Diversity Equity and Inclusion Wont Work Without Antiracism
[Music]
i’m here today to talk about the most
serious problem facing higher education
there are no easy answers no quick fixes
and absolutely no
all you have to do is just explanations
i’m here today to talk about how racism
is so
deeply embedded in the structures and
practices of higher education
that it’s invisible and its most
injurious impacts
on minoritized faculty staff and
students
look normal but first a story
i’m going to tell you about a student
who used to frequent the center i used
to lead
more about that center later maria not
her name
was a new american who had come to this
country when she was a young child
maria used to drop by my office often to
talk about
how much she loved villanova and
learning you see when she first came to
this country she didn’t speak
english very well so she studied hard
and ultimately was able to secure a spot
for herself
in the most prestigious charter school
in her neighborhood
and it was there that she developed her
love of science and determined that she
was going to be a scientist
and as she told me and everybody in the
center
she graduated number one in her class
now maria was supposed to have an
appointment to come and see me
but that never stopped her she
frequently burst into my office
to tell me the good news of her day
however
as time went on i began to see her
less and less until finally toward the
end of her second year
she dragged into my office and said she
wanted to ask me a question
i could tell that this was no easy
question
i asked her to sit down but instead she
stood in front of my desk
with her fists balled up and said why
did they lie to me dr nance
they told me i was smart but i’m not
why did they lie maria had just been
told that she needed to leave her major
and select a less
demanding one maria’s sense of betrayal
was because she had done
everything she was supposed to do
through elementary school and high
school
she had taken every course she had
studied hard
she had even taken the most demanding
courses in her discipline
she’d gotten into villanova
and into the science major of her dreams
but if she stood
before me that day i could see the dream
dying in her eyes
it is maria’s haunting question that
brings me here today
even though there are no more
hate-filled name-calling crowds shouting
at students like
james meredith or the little rock nine
racism
that existed on our campuses back then
is still there
we see that the biggest
problem here is racism and the
inequities it produces
and the solution is equity
and anti-racism my name is terry nance
i’ve been in villanova for more than 40
years
and in that time i’ve been a faculty
member a department chair and an
administrator
in student life and now in the office of
diversity equity and inclusion
over the years colleges and universities
have worked
to produce equity and opportunity for
minoritized students
though much has changed too much has
remained
the same we need change a change that
recognizes the role
of race in the institution
so let’s get started there’s no better
way to start them with a definition
and this one comes from professor ibram
x kendi
who defines racism as the marriage
between
racist policies and racist ideas
that produce and normalize racial
inequities
so let’s take that part just a little
bit a racist policy
is any policy that maintains racial
inequities
a racist idea is any notion that
supports
the idea that one group is superior and
another group
inferior and finally racial inequity
is when any two racial groups
are not standing on approximately equal
ground
so what does that look like in higher ed
well
let’s take it this way let’s suppose all
people are born with
basically the same human qualities so
then
why is it normal that in higher
education
according to the chronicle on higher
education that black enrollment reached
its peak in 2010
and has declined by more than 13 percent
why is it normal in higher education
that just over half of black and latin
students
graduate in six years as opposed to 70
percent of white students
and why is it normal that
with a diploma in hand black students
will earn
15 percent less and be two-thirds more
likely
to be unemployed well the answer is that
it is
not normal but because we have taken it
to be that way
the following facts are also true one
year out
black graduates median income
thirty six thousand dollars white
students
forty thousand dollars now that’s a four
thousand dollar
difference once you hold on to that fact
now while they were in school
86 percent of black students took out
loans
compared to 67 of white
students and the debt load of black
students
thirty seven thousand dollars the debt
load for white students
thirty one thousand dollars so that four
thousand dollar salary difference i
talked about before
is much greater and imagine what that is
over time
faced with data like these american
council and education president ted
mitchell said
communities of color have made great
educational headway
over the last several decades but we
must maintain focus substantial
and persistent inequities remain
if we think we’re going to be able to
address
those substantial and persistent
inequities
with diversity solutions we are wrong we
must confront
challenge and eliminate the racial
inequities that lie at the heart
of the major problems in higher
education today
now no problem this big can be handled
without a real
sense of the big picture and for that
i’m going to give you the an iceberg
an iceberg of racism in higher education
now if you look above the line
are racial inequities and these i have
already talked about and will talk about
later
they are provable we can’t quantify them
we know they exist but what lies below
the water line are the causes of those
racial inequities
and that’s what we need to figure out
now i’m going to leave this slide up
as we go through the next section of
examples
now i want you to remember though our
definition of racism
right that it was racist policies plus
race id racist ideas that combine to
produce
racial inequities that appear normal
have you ever wondered why colleges and
universities
are still relying on a standardized exam
