A few weeks ago, I took a (very) public stand against a prominent local art publication. A group show I was in was reviewed and out of the 5 performance works shown, the reviewer engaged with 4, mine being the work left out. On this bill, I was the only Black woman and one of two more traditional dance artists. The reviewer, a white woman, spent the article describing the work she had seen and her feelings towards it, occasionally musing on meaning. This would take place over 600 words. My work was distilled down to one nondescript sentence, slotted between two longer descriptions. You could miss it if you blinked.
What followed was a public call-out and a series of half-conversations surrounding art writing, grassroots organizations, and DEI. I could spend this entry rehashing in great detail what occurred - my private concerns that led to a public callout, the rush of community support, the bubbling up of organizing, my very private tears of doubt, frustration, and deep anger - but that’s not (entirely) the point. This incident is not an isolated incident, it is also not nearly the worst of its kind that I’ve experienced. On the contrary, it’s quite commonplace. It’s so commonplace that I find it difficult to find the words to describe why what occurred was wrong and ultimately harmful. So I decided to write about it (in a stream-of-consciousness essay).
I want to talk about inactive DEI policy, the misnomer of “dialogue”, and the white women who skirt accountability by the weaponization of both.
I am 20 years old.
I am awarded a student engagement award for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion advocacy. I accept the award and it lives in a box under my bed.
I do not speak about this award.
DEI programs typically refer to a set of principles and training modules an institution has developed to address discriminatory practices that are presumed unconscious and not reflective of the (current) values (or interests) of the institution. DEI programs are not bad. On the contrary, when activated properly, they are a space for folks to understand and address their biases towards historically marginalized groups, and learn strategies to engage in their workplaces respectfully and mindfully on multiple fronts. In an ideal scenario, DEI programs (should) do the work that marginalized folks have been doing in their workplaces for years with no support - address biases and harmful behavior, and offer means of engagement for accountability and future harm reduction. Where DEI programming fails is when understandings of harm and the ramifications and consequences of causing harm do not leave the hypothetical; when discrimination is conceptual and neutrality is assumed of all people, of all identities; when harm is considered insular, or a “learning opportunity”, and not a possible detrimental or even traumatic experience for the one harmed; when they reinforce the very discrimination that they seek to dismantle by continuing to uphold outdated and problematic ideas about race, gender, sexuality, and disability that continue to “other” those members of their community. DEI programming doesn’t work when whiteness is at its center. DEI programming especially doesn’t work when white womanhood is at its center.
The centrality of whiteness in DEI work is an ill-guided attempt at creating neutrality. Directly oppositional to the concept of equity, neutrality is meant to be the blank slate where we all strive to arrive and, in turn, see one another. The misnomer of “I don’t see color” or sexuality or disability, arises out of this idea. A good DEI program combats this by saying, “I do see our differences, and acknowledge that they have allowed some folks privileges not afforded to others.” A better DEI program says, “Not only do I see the breakdown of privilege and opportunities, but I am going to do my best to see the merits of marginalized folks’ work and acknowledge it in the same way I would for a person that does not hold marginalized identities.” A dream DEI program says “I see privilege, I’m seeing the merit of marginalized work, and I’m also doing work to uplift marginalized voices when I have the opportunity to do so to make up for strategic omission and silencing.” This is where most DEI programming stumbles, holding all marginalized identities and experiences at the same level, while also not affording the same level of grace across the board.
This line is precarious. What is about to follow will not be some kind of sacred math, calculating who exactly is the most oppressed among us. On the contrary, I maintain that whiteness does not skirt marginalization. whiteness is a layer of identity that exists in concert with others. A white disabled person is still marginalized. A white LGBTQ+ person is still marginalized. A white woman is still marginalized. What is the distinction, is that even through marginalized identities, (certain kinds of) whiteness can act as a safeguard (to varying degrees). In the same way that neutrality is assigned to able-bodied, cisgender, and heterosexual folks, neutrality is also (mistakenly) assigned to whiteness. So when a white person who holds a marginalized identity fails to see the ways that their whiteness not only colors their biases but also protects them from certain kinds of harm and discipline, they can continue to cause harm to other marginalized folks who hold different or more (in number) marginalized identities than they do under the guise of “learning opportunities.” What is often misunderstood about biases is that they do not just encompass hateful or negative feelings, they also encompass apathy. Not caring or (worse, IMO) not knowing to care about others who hold marginalized identities, is also harmful.
