Divergent Perspectives on Diversity and Inclusion: Reconceptualizing & Advancing Black Scholarship

Abstract

Why does diversity and inclusion scholarship remain silent on epistemic injustice? This article demonstrates that a culture of wilful blindness embedded in historically racist academic structures breeds inequalities in knowledge production and dissemination that disenfranchises black scholars and denies them contribution to dominant discourse. Reflecting on the experiences of black academics in diverse disciplines, we conceptualize black scholarship as underpinned by epistemic struggle and epistemic survival, due to subjugation to epistemic injustice. We conceptualize epistemic struggle as striving to produce and disseminate knowledge in the face of difficulties and resistance generated by structural and agential power. Epistemic survival denotes the sustained presence of black scholarship through compromise, collusion and radicalism, within an academia founded on the ideology of white supremacy. We argue that black scholarship struggles for survival not only for the sake of emancipating and integrating people of color, but also with the goal to bridge deep epistemic divisions. In reimagining black scholarship through the lenses of epistemic injustice, we aim to embed the concept into theoretical debates on diversity and inclusion in order to inform management practices in a nuanced way.