Not another conversation about diversity
...unless we are addressing it intersectionally. Yes, I'll admit that was a bit of click bait. It was also a genuine feeling, though, after I sat through (yet another) conversation about sexuality and gender identity. When I dared to bring race into the conversation, it was met with contention, "...but this isn't about that." And while typically I might offer the benefit of the doubt but we were discussing a black man and rarely if ever is a black man's gender and sexuality isolated from his race in our understanding of him and his experience. Diversity and true inclusion attends to the "and" as well as the identities that lead and follow it. At the same time there is black, there is man, and there is the black man they are irrevocable in his being and yet we can sometimes lead one to believe that our existence can be compartmentalized or seen in isolation.
Recently in pop culture, R&B superstar Usher has been accused of omitting his STI status during sexual encounters and three people have come forward claiming they contracted herpes from him. One accuser is a fat, black woman. The internet went wild. Even before I heard a word she had to say, I saw meme after meme commenting on this woman's weight, as if being fat made her a nonsexual being. Or, like someone like Usher would never be intimate with a woman who looked like her. I tried to separate out my own feelings and trauma from my critique of rape culture being exacerbated by thin privilege/fat oppression. It is hard enough for a woman to come forward and speak out against those who have sexually violated them in some way, but then to be mocked and ridiculed as if her claims are not plausible nor probable? I found the entire thing disgusting. To me, we did not see her as a woman because we saw her first as fat. And somehow her fatness made her less of a woman, being both at the same time made her less of a person. And when someone is barely a person, their story doesn't matter. Their pain is mocked or all together ignored and we push them to nonexistence as if we have that power. That sort of slippery slope to dehumanization stings me to my core and leaves me wondering how it becomes so easy to write someone off as negligible.
Right or wrong, I always find it to be more disappointing that these sorts of discriminatory acts are often committed by people who hold marginalized identities. In theory, my being a person of color, a woman, fat, diagnosed with a mental disorder, etc. would mean that my experiences of oppression would increase my capacity for empathy for those who also experience oppression. What I find, though, is that we are not thinking of our selves as intersectional beings; we root ourselves firmly in the most salient identity and adjust our gaze to see, hear, and feel life from that space primarily. Others who do not reside in and around that identity are foreign. It is as if we want people to visit us in the place of our pain before we are willing to venture out to do the same. Why? Why do we stay when that is not the truth of all that we are?
When I first began to research and write about diversity and social identity, I admit that I saw myself as black first. I lead with my race because that is what felt the most relevant in my experience of the world. Then I was sexually assaulted and every part of that experience colored my perspective with a new lens: my gender identity and expression. In my recovery from the assault, came the mental disorder (panic disorder, anxiety disorder, PTSD) and as my abilities and ways of functioning changed I gained yet a new more salient lens. And it wasn't as if my blackness or my womanness went away, it was as if we were all standing at the edge of a vast overlook holding hands and looking out over this great divide. Once I dove deeper into my work as a fat studies researcher and a woman who identified as fat, my fatness walked up to that same place and reached out her hand and my blackness, my womanness, my ability all looked back and hesitated. Did they want to acknowledge this part of me? Did I want to bring this identity into existence? How much harder would the world become for me once I accepted this perspective as a valid one?
The work to accept and integrate all facets of my identity is iterative and infinite. In a stroke of good fortune, I get to help students do this work for themselves mainly by living my own truth and being open about my process. Speaking candidly in a way that people can hear me rather than in a self-righteous or all knowing tone. I make no secret of my flaws failures and shortcomings and will be the first to take a jab to the chin if it teaches me a lesson.
To me, diversity is a living breathing thing. It is having 750 crayons and recognizing there are 750 more that could have been included but were not and that some part of me aligned with the oppression of their inclusion while other parts of me ally with the liberators to bring them voice. It is honoring the space between where we are and where we could be with attention to where we came from. Diversity is not siloed; and no one diverse population is any better or more important than the other. This is not to say that recognizing individual diverse social identities is wrong or unnecessary. Some spaces require more focused attention and loving support of specific communities. Sometimes I want to reside fully in my blackness and surround myself with black people talking about black topics relevant to black culture. Still, during that time I do not and cannot forget about the rest of me and how that impacts how I show up to the black meeting. All of me matters, at all times and I will honor myself as such. By doing so, I give others permission to do the same in my company. At least, that is my goal. My aim. Perhaps it is mostly aspirational.
I also see each communities as responsible for paving the way for others' should they be recipient of targeted support or attention. The women's center should have a vested interested in the LGBTQ+center and that center should be committed to the success of the Black student center, and they all should be champions for student support of the dis- and differently abled, and so on and so forth. WE cannot overcome if all we think about is "I/ME". So, if we must have another conversation about diversity, can we breathe new life into an old narrative? Can we understand that class, age, gender, race, religion, and so many other countless social identities all have the right to a seat at the table and a place at the edge of the overlook. That each perspective shows us something different, something valid, something of value.