January 21, 2021 Diversity and Inclusion forum
The college held the first Diversity and Inclusion Forum in January as part of our commitment to the Call to Action statement : “Holding anti-oppressive conversations and training for faculty and staff that focus on specific identities (e.g. Black, Indigenous, Latinx, Trans, Disability, national origin, etc.)”
A short recap of some key takeaways from our first forum along with a few resources shared in the meeting:
- How to apologize and focus on impact (instead of intent)
- Considering a shift away from “calling people out” to “calling people in” (NYT Article below)
- Importance of learning how to pronounce people’s names (or trying to correctly pronounce people’s names)
- Common coping strategies used by students when responding to incidents related to race (resource from University of Illinois Racial Microaggressions Project)
- What can we do as a college to encourage/enable our students to use empowering, constructive coping strategies? (connection to work done in our college committees)
- Approaches to take with our colleagues and students when we find ourselves in these uncomfortable situations
- Normalizing the behavior of asking others to hold us accountable/modeling the behavior of acknowledging our own mistakes in these situations in our roles as instructors and advisors
Resources:
- How to Apologize (video by YouTuber Chescaleigh)
Link: https://youtu.be/C8xJXKYL8pU
- NYT Article: What if instead of calling people out, we called them in?
Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/19/style/loretta-ross-smith-college-cancel-culture.html
- Crowdsourced Pronunciation Dictionary:
Link: https://www.howtopronounce.com/
- “My Name, My Identity” Campaign
Link: https://www.mynamemyidentity.org/