that has for years not
fairly evaluated the talents
of low-income black and minoritized
students
have you ever noticed the appalling lack
of faculty of color
on college campuses across the country
have you ever noticed the small number
of black and latin students in sciences
and stem disciplines
and have you ever thought
about the number of black and
minoritized students
who either drop out or are forced
out of disciplines from which they might
secure a high-paying job immediately
after graduation
and into disciplines that will not
afford them the same security
well even if we didn’t notice we might
have just said
just happens that way no
decisions were made and though those
decisions were not
meant to have race-based
impacts inequities exist
unless we take seriously the demands we
heard
so clearly this past summer of racial
reckoning
then we will face another 40 years
of minimum gain and maximum frustration
anger from our students who demographic
profile does not match the majority
race in america is a problem
and for too long diversity
solutions have burdened those in the
institution
without the position or power to
sufficiently deal with them
too often when senior white officials or
faculty
hear about the indignities suffered by
minoritized members of their community
they express
shock and surprise such
excuses are far from
acceptable especially to people who have
been
suffering these kinds of daily
assaults it is though
their excuses are a complicit agreement
that racism exists and should be
tolerated because it’s not worth
significant intention there must be a
way
that everyone in the institution
realize the impact of racism
we must be able to see race
and call its name and i’ll begin with me
when i first became an administrator i
had the wonderful opportunity of leading
the center for multicultural affairs our
job
was to make sure that black and
minoritized students
were fairly admitted into the
institution
and that they were given every
opportunity to succeed
and graduate ready to take on the future
and we did that
we had retention counseling we had
subject area tutoring
and lending library and so many
resources for our students i’m proud of
what we were able to accomplish
now maria took full advantage
of the subject area tutoring she saw her
counselor regularly
and took so many of our self-help
courses
but it was not enough you see
the diversity solution was to
make the students ready for the
institution
but through the lens of anti-racism
we’re forced to ask if so much was done
to accommodate the students to the
institution
how much did the institution change
to accommodate the students now i’m not
asking anyone to lower standards
or not teach students what they need to
know but i
am saying we need to notice who’s
learning
and who’s not and make the change for
too
long in higher education we have used
the
veil of academic excellence to shield us
from the demographically changing
student body in front of us
to use a business analogy which we
absolutely hate in higher education
it is though we are looking at our 2021
students exactly the same as we looked
at our students 20 and 30 years ago
now in business that wouldn’t happen but
in higher education we call our
reluctance to change tradition
and blame the students for not being
able to keep up
maria wanted to learn instead of finding
out what she could learn
we told her what she didn’t learn there
are
thousands of maria’s in higher education
today
playing an educational game that is
rigged
against them it is time for the game
to change now it’s not only in the
classroom we need to be aware
of racism but also in our policies
let’s take the policy of requiring a
certain gpa to get into a major
well for black and minoritized students
many of whom may come from
under-resourced and
under-funded schools the academic
standards of
of a college like villanova are daunting
now we have great evidence to show that
these students
make up the difference and graduate
just fine however initially
these students as a group are denied
an educational opportunity because
of pre-existing racial disparities
so the policy is logical
the impact is racist we need to find a
more equitable
anti-racist solution now
it’s not just faculty and staff who need
to be aware of racism
students do too so let me give you one
last example
four years black and minority students
have complained
that they haven’t been able to access
the most prestigious clubs and
organizations in villanova
now it’s not so much the overt racism
here but a subtler form of racism that
privileges certain kinds of
socio-cultural experiences
knowledge and skills let’s take this
example
the student is asked the question talk
about your
best summer vacation well that question
presumes that you’ve had a summer
vacation or
you’ve had experiences that you can talk
about so at a high level
the problem here is not with the
students applying
but rather the limitation is on the part
of the student leaders who have created
a
complex intercultural situation that
they really
are unaware of so the solution
is recognize that there’s a problem and
next
be able to see and talk about race
now as i move to my conclusion i must
end with this very emphatic point
it is not the responsibility of
one person or one office in the
university
to address issues of racism
we all have a responsibility
whether it’s leading faculty searches
designing a course
or deciding whom to include in our study
groups
we all have a role to play we
begin to eliminate racism when we
make racism our problem
what happened to maria is in the past
but in the future
we need to see our students not just as
diverse but
rather as villanovans deserving of the
best
equitable education we have to offer
now in villanova we claim community as a
very special value to us
and as english majors around the world
will go crazy when i say
community is not just a noun to me
it is an active verb it is what we do
we can make villanova more welcoming
and more just by confronting issues of
racism
and inequity with the truth and love
we also value it is time
for us all to shoulder the
responsibilities of anti-racism
diversity has done its work now
it’s time for us to do ours