Sorry. For some reason, this comment was posted to your blog Lindsey and not the one it was intended.

Something I learned recently at a conference regarding the use of pop culture in the classroom is that we have to make sure we are providing the proper framework before and after its use. In international relations, we tend to use movies like 13 Days to engage students in the events of the Cuban Missile Crisis. However, unless we “deconstruct” the movie along the lines of the politics and biases that were present in the historical event and the politics and biases present in the time the film was mode, we leave students with a “false reality” of how the events actually occurred. If you just show the movie 13 Days without this “deconstruction,” there is a significant chance that when students think about the Cuban Missile Crisis, they will first and foremost remember Kevin Costner doing a bad Bostonian-Irish accent. They will not remember that the lesson from the movie is about diplomacy between two starkly contrasted ideologies during the Cold War.

Great questions! Thanks! So first, “incivility” was supposed to be “inclusivity” so I just went and fixed that. In terms of creating an inclusive environment, I would suggest that there is no one way to do that. The use of acceptance can be an important aspect of that, but I agree that it could lead people to settle too early. It seems to me that many of our posts on this topic could go on and on about the many ways to allow for better inclusiveness, so I decided to keep this post a little more succinct. So yes, there are many approaches to keep in mind for inclusion, acceptance often included.

“Thinking less about diversity and more about equal access to tools of upward mobility” You have a strong point !

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Thank you so much for this valuable piece and reminding that there is no end to the effort to hear the silenced voices and histories, to realize and question the differences in the way in which individuals and communities represented in the social and political environment, and to pay attention to the erasure of differences via language. I hope the Tribal Leaders Summit would bring you strength and energy to extend the solidarity network here and everywhere.

Ezgi

Thank you for sharing. I agree that universities still have a long way to go in terms of properly addressing diversity. Simply aiming to increase the numbers of minority groups would be a disservice to these groups of people since it would mean directing all efforts to increasing recruitment without addressing retention. And since retention involves the community-at-large, it gets more complicated as it would require getting people–who might not feel that this is something they should care about or work on since it doesn’t directly affect them–involved in the process as well. I also think that microaggressions can be a harder issue to deal with since they could be easily missed or disregarded without being aware of the negative consequences. In that sense, microaggressions have the ability to do more damage than macro or more direct types of aggressions which can be more easily addressed.

Thank you for your post. I agree with your observation about diversity being a buzz word, especially in specific contexts. Unless it leads to understanding the reasons behind unequal conditions between individuals, identities, and communities and to an effort to change these conditions and to undo their effects, diversity remains just a buzz word. It diminishes the effect of our complicity in reproducing inequalities and pulls down the threshold of feeling guilt to acknowledgment and celebration of differences, reinforcing privilege.

Ezgi

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Unfortunately we are products of our upbringings, both the good and the bad. It’s very easy for people to point their fingers at parents but it is much broader than that. While I was reading your post I thought about a documentary I had seen that Chris Rock produced in 2009 titled “Good Hair”. In the documentary Rock talks about a moment he had with his daughter who mentioned that she didn’t want the hair she had, but good hair. Confused, Rock asked her to explain. What ended up happening was that his daughter inevitably explained her desire for what many consider “white women” hair. The film then goes onto explain the history of African American hair and how people perceive it. As a white woman, I honestly would never have even considered the notion of “good vs bad” hair but it was definitely an eye opening film. Everything is about perception. There are far too many factors to single out one when it comes to childrearing. I don’t have any children of my own, but I hope when I do that I never categorize anything, hair, races, or food, as “good” or “bad”.

Thank you guys so much for your kind words. I needed them. I posted this and then felt really afraid that what I said was going to be read as bitter or angry or unappreciative or {insert bad thing here}. I actually teared up reading these comments. I needed to know that I wasn’t alone in my struggle, that it was okay to be tired, that my feelings were valid or whatever, and that it was okay to share those feelings even when their not entirely positive.

This is definitely the year of self-care for me. I’ve been making it a priority but I’ll admit the last couple of weeks I’ve slacked a little bit on it and I’m feeling it now. But it’s okay. It’s okay to be tired and it’s okay to rest. But tomorrow I’ll get up and get back to work.

I LOVED this btw “But the burden of blackness is also a gift; the greatest privilege of my life. And that I must remember.” I relate so much. My “Indian-ness” is who I am. It’s what’s gotten me to this place. It’s in my blood. It’s why I do what I do & am passionate about my passions. It’s why I have an problem making eye contact (culture thing). It’s why I need community. It’s everything. It’s me. And I would never give up the trauma, fatigue, or burden for what it has given me. And that I must remember. ?

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I really liked your post! It was very insightful and informative. I wanted to comment on the section of PC vs OC and the question you posed afterwards about first-generation students with OC backgrounds in academia and the interactions with peers and faculty as I feel I could identify as such. As I read it, it reminded of one of the reading assignments in the book by Steele where he mentions the “paralyzing” feelings of an African-American student trying to down play his personality or his identity in order to adapt to his surroundings in a mostly white school. I think it would be similar for a student with OC background in academia where the communication could be affected by an overly conscious interlocutor trying too hard to comply with the more widely accepted mode of communication.