By Adriana Salazar Méndez
In this post I would like to discuss some of the pitfalls for ineffective equity, diversity and inclusion work. I’ll also be providing some tips on how to address the most common challenges encountered when doing this work, and making a case for the adoption of measures that when used alongside programmes, such as ‘well implemented’ reverse mentoring programmes, can act as catalysts for transformative inclusion.
Falling into the Happy Diversity trap
In her chapter “Racism in Higher education: What then can be done?”, Heidi Safia Mirza calls “happy diversity” all those ‘acts of strategic tick box inclusion’ (or perceived acts) which create ‘the appearance of an institution being’ a diverse and inclusive place.
5 key reasons for lack of progress in the liberation, equity and social justice space
#1 Avoiding difficult conversations
There is a tendency in society and organisations to avoid difficult conversations about inequities and discrimination. Examining and openly talking about racism, homophobia, islamophobia, classism, ableism, etc. is difficult, and often uncomfortable. It is common to hear people say that they avoid these topics for fear of offending somebody or simply getting it wrong. Instead, we favour the option of pretending that harmony and fairness is the norm, not realising that prioritising the comfort of dominant groups when discussing discrimination and exclusion only perpetuates apathy and stop us from making progress in that space.
These tendencies are exacerbated off the back of the debate about ‘wokeness’, and when we institutionalise justice and equity work gets reduced to compliance and regulatory practices. In my experience, in such situations there is an inclination to adopt tokenistic or performative approaches to these matters, and to have conversations about inequalities in a binary way. Either you are ‘positive’ and measured for celebrating marginal progress in the diversity and inclusion space, or you are deemed as ‘negative’ and divisive for flagging the pervasive and persistent inequities that continue to exist.
Even though it is valid to celebrate our victories when some ‘metrics indicate some minimal progress, when we achieve a milestone of some kind or receive an award, we need to open a frank discussion about the impact they truly have to make our people feel safer and more valued, add an intersectional critique to these ‘successes’, monitor our organisational culture and, more importantly, we must openly interrogate the notion of power and systemic disadvantages and the role they play in our organisational and societal dynamics.
#2 Centering wins on paper
Equality, Diversity and Inclusion as a field has been at times co-opted as a damage control tool, compliance mechanism, and/or as a marketing/PR tool for many organisations, leaving aside the wellbeing and safeguarding element linked to it. When this happens, EDI can become a numbers game.
If we are focusing only (and notice the word: only) on statistics, metrics and data without critical analysis, and continue leaving behind the ‘stories behind the data’, we will not pay sufficient attention to our organisational culture and the behaviours of our staff. Our EDI awards, website and mission statement articulate our intention and commitment to address inequity, but they do not replace our ultimate effectiveness and the true impact of these initiatives on our employees, customers and the broader community.
Joyce Bell and Douglas Hartmann have called ‘happy talk’, those reductionists, uncritical and simplistic practices that encourage performative ‘celebration of diversity’ without requiring organisations and policy makers to acknowledge their lack of engagement and complicity in structural inequality.
Regardless of your numbers, accolades and profession of commitment to equity and justice in paper, your organisational “culture is the worst behaviour a leader tolerates’ and leaves unaddressed, as Dr John Amaechi wisely put it. The two need to go hand in hand.
#3 Perpetuating difference blindness and scarcity mindset
Eldar Shafir and Sendhil Mullainathan have compared scarcity mindset with mental bandwidth.
‘Imagine that you are surfing the web on your laptop. On a reasonably fast computer, you easily go from page to page. But imagine now that there many other programs open in the background. You have some music playing, files downloading and a bunch of browser windows open. Suddenly you are crawling, not surfing, the web. These background programs are eating up processor cycles. Your browser is limping along because it has less computing power to work with.’
The same happens with the human mind. If our mind is focusing and using most of its cognitive capacity on how addressing the problems of one group’s problems takes away from themselves and other groups, this blinds us to the plights and disadvantages of others. Race, gender, socioeconomic status, disability, sexual identity, and other ideological values of identities are behind structural inequalities. Yet I have heard many people in charge of justice agendas profess: the problem is class, not race; feminism is divisive, etc.
Equally, detractors of equitable principles sometimes insist: ‘we must treat everyone in the same way” or ‘if we keep making exceptions for people, where does it stop?’, ‘positive action creates resentment and new forms of unfairness’. Or the perennial: are we removing obstacles for a group and overcorrecting and disadvantaging others?’.
And the questions that remain are: are we? do we?. This can be linked to Charles Taylor’s difference blindness concept. If we insist to deny that we do not live in an equal society and that there are groups that have been historically, and are continuously disadvantaged, we would be failing to dismantle the structures that keep them in that way.
If the approach to tackle equity and justice insists in competing resources, difference blindness and oppression olympics, we are less likely people to embrace a ‘we are in this together” and ‘our struggles intersect’ view in the pursue of a coalition building and solidarity approaches.
# 4 Deficit narratives
A deficit narrative places the responsibility on the person/group at the receiving end of injustice for the challenges they face and the situation they are in. For example, deficit thinking will perpetuate the notion that marginalised groups are themselves the cause of their struggles, and that the root cause of their failures or underrepresentation is caused by those things they have not or cannot do.
According to this approach, the only reason a black person or a neurodivergent individual did not get a job was because simply they ‘did not perform well’ in the interview. Instead, they fail to consider that biased parameters, stereotypes, non-inclusive evaluation methods and lack of diversity in the interview panel could have also played a part to produce this outcome. This views alongside the myths of meritocracy can derail efforts to address deficiencies and correct wrongdoings.
‘Deficit lenses are typical of research that examines “gaps” of different kinds, positioning individuals, rather than structural inequities, as the subjects of scrutiny’ (Wang et all, 2021).
#5 Embracing and perpetuating outdated notions of leadership
Finally, we need to revisit and redefine the notion of leadership. The journey to improve equity, diversity and belonging require a steadfast commitment to revamp what we have understood as leadership. Robert K. Greenleaf coined the term “servant leadership” in 1970, as a theoretical framework that advocates behaviours such as having as primary motivation to serve others, focusing on the growth and wellbeing of the people and communities where they ‘lead’, and embracing as a mission to build strong teams and empower individuals. That was half a century ago.
And yet, our organisations often reward and promote ideas of leadership closer to simply deliver and produce results regardless of the means. That ‘leader’ promoted as the ideal is a person who does not need to listen to others and believe they have all the answers. If we continue developing and promoting leaders who see their teams and staff as a Human Capital, and people from underrepresented communities as ‘issues to be solved’, rather than appreciating the richness and value that their differences bring to the table, we will not have real commitment to address marginalisation, inequity and exclusion.
Concluding Remarks
For equity, diversity and inclusion work to reclaim its validity and purpose, we need to embrace Ubuntuism, which is an African philosophical framework characterised by interconnectedness of all things and beings. Under the Ubuntu umbrella we are reminded that “I am a person because you are” and “I am because of others”. (Chigangaidze, R. K. et all, 2022).
‘If one of us is down, all of us are down’, and ‘we cannot achieve our humanity when others have not’ (Mugumbate, R., Naami, A. 2023). Unless we centre these principles in our equity and liberation work, we will continue forgetting that the aim is a fair collective future where we all can thrive.
Adriana Salazar Méndez (Specialist Practitioner – The Reverse Mentoring Practice)