On diversity in white institutions
August 10, 2009
PhysioProf linked to this post from The Witty Mulatto who normally blogs at The Madness is the Method. I would call this the money quote but the whole thing is full of ’em:
White organizations everywhere create entire commissions and councils surrounding diversity. Their mission statements usually say things like, “We believe the University environment is greatly enriched by the presence of people with diverse backgrounds and cultural perspectives.” They have a lot of pretty words. But what they really mean is, “How can we reach out to people of color and make them want to join our organization?”
The question that logically comes next but is rarely asked is, “Why would people of color WANT to join our organization?”
If you asked THAT question, things would get interesting.
The good Comrade, denizen of White Institutions, has this to say:
As a member of a white organization, I can say from personal experience that this is, indeed, exactly what “diversity” ends up meaning for us, and how we strategize about it.
I have participated in many discussions concerning “How can we reach out to people of color and make them want to join our organization?” as well as “What can we do to improve the prospects of people of color succeeding within our organization?” I have never had a single discussion concerning “Why would people of color WANT to join our organization?”
Well, I’m a member of multiple white organizations and he’s high as a kite.
As always truth is slightly more nuanced. I’ve been on the usual committees which are focused on enhancing diversity in the academic sphere before and I have definitely found “What can we do to make ourselves more attractive to a diverse pool of students/applicants/etc” to be a topic of conversation. Perhaps not always, nor on every committee but it does happen pretty consistently. Not everyone who is involved in these efforts from within white institutions is a complete and utter idiot. (I can’t speak to wherever PhysioProf derives his experiences.)
Now it is indeed true that, IME, committees try their hardest to remain focused on practical, doable steps and on metrics of success/failure. This is because the natural tendency of committees is to get distracted and waste* a bunch of time blathering about all of the myriad issues involved in, for this topic, enhancing diversity. So yes, committees on diversity tend to focus overtly on numbers: How do we get more people of color? Sure. Because this is tangible. And, speaking from the science-y side of white institutions, quantifiable. Things that are familiar to scientists, things that they can understand.
Nevertheless, there are indeed people within white institutions who are also concerned about the fundamental question asked by The Witty Mulatto. Personally I don’t have any brilliant answers although my dedicated readers will have anticipated my best** answer. Science is really great fun. It is a decent career*** offering many benefits from a pure “job” perspective, intellectual satisfaction and in many cases the confidence that in some small way we are improving the human condition in a lasting way. These are the types of reasons why anyone, of any background and ethnic or racial identification, should be attracted to the white institutions within science. Communicating this is not, however, something that the usual committee-to-enhance-diversity can do much about. This job, my friends, is up to each of us. To make our job sector a little better known and understood in every walk of life. I regret that I do not blog a little more on this topic.
__
*I mean “waste” in the sense that there are some things that a given committee is simply not going to be able to change such as the local ethnic makeup, the University-wide reputation, a geographic handicap, etc.
**My cynical answer is that this is simple: pay up. I have raised this in one or more of my stints, being the experimental psychologist that I am. Offer to pay more than the competition. Bribe people to come to your lily-white enclave by offering them a salary bump over the expected value. I find that this is not popular despite some common and erroneous opinions that white institutions “throw money” at diversity initiatives.
***Sure there are drawbacks but even N-th year postdocs with no professorial prospects could stand to take a hard look at the alternative careers in cold-calling dubious investment opportunities and whatnot that their peers took straight out of college.
DrugMonkey 
August 10, 2009 at 4:40 pm
Caltech (back in the day at least) had a very good approach IMO. Everyone had the same admittance standards (color-blind, but not socioeconomically blind), but under-represented minorities were recruited more heavily. They most often had an alum visit with them at length and got an all expenses paid visit to the campus.
Sure the ratio still sucked, but the system was fair and minorities who attended were well prepared and knew the university really wanted them there. Maybe even more important, there was social equality where the diversity actually served well to dissuade people of prejudice… everyone there were peers and someone being a difference race, nationality, gender, or class actually didn’t mean much at all.
