efforts we see in our society in the workplace, our schools, or newsrooms for example, aim “to include those who are not included by creating diversity at points in the structure where diversity is obviously lacking. For example, changing hiring practices from “race blind” to “race aware’.”
When I read this article the first time I have to admit that I did not see too much wrong with this kind of practice. At least it’s something. Some diversity is better than none at all, I thought ignorantly to myself without reading the rest of their article. But, they go on to explain that this sort of “presence as a measure of participation” mindset will only help us feel satisfied, and deter us from fostering radical change within the exclusive structures.
Then McCann penned this sentence duo:
“Because we don’t actually want change.
We just want Inclusion.”
What is the article-writing equivalent of mic-dropping? Laptop dropping? (I hope not.) Anyway, I picture them dropping something triumphantly on the floor after writing that. I mean, how often are we feigning Disruption and Innovation just to feel better about our broken society? What other “initiatives” are put in place to treat the symptoms without curing the disease? (their metaphor, not mine). How do we do inclusion right?
Until something fundamentally changes within the structure and approach of your organization — until you’ve developed networks outside of white* networks, intentionally co-created an internal culture that thrives in difference, hired people of color and women in tip top and mid-level leadership positions, altered what leadership means, and maybe even reconsidered the way you frame and do the work that you do — you will be stuck working on end-point diversification. Forever.
Here come the parallels.
This week in education, Mayor Bill de Blasio and NYC schools Chancellor Richard Carranza approved an integration plan for District 15 middle schools in Manhattan. The new system aims to change the way students are admitted to District 15 schools by eliminating the “screening” process altogether. Normally, students applicants are screened based on factors such as student report card grades, test scores, or auditions for performing arts programs. In place of this, “the district will use a lottery that gives extra weight to students who come from low-income families, are learning English as a new language, or are homeless” (Christina Veiga, Chalkbeat). How much extra weight? 52 percent of these seats will be given to such disadvantage students. So does this diversity plan count as an effort to shake up the current framework of New York City schools? Or is it another surface attempt to include the formerly excluded?
If the plan stopped at changes in admission, then I would be reluctant to answer “yes” to the first question. But the plan for District 15 also “calls for anti-bias training, hiring more teachers of color, and ensuring equal investments in programming across schools.” From the literature I’ve read, I think Carranza understands that NYC schools are not serving all of their students well, and that training teachers to be better equip at serving the students in their classroom is a step in the right direction. I think hiring more teachers of color is a good idea, but putting these teachers in positions of power — i.e. curriculum development, serving as school-board representatives, and department heads — would be a better one.
In a school district where students are starkly segregated by race and class, diversity plans like this are important, yet need to go deeper than just changing the school demographic. I can’t help but think about McCann’s own qualms with inclusion as we know it, and how they kept referring to “working on exclusion” instead of focusing on “inclusion.” The distinction sounds subtle but is vital. They explain that:
Working on exclusion means starting at the beginning, not the end. It means examining the practices we have in place (the ones we take for granted as normal) and changing them so that we don’t just value diversity but require it to thrive.
Matt Gonzales, an integration advocate with the nonprofit New York Appleseed, seems to be down with the cause. Regarding the new District 15 plan, he says “If we’re simply moving bodies, and not changing pedagogically or culturally, then we’re ultimately setting up students of color to be in environments where they’re not welcome.” The last part about not being welcome echoes some of the collective feelings of the middle and upper class white families who are concerned about the new admission process eliminating all criteria aimed to “reward hard work and punctuality.”
The second parallel comes from a conversation I had with a man named Terrance who lives on my block, and really has more to do with exclusion. Terrance is a 64 year-old African-American man who moved to Brooklyn at the age of fourteen after his family relocated from Trinidad. Terry — as most people in the neighborhood call him — is a somewhat of an errand man and works for multiple people in Brooklyn and Queens. Terry and I spoke on a sunny late-September day at Irving Square park, where young children squealed on the playground nearby. When I asked Terry what he did for work, he replied “I cut grass, I put out trash, I clean buildings..that’s what I do.” Terry had dreams of becoming a dentist, and for awhile it looked like he was on track. He went to Brooklyn college majoring in Biology, and then finished his Doctor in Dental Surgery degree a few years later. Terry said he never went on to practice dental surgery even though he had obtained the degree due to having to retake the certification exam over and over again. I wrongly assumed that Terry had failed the exam, and I tried to comfort him by explaining that certification exams are a practicality, and don’t always accurately test knowledge or skills. Terry held a half of a cigarette in his hand as he danced around the point he was trying to make about why he never became a dentist. Terry had been given an unfair chance, explaining that his professors didn’t believe the fact that a C average student could do so well on an exam — according to Terry, he scored a 90% the first time, but was forced to take it again due to his professors’ skepticism. Terry said that it was made clear to him that he was not supposed to be a dentist, and that his friends, family, and teachers told him how hard it would be for a black man to be a successful dentist. Terry wanted to own a private practice, but was told that he could not due to the fact that he had no money, and owed money to the federal government for student loans. Today Terry owes over 100 thousand dollars in student debt, which he had to borrow against his house to obtain. Terry said that he had tried to do everything the “right” way — go to school, get a job, work hard, pay off loans, someday be successful in his field. Terry didn’t go into too much detail about why he never continued to try to obtain his certification in dental surgery, but I could feel how genuine his frustration was when talking about the inequalities of the systems that worked against him. He summed it up for me: “We definitely don’t support black men who have aspirations to be anything other than drug dealers.” All of this lined up, but then Terry began saying something that truly shocked me:
How do we undo hundreds of years of inequity? Racism? Excluding minority voices from the conversation? We can start by acknowledging that we’ve been doing it, or undoing it wrong. We should first step back and acknowledge the failures built into the existing structures, and then shut up and listen to those who have been excluded.