I am 21 years old.
I am sitting in a lecture being co-taught by two professors. I ask a clarifying question about the concept that is being covered and one of the professors gives me an unclear answer. I press him and he continues to skirt around the question I’ve asked. I become frustrated and press him more and the other professor, a white woman, becomes flustered and says
“Calm down! You are so angry!”
I look at her and repeat what she has said to me.
I get up, grab my things, and make my way towards one of the exits. Before I leave I turn back and say,
“You, white lady, don’t get to tell me to calm down.”
She attempts to file a Title IV complaint against me for calling her a white woman.
I am contacted by the offices of Community Standards and DEI and asked to recount the incident. I repeat what is written above. They dismiss her complaint, and I file a Title IV complaint against her.
When asked how I’d like to proceed, I assume goodwill and ask for a moderated conversation.
In the conversation, she cries the entire time and says that she never thought about her white identity.
She never apologizes.
Most folks who hold multiple marginalized identities know what I’m talking about: harm is enacted upon you, and instead of taking accountability for their actions, the person who has caused you the harm wants to have a conversation with you to understand what they did and be told how to avoid doing it again. They face no consequences for their actions other than an uncomfortable conversation and the hope that maybe they were listening. Meanwhile, the person asked to engage with them has experienced material harm and frequently will receive no remuneration or reparation for the time, energy, or work lost because of it.
This is the dialogue.
It is difficult to describe the feeling of sitting on the opposite side of the screen or the table, being asked to engage a person who has hurt you when there are no consequences for their actions -shame, anger, fear, frustration. I have sat through weepy non-apologies and defensive standoffishness, that behavior typically held with more care and grace than my pain. “It’s tough when we reach out learning edges".” I have been asked to not only be the bigger person but to facilitate the learning and growth experience for grown adults from the time I was barely an adult myself. I have been asked to forgive when not a single apology and acknowledgment of harm could be made. The common misstep in these dialogues is confusing reconciliation with restoration when one is simply a pathway toward the other.
I am 22 years old.
I am proposing my qualifying project for my master's candidacy. I specify that I’d like to work with BIPOC women in my project as I had hoped to center it on autoethnographic movement research surrounding BIPOC womanhood.
A professor proposes that working with white women in the cast could be a good learning opportunity for them (the white women) to learn more about marginalized experiences.
There is a substantial amount of writing that outlines the nuances of the victim complex of white womanhood. You could write entire books about it (and people have). The primary argument is that white (cis) women, benefit not only from whiteness but also the presumed fragility of their womanhood. The intersections of their identities effectively allow them to perform as victims with greater success than their BIPOC and trans counterparts, in times of real distress and harm and, unfortunately, in times of fabricated distress and harm as well. This can range from something as small as what I have experienced (weaponized incompetence and apathy), to instances that have the potential to pose much more consequential outcomes (Amy Cooper).
What we see most commonly inside institutions is the former - the little “oopsie daisies” and “sorry if your feelings were hurt” half-apologies. I read those as coming from a place of “I am like you in some capacity”. white women latch onto their marginalized identity (womanhood) as a means to validate the “light touch” or “kid gloves” - “I don’t need to be disciplined and spoken to about my harm towards another marginalized person because I’m marginalized too. ,” This is paired with the assumed neutral docility of whiteness. This is a non sequitur. We know this because if that were the case, your BIPOC, LGBTQ+, and disabled colleagues wouldn’t also be engaged by DEI programs and subject to disciplinary actions in cases of harm towards folks of marginalized identities other than their own. When white womanhood is centered in DEI policy, accountability takes a backseat and education expands, crushing everything and everyone in its path.