PS: Class was actually more of an issue in my mind, doubtless because I come from a working class family and most of my friends there were sons and daughters of professors, doctors, lawyers, ect. Having attended a relatively crappy high-school was much more of a mark of distinction than race, since it meant your admission was judged a bit differently and you were expected to work harder (not just to “prove yourself”, but because it was necessary to catch up and be successful.) After the first year, the class distinction was pretty well dissolved since the ‘remedial’ courses were over. Tangential amusement: The remedial intro math course (which I really should have taken in retrospect) was universally considered more difficult than the normal course… it covered more material and actually ended with more advanced stuff than the normal course.
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August 10, 2009 at 5:57 pm
I too have been involved with some diversification type initiatives, but I tend to see more of a “how can we appear attractive to diverse populations” versus “what can we do to make ourselves more attractive to diverse populations.” The difference is subtle, but still pretty huge.
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August 10, 2009 at 5:59 pm
PS: It’s good to have you back. BikeMonkey is a tool.
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August 10, 2009 at 6:05 pm
The difference is subtle, but still pretty huge.
Fair enough. I would hesitate to assume what is in the
twisted evil heartsminds of administrative and policy people who seek diversity improvement.I have been in a room where some BSD white pasty dudes from a small biologically oriented research institution were strategerizing the diversity angle on a BigMech grant submission. There were outright offensive remarks made about paying lipservice to satisfy anticipated views of a reviewer (these are known in BigMech review, don’t ask) on diversity. Including disparagement of said reviewer’s (anticipated) views. Whilst no fewer than two junior scientists of obvious color were in the room.
And yet I’ve also been around situations in which the commitment to diversity seems to be very sincere and backed by specific actions. Of course in just about *any* situation, the white institution folks at least think that they stand to benefit their institutional interests in some way by pursuing diversity. Need we be always cynical though?
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August 10, 2009 at 6:10 pm
So have I, and this is exactly what I said:
Dude, I think maybe you are confused either about my annotation to The Witty Mulatto’s quote, or about what The Witty Mulatto meant in his/her quote.
Of course, I and my colleagues have given a lot of thought about creating a situation where becoming/being a scientist at our institution is–in many ways–a fantastic thing and one that people of all different ethnic and racial backgrounds would want to participate in. And as I said, we have given a lot of thought to things we could do to make our institution attractive to non-whites in particular, and to make it a place that will reward them in terms of their own personal and professional goals.
My reading of Witty Mulatto is that–notwithstanding all of that–maybe non-whites still have good reason to not want to join our institution, regardless of how welcoming and fulfilling and so forth it is. And that is something that we have never considered.
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August 10, 2009 at 6:41 pm
The emphasis in the original quote:
is ambiguous, as is the nature of “organization”. I do not think this can easily be resolved from the balance of the post itself. So we can bounce from topic to topic at will…hey it is blogging.
There is the question of whether people of color wish to join, say, academic science or a university culture at all, versus a desire to join my *particular* university. Most diversity-committee work focuses on this latter, I grant you. Now are you suggesting that your committees fail to consider that your specific institution may have intrinsic negatives for people of color that you do not consider?
Or are you reading TWM as saying no matter what, people of color are just *intrinsically* less interested (proportionally speaking) in areas of biomedical science? Because I’d take issue with that.
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August 10, 2009 at 7:12 pm
You’re saying that, despite what the white status quo perceives as a welcoming environment, minorities may have reasons not related to diversity for not wanting to join your institution? Or that there are, in fact, non-welcoming beheviors present that you are not able to perceive? Or perhaps there is merely a perception?
What are you getting at, PP?
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August 10, 2009 at 7:15 pm
Balls! Why was my last comment “anonymous?” That was totally me!!!
I think I am breaking the interwebz today.
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August 10, 2009 at 7:25 pm
In addition to the distinctions between changing the institution and marketing the institution as changed, there’s also the distinction between attracting people vs. finding people. While institutions can and should make themselves good places for faculty from under-represented groups to work, it’s not like young scientists from under-represented groups are going around en masse turning up their noses at universities and saying “Nope, not good enough, you need to do a better job on persuading me to teach here.” Everyone here knows that there are lots of trainees (under-represented and otherwise) who are frustrated with the training pathway, frustrated with the obstacles to making it to the next step, and wondering how they can get there. They’re trying to get onto the radar so they can get hired.
