Reimagining Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in Communication Sciences and Disorders
By Vishnu KK Nair, Maria R Brea-Spahn
At the height of racial reckoning following the brutal killing of George Floyd in May 2020, many Communication Sciences and Disorders (CSD) departments across the nation vowed to eradicate racism and made commitments to social and racial justice. There was an explosion of listening sessions, expert panels, webinars and virtual meetings addressing the impact of racism in CSD. Topics such as implicit bias, micro-aggressions, racism, white privilege, white fragility have become part of mainstream academic debate. It appears that a new discipline centered on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) is emerging within CSD. In fact, the 2021 CAPCSD virtual annual conference is offering a significant representation of topics addressing DEI in the program schedule. While this trend in knowledge-creation may have the potential to decolonize CSD education, one must ask ‘is there a danger in academizing DEI without interrogating our knowledge and positionality, and in the absence of action and accountability in CSD?’
Asking the Unanswered Questions
Do we know enough? — History ignored
In most academic conversations in CSD, a narrow view of DEI is endorsed — one disconnected from history. While anti-racist efforts in higher education provide relevant opportunities for difficult conversations centered on equity and belonging, alone, they are insufficient at unearthing and critiquing institutions’ harmful racial-colonial historical legacies. In fact, in most cases, these initiatives appear as deliberate attempts to subdue history — especially as they fail to situate the foundation of higher education within narratives encompassing the enslavement of, violence against, and dispossession of land from indigenous people. Sharon Stein argued that there are three phases in the history of US education — the colonial era, land-grant legislation, and the post-War golden age. Albeit separated by hundreds of years, racism and disregard for Black and Brown scholarship connect these distinct times together. Even in the post-War golden age, any call for racial justice continues to be met with white fragility, hostility, and violence.
It is easier to assume that this history is unique to the United States. On the contrary, higher education in most former European colonies was founded on the basis of Eurocentrism and European cultural transmission. In India, for instance, the architect of English education Thomas Babington Macaulay promised to create “a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in tastes, in opinions, in morals and intellect.” In other former colonized regions, such as Australia and New Zealand, the social, economic, educational and political power structures are still dominated by the imposition of colonizer cultures. Another example is the continent of Africa, where one of the primary challenges of anti-racist education is the superiority of Eurocentrism in schools that results in the de-emphasis and delegitimization of Afrocentric world view and African knowledge systems. It is rarely acknowledged that the white man’s burden “to civilize the uncivilized” came at the cost of marginalizing, undermining, and vanishing knowledge systems and traditions that were dissimilar to their own.
As celebrated author and founder of post-colonial studies Edward Said argued, it is a grave delusion to pretend that the violence of colonialism ended with the colonies reaching freedom. In fact, much of the violence that continues to take place, including the marginalization of Black and Brown communities in education, is a direct result of colonial ideologies and practices. Higher education was built on the assumption that knowledge evolved by Black, Indigenous, and Brown communities was morally and intellectually inferior to that of the settlers. Despite varied colonial histories, a shared experience of violence and subjugation unifies Black and Brown communities.
To commit to authentic DEI and anti-racist work in CSD, then, requires a confrontation of academic histories and positionalities rooted in racism, colonialism, and imperialism. This work of liberation also demands that the academy move beyond performative land acknowledgments and anti-racism policy proclamations, to inquire:
How do our institutional mission, policies, and practices perpetuate the erasure of our colonial histories?
In what ways are we maintaining dominant narratives of inferiority about marginalized groups?
How can our pedagogies and curricula acknowledge harmful ideologies and be reimagined to foster educational excellence?
Are reconciliation and reparation possibilities in DEI work within CSD?
What voices are being centered?
Like CSD, education is disproportionately represented by white women. In a recent article, Sana Sheikh indicated that a large group of these white educators may believe of themselves to be anti-racist allies. While well intentioned, the pedagogical practices of these allies protect themselves from discomfort and fail to emphasize the lived experiences and perspectives of minoritized individuals. Belonging to a system that privileges and centers their whiteness results in an absence of awareness that their own thinking requires decolonization and that their practices are undermining the voices of students of color. This, in turn, has negative ramifications on the socio-emotional well-being of students of color, who are prevented from authentically exploring multiple facets of their intersecting identities. This lack of reflexivity and critical self-analysis of own positionalities represent a performative persona to the anti-racist ally label, which, at its center, is more concerned with the preservation of personal self-image than advocacy for justice and liberation. Additionally, it is a significant barrier to authentic culturally responsive teaching.
Similarly, in academic scholarship, colonized researchers create knowledges and interpretations on Black and Brown identities through scientific processes, committing epistemological violence. These bodies of knowledge become legitimized science through academic publications. This knowledge treated as authentic science is then used to make inferences about and policy changes affecting marginalized individuals. A good example of this is the myth that Black and Brown students lag behind in academic achievement as determined by standardized testing. As Ibram Kendi stated, “Standardized tests have become the most effective racist weapon ever devised to objectively degrade Black and Brown minds and legally exclude their bodies from prestigious schools.”
A broader view of DEI in CSD implies the centering of culturally responsive and sustaining frameworks into pedagogical and investigative practices. And this deepening of DEI to incorporate responsiveness and sustainability into our teaching and research entails the decentering of white feelings, a shift in positionality that results in debunking the pathologizing of people, phenomena, and their behaviors. It also requires the inclusion and highlighting of insider’s perspectives in the stories being told, because as Glenn Martin states: “those closest to the problem are also closest to the solution.”
Do we change without actioning?
One of the leading intellectuals of our times, Arundhati Roy, warned us about the danger of a capitalistic world view that compartmentalizes writers and activists separately. This reductionist worldview is widespread in academic circles, where the term academic activist is commonly used. This presumes academics and activists are two separate entities when, in reality, research and activism are highly congruent.
Angela Davis, the iconoclast, and arguably the most important figure in the fight for racial justice stated, “I think the importance of doing activist work is precisely because it allows you to give back and to consider yourself not as a single individual who may have achieved whatever, but to be a part of an ongoing historical movement.”
Decolonizing education and scholarship in CSD requires an intentional disposition to practicing a “liberatory consciousness.” Key ingredients for liberatory consciousness include bringing awareness to systems of privilege and disadvantage, interrogating and analyzing historical accounts and current systemic manifestations of racism and injustice, and equipping educators, scholars and students with the tools and skills to confront power structures and translate core concepts of DEI into action to advance social justice.
Awareness, interrogation, and action: The way forward
a) Awareness would involve acknowledging the history of violence experienced (and which continues to be experienced) by Black and Brown communities including the suppression of linguistic pluralism and indigenous linguistic genocide. It also demands a recognition that frameworks informing CSD practices are influenced by colonial ideologies, which center whiteness and English hegemony.
b) Interrogation can include educators and researchers questioning and confronting their own positionalities within systems of power and oppression and how these positionalities impact their teaching and research. It also requires identifying and challenging the harmful ideologies (e.g., deficit mindset associated with “accented English”) infused in the curriculum and pedagogical materials.
c) Action requires coalition building. It could involve the co-creation of abolitionist resource repositories and brave learning spaces by educators, researchers, clinicians, and students, who envision meaningful change for their local communities. Good examples of such coalition building is the land grab database and BLLING, a learning community that includes diverse membership from different universities (New York University, Emerson College, University of South Florida and West Virginia University).