I am 23 years old.
I am in a seminar and I have turned in a reading response paper in which I disagree with the writer’s (a white woman’s) proposition that improvisatory dance spaces are inherently nonhierarchical and spaces of neutrality. I offer examples of lived experiences wherein my consent and autonomy were ignored in contact improvisation spaces, making the correlation between my black womanhood and white male (presumed) dominance.
The professor for this course tells me that I am not being charitable enough with the writer (a white woman) and that I should consider strengthening my argument with primary sources if I’d like to argue against her proposition.
A commitment to DEI needs to be a commitment to people, not concepts, not theories, not literature. Actual people. DEI cannot just be policy, it is an action. It is work, and a DEI policy that treats the contributions of marginalized folks as extraneous and expects those same folks to be happy to contribute to conversations about how to better engage them is a bad DEI policy. It is a red herring, a trendy buzzword, and a deep disservice to an institution and those it touts to support. Commitment to DEI needs to be a commitment to accountability. Education is an element of that, but it cannot be effective if there are never consequences and reconciliation of acts of harm, no matter how small or inconsequential.
I keep asking myself why this particular moment feels so fraught. In writing this I am drawn to the writing and performance work of Thomas DeFrantz and Miguel Gutierrez questioning the white gaze and abstracted Black and brown bodies. I am drawn to the time I spent this summer working with Reggie Wilson, feeling permission (for the first time in a long time [but more on that later]) for abstraction and Blackness to live side by side and be a valid and honored line of inquiry. I am drawn to the work of Symara Sarai (watching through my little phone screen) reminding myself that Black femme identity work is rich and powerful and playful and necessary. I am thinking about projects with Noli Rosen and Marissa Molinar, surveying BIPOC artists in our community and learning about the rich culture I was becoming a part of. I am thinking about Cassandra Charles’ long-term project tying together the history of Black dance in Boston. I am thinking of the conversation I had with Jess Roseman after the inciting incident, beginning to think of ways to gather and honor the work we do.
And so I guess why reading that review broke me was because I know all of this to be true and necessary and live-giving and affirming and rich beyond just our insular community. So rich, in fact, that people were willing to go out on a limb and say so in my name. So rich, in fact, that I had the courage to stand up for myself to an institution. I know all of this to be true and yet this person, this white woman, couldn’t be bothered to even consider it; couldn’t even be bothered to consider the vastness of the omission and poor distillation, and what that vastness speaks to. When pressed for why the omission, she blames a quick turnaround and tight word count, and official communication from that publication not only panders to others to come in and bridge the gap (“we’re always looking for more writers!”) but also blames the issue on a lapse in DEI, and frames this as a moment for learning (“our commitment to DEI is rooted in making space for learning”), not accountability or the reconciliation of harm. The ways this enacts harm to a living, working person, is a learning moment for white women. The way years of institutional harm have constantly been framed as learning experiences for white women, but never asking them to take accountability and reconcile their actions in impactful, public, and material ways.
That’s why it fucking broke me.
Writing this was even more painful. I am once again doing the labor that has been asked of me for so much of my life. But something about this is also freeing - to put into words and reflect back what makes me itch, what hits me in the pit of my stomach when confronted with glossy doe eyes and a shrug saying “We’ll do better next time.”
I am 27 years old.
I have performed on a 5-person bill of work about the femme experience.
The work is reviewed by a local, respected arts publication.
My work is not engaged in the review.
I engage the presenter privately and the reviewer publicly. The presenter and reviewer both reach out privately to engage, but do not understand the scope and nuance of the harm they have enacted.
In my last communication with the reviewer, she says,
“I think your work is great, and I wish you all the best for your art-making and hope it gets the attention it deserves”
But I don’t want or need attention, (I tell her I already have it).
I am asking for respect.