Instead of wondering why young scientists from under-represented groups aren’t interested in your school, maybe the problem is that there are interested people and you aren’t finding them. This is not to say that schools shouldn’t try to make themselves better places for people of color to work; clearly they should. However, if you see only a handful of minority candidates on the job market and you’re unable to recruit them, while it’s fine to ask how you could have recruited that person maybe you should also ask who else was out there that you simply overlooked.
Consider this: If you invite 4 candidates to interview and one of them is African American, statistically you’re doing pretty well. African Americans are about 12% of the US population and a lower percentage of biomedical trainees, so an interview pool that’s 25% African American seems pretty good. OK, kudos on that. But that person gets interviews elsewhere, and accepts a job elsewhere. At this point, there are a few predictable ways one could respond:
1) “Well, we tried. What more do you want?” And, honestly, the statistics support that response (at least on the surface).
2) “Maybe if we had made ourselves a more welcoming and inclusive place, and thrown more start-up money at this person, we could have gotten him/her to accept the offer.” Certainly a laudable response, and probably a good course of action irrespective of whether that one person accepts your offer.
But you interviewed the one black candidate in your field that a bunch of other schools also interviewed. Maybe the problem is not that you didn’t get this person. Rather, maybe the problem is that there’s a pipeline full of frustrated trainees (of all sorts of backgrounds) and somehow out of that entire pool only one black trainee made it onto everyone’s radar.
If everyone simply races to be more welcoming to the handful of under-represented candidates who made it onto the radar, then you’ve got a bunch of schools playing tug-of-war for the same handful of people. That’s nice as far as it goes, but it only goes so far.
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August 10, 2009 at 7:31 pm
While discrimination is self-harming for any academic institution like any waste of good talent is self-harming, I’m not clear on what the advantage to pro-active diversity is. Are we looking to benefit from minority-specific extramural cash? Do we get more prestige from having a highly successful minority-scientist than from an equivalently successful majority-scientist? At my institution we value #1 cash and #2 prestige and not a whole lot else (at least not compared to #1 and #2).
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August 10, 2009 at 8:03 pm
Not at all. I am suggesting the opposite.
I’m reading TWM as making the point that even though non-whites may be interested in engaging in pursuits within which the most “esteemed” institutions are white, and may even be interested in particular unique beneficial features of those white institutions, there may be political and personal reasons that they nevertheless wouldn’t want to join those white institutions.
Did you read this from TWM’s “About”?
I’m a…radical left-wing critical race theorist
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August 10, 2009 at 8:13 pm
Isis, I’m not saying anything, other than that I read TWM as asserting something provocative that I had never thought of and had never discussed with my colleagues. I haven’t the faintest idea if TWM is making any sense, or is totally full of shit.
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August 10, 2009 at 8:25 pm
I know we live in a country that has been nearly completely destroyed by sick-fuck right-wing “I got mine, so FUCK YOU!” conservatism, but c’mon holmes. There was a time when fairness, equity, and justice were considered intrinsically valuable.
In fact, this exact depravity is playing itself out in the health care “debate”. Obama and the rest of the Dems are basically arguing in favor of health care “reform” by trying to convince people who already have what they consider to be acceptable health care that the “reforms” on the table might directly help them if they lose their jobs or suffer catastrophe or whatthefuckever. I have yet to hear anyone make the argument to the mainstream that it is decent and right and just that all Americans have access to health care, and that it is depraved and wrong and unjust to allow Americans to unduly suffer and die for lack of reasonable access to health care.
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August 10, 2009 at 8:34 pm
even though non-whites may be interested in engaging in pursuits within which the most “esteemed” institutions are white, and may even be interested in particular unique beneficial features of those white institutions, there may be political and personal reasons that they nevertheless wouldn’t want to join those white institutions.
It’s a provocative idea, but I am skeptical. As I said above, one need only look around the science blogosphere to find lots of trainees (including plenty of people of color) who want to progress in the pipeline from trainee to independent academia investigator. The most common things we hear are not “You know, I could have worked at that elite university, but I don’t want to” but rather “I wish my mentors and supervisors were more supportive so I could make more progress in this training path.”
If we frame this in terms of attracting talent then universities can either (1) persuade themselves that they just need to do more nice, inclusive things (which they should anyway!) and the problem will sort itself out or (2) persuade themselves that people are simply opting out, so there’s nothing they can do about the applicant pool as it exists. But if we frame this as a matter of failure to identify talent, then universities have to do more than just show how nice and friendly they are (both on paper and in practice) and wait for the applicants to flock. They have to look at how they identify talent and make interview decisions.
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August 10, 2009 at 8:56 pm
It is interesting that white folks often assume that the only way to measure diversity is by looking at the range of skin colors and the range of genders. There are a lot more ways that people can differ from each other, and many of those differences can add a lot to an institution….and seeing that an institution has a wide range of diversity in it can make that institution appear a lot more welcoming to a person who differs in a particular way.
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August 10, 2009 at 9:04 pm
It is interesting that white folks often assume that the only way to measure diversity is by looking at the range of skin colors and the range of genders. There are a lot more ways that people can differ from each other, and many of those differences can add a lot to an institution
This is nonsense of course and anyone with a legitimate interest in the ways, e.g., academic institutions, grapple with diversity knows this. The fact that numbers are tiny and it is easiest (and often obligatory) for places to work within federal conceptualizations of race, ethnicity and representation is your partial defense. Nevertheless such quantification undersells the reality on most diversity initiatives I’ve seen.
Undergrad admissions officers are perhaps the best to talk to because they work with sufficient numbers. Prof hiring committees…not so much, although you will still see that most people (again, they are not idiots) do understand that diversity does not begin and end with skin tone.
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August 11, 2009 at 2:25 am
I think that the answer to Witty Mulatto’s question, “Why would people of color WANT to join our organization?”, is: For many of the same reasons that “white” people do. To me, this is the only answer that makes any sense.
I put the word white in quotes because, after having read WM’s guest post and her replies to comments, it’s clear to me that when she talks about “white people,” she does not have someone like me in mind (i.e., Hispanic and white). Am I a POC in her view? – I’d find that hilarious! I guess I’d have to read more of her blog to decide if she’s really full of it or not.
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August 11, 2009 at 8:07 am
It seems to me that people are considering diversity on an individual basis as opposed to considering the source(s) of diversity in a population context. People of any given race, creed, socioeconomic threshold, etc come from a community that has specific values and interests…and any given community regards some careers/pursuits more highly than others. I have trained a number of high school and undergraduate students from various disadvantaged backgrounds, and almost universally, the MD degree or JD degree is valued more highly than the PhD by the students’ communities (according to the students, that is). The conversation starts with me asking about their career goals. They specify pursuing an MD, possibly an MD/PhD, but primarily focusing on clinical work. When I ask about the motivation for pursuing an MD vs. a PhD or a clinical vs. a research career, the response typically follows: “Well, my parents/friends/teachers wouldn’t really understand why I wanted to do research. I’d get more respect as an MD.” Or some variant of that.
Maybe an integral part of diversity outreach could begin with making scientific research “cool” to middle school and high school students in disadvantaged areas. Particularly in making lab experiments accessible to these students. It’s probably too late to change people’s perceptions by the time they have reached college.
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August 11, 2009 at 10:37 am
May I start by saying how refreshing it has been to read this back-and-forth. There is no camel-spitting in anyone’s eyes. The entire discourse has been toward a solution…a resolution of some kind. Thank you.
Let me take one little sliver – the why would we want to come to a white institution aspect of it.
(a) Because predominantly white institutions (PWI)(large public ones primarily) are able to secure more funds (alumni, grants, research, et cetera), they are better able to secure and retain top-class faculty, students, facilities, et cetera. This offers a marketing advantage – an assumption that the students from that university are better prepared academically. (b) Once, as a (PWI), I am able to place my alumni in better social positions, then my students have a better chance of landing a good job. I walk into the interview with an advantage. (c) There is a list of the institutions that command the top corporate posts, and whose graduates dominate the “Who’s Who”. If I graduate from one of those institutions, I have enhanced my chances at employment. This is dominated by PWIs…stronger history, stronger network, greater financial solvency. I have a piece of data that suggests that the total endowment for the top 10 PBIs is less than the salary of the person overseeing Yale’s endowment funds. (Either Yale or Harvard – don’t quote me on that part) There are many more reasons why this is so, but I do not want to kill my welcome in my first hit. If it is okay, I will come back in and talk about science, diversity, and accessibility. This is a great conversation.
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August 11, 2009 at 11:16 am
A few things:
Whimple – you’re an idiot. Prestigious institutes need to value diversity for the same reason everyone else does. A lack of diversity is self-harming. A diverse research institution leads to different perspectives, ways of thinking and approaches to science. Which are all good things. Ignoring why your institution is homogeneous is ignoring systemic barriers that have been set up. Unless you believe that other cultures, races, ethnicity’s, or genders are less intelligent or capable then that of your institution, the question needs to be asked “Why are those genders, cultures, races not represented in similar in proportion to the general population?” Considering the long history of power being held in the hands of white males, it should not be surprising to you there are systemic barriers to “others” coming in.
Ria makes an excellent point about outreach. Individuals who are growing up in lower socio-economic backgrounds or who are immigrants to North America are working to be accepted and viewed as successful. Success does not = scientist. A successful individual is a MD, Lawyer, dentist etc. TV, movies etc portray success has earning $$$ and being a professional. Scientists are not usually protrayed as cool or even successful. They are quirky odd characters. Now we all know that not to be true. I’m a pretty awesome person that just loves microscopes and dissecting stuff. However popular culture doesn’t.
Oh and if you’re wanting to know why diversity issues are important perhaps you all should read Samia’s blog. She talks about all the shit she faces because of her gender and race.
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August 11, 2009 at 11:49 am
You mean like not wanting to join/contribute to/support an organization that is self-consciously trying to increase their marketed appeal while there are still people arguing over whether diversity is a valid aim?
Poor alignment with my personal and political views, more than anything else, makes me squeamish about academia.
Academic liberalism is more about patting each other on the back for being openminded than about any serious change.
“If we frame this in terms of attracting talent then universities can either (1) persuade themselves that they just need to do more nice, inclusive things (which they should anyway!) and the problem will sort itself out or (2) persuade themselves that people are simply opting out, so there’s nothing they can do about the applicant pool as it exists.”
Wrong. Couldn’t disagree with you more. I mean, you’re right about the surplus of trainees who want to move forward. But the bottom line is we *can* change the very things that make people want to opt out.
*tangential*
“It is interesting that white folks often assume that the only way to measure diversity is by looking at the range of skin colors and the range of genders.”
Actually, I find that most white folks (indeed, most folks) assume that we should measure diversity using only two genders. More’s the pity.
/tangential
I think that the answer to Witty Mulatto’s question, “Why would people of color WANT to join our organization?”, is: For many of the same reasons that “white” people do. To me, this is the only answer that makes any sense.
The issue is, if the answer is something like “because have Totes Awesome Research!”, that may not be sufficiently compelling for someone who is also politically conscious enough to not want to be part of an organization that systematically oppresses certain people.
It’s not something even politically conscious white people are forced to confront to the same degree others might have to. For example, would you expect a white person and a black person considering joining, e.g., the LAPD, to have exactly the same analysis of the pros and cons of being part of that organization?
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August 11, 2009 at 12:09 pm
Academic liberalism is more about patting each other on the back for being openminded than about any serious change.
I would be interested in what groups/environments/professions get significantly beyond this ?
“serious change” when it comes to these issues is a slow evolution driven, but never revolutionized, by any single event.
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August 11, 2009 at 12:36 pm
Sure. And we should. There are, of course, people who publish in the GlamourMagz and get some high profile invites and build the killer CV and still choose not to pursue the academic track because they find the system unattractive. And something should be done about that.
But if we just focus on how to make the system attractive to the stars who opt out we’re missing the fact that there are a ton of trainees who did try to move forward and they were never identified and interviewed. There are at least as many people who opt out because they haven’t been prepared to succeed in the next stage: Not getting supported in their research to produce the results they need, not getting enough mentoring on the art of networking, mentors not promoting their work and introducing them to senior people, etc.
If we focus this on the handful of minorities who got on the radar and either (1) interviewed in subfield X but chose a different school or (2) decided on something non-academic, and ask how they could have been wooed, we’re missing the fact that there are a ton of people who tried to get on the radar and didn’t, and we need to expand our search. FWIW, I suspect that many of the things that could expand the radar will also be good for the handful who are on the radar. But I’m not sure that being more attractive to the people on the radar is automatically beneficial to those who aren’t on the radar. Expanding the radar is probably more inclusive than focusing on the handful who are on the radar.
Let’s make this concrete. (Here I go into the infamous white guy speech on “Some of my best students are….”) I have a student in my group who comes from a very under-represented background. His grades are less than stellar, but I saw some raw talent and enthusiasm so I took a chance on him. And it seems to be paying off. He has a long way to go, but it’s clear that he has raw talent that just needs to be honed, and if his next round of calculations work out he’ll be second author on a paper. (I know that middle author status has been widely discussed here and is not considered anything major, but for an undergrad starting out in research it’s a crucial validation that he can do something useful for a project.) I wouldn’t have found this guy if I had limited my radar to the same handful of, say, Minority Scholarship winners (or whatever) that all of the other professors are trying to recruit to their groups.
I’m not asking for a pat on the back. I’m just noting that there are concrete ways of expanding opportunity by expanding the radar rather than trying harder to be welcoming to the stars. Casting a wider net for talent is probably more useful than wooing the handful of stars that everybody else also noticed.
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August 11, 2009 at 2:33 pm
How do you balance the realities of small numbers of canidates, geographic handicap and so on with a desire for diversity, while being realistic, but not making excuses for yourself?
When I was an undergrad at a small liberal arts college, a popular African American tenure track math prof was killed in an accident. The college president took lots of flack for the fact that they hired yet another white man for the math department. He fired back with stats about how many African Americans were granted PhDs in math the previous year and the challenges of convincing one them to come live in a very small town, in the middle of nowhere, in a very cold part of the country, and teach nothing but undergraduates.
So how do set realistic expectations without using that as an excuse to quit trying?
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August 11, 2009 at 3:21 pm
becca @21 — Do you think the racial issues involved in academic science are comparable to those in the LAPD? Srsly?
ScientistMother @20 — Let’s say my institution is interested in hiring, e.g., someone who can do neurophysiology in behaving animals — in what way will the skin pigmentation of the applicant result in different “approaches to science” that are relevant to this particular position?
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August 11, 2009 at 4:39 pm
@becca (#21) – For example, would you expect a white person and a black person considering joining, e.g., the LAPD, to have exactly the same analysis of the pros and cons of being part of that organization?
Of course not, becca. But I wouldn’t expect two white persons (or two black persons, for that matter) to have exactly the same analysis of the pros and cons either.
Perhaps my answer, which you quoted, was a little too compact, so let me expand a bit. I question the utility of framing WM’s question in terms of white vs. POC (in fact, I question the utility of the term “POC,” but we’ll leave that alone for now….), because I don’t see any way to actually answer it. If you polled a thousand POC’s and a thousand whites on their reasons for taking a job at institution X, would there be a statistically significant difference in the answers? (Consider Dr. Al’s reasons in #19, for starters.)
Also, please tell me where I can do top-notch scientific research at an organization that does not, in your view, systematically oppress certain people. Can you think of any examples?
In the end, it always comes down to priorities and what one is willing to compromise. And I’m not convinced that we can make general statements about what whites vs. POC value most without resorting to crass stereotypes.
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August 11, 2009 at 9:24 pm
“even though non-whites may be interested in engaging in pursuits within which the most “esteemed” institutions are white, and may even be interested in particular unique beneficial features of those white institutions, there may be political and personal reasons that they nevertheless wouldn’t want to join those white institutions.”
Of course this can be true. In NZ, indigenous people have set up indigenous tertiary institutions for exactly this reason.
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August 12, 2009 at 7:39 pm
“Maybe an integral part of diversity outreach could begin with making scientific research “cool” to middle school and high school students in disadvantaged areas. Particularly in making lab experiments accessible to these students. It’s probably too late to change people’s perceptions by the time they have reached college.”
This is the best suggestion I’ve seen here, but I think it still falls short – unless you’re talking about real massive curricula changes and commited support from the communities raising the children. We’ve seen what family support can do in some immigrant groups. Groups that are equally poor, underrepresented in the media and academic administation etc.
“So how do set realistic expectations without using that as an excuse to quit trying?”
By not STARTING diversity outreach on a search for PhDs, or even undergrad admissions. This is too late. Increase the pool from the ground up.
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