What Does Genuine Transformation Look Like?: Emphasizing the “D” in DEI

Abstract

What Does Genuine Transformation Look Like? Emphasizing the “E” in DEI Rebecca T. Alpert (bio) Knowing the deep commitment of Feminist Studies in Religion (FSR) to diversity, equity, and inclusion, I was not surprised that the leadership responded to the murder of George Floyd and the renewed focus on race in the United States by creating a list of “Action Items to Combat Anti-Black Racism.”1 I was curious that these items included no. 5, “Self-reflect[ion] on FSR’s history and current practices,” and so was honored, since I have not been that deeply involved in FSR, to be asked to respond to Judith Plaskow’s deeply thoughtful and provocative roundtable essay to begin this conversation. I was invited to join the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion (JFSR) board in 2010, and I was both pleased and surprised by the invitation. For some twenty years before that I had actively published in the field (and in the journal) and had been both chair of the American Academy of Religion (AAR) Status of Women in the Profession Committee and director of the (then) Women’s Studies Program at my institution, so I occasionally wondered why I had never been asked to serve. But I also knew that diversity mattered to the JFSR board and so assumed that they were looking for a queer Jew at that time and that it was my turn. I stayed on the board for ten years and enjoyed interacting with an amazing cohort of scholars, including an atypically high percentage of scholars of color—at least 30 percent, as Judith calculated. In terms of representation, that board truly reflected inclusion. Despite those efforts, I, like Judith, failed to recognize how very white both the premise and power dynamics have been. Despite these efforts at inclusion, the results failed to achieve equity. Scholars of color were “invited into projects after their basic parameters have been determined” (10). Ownership has not passed out [End Page 31] of the founders’ control. Inclusion exists, but not power or influence. The idea that white people can, with the best intentions, find ways to be inclusive and diverse but yet fail to achieve the desired goal of equity struck me as Judith’s key insight in this retrospective essay. We must begin thinking long and hard about how to deal with the “container,” as Judith calls it, the system of white privilege and power that, despite our best efforts at inclusion and diversity, remains in place. As I read Judith’s words, I thought about how efforts to be inclusive have failed to achieve the desired goals. In my own case, I would highlight two things that Judith alluded to: • Confusing social position for insight. Assuming that as a queer Jewish woman who spent her childhood in a predominantly Black neighborhood, read widely in Black studies, and taught courses in the race requirement at my university to educate myself, that I really knew anything about the experience of people of African descent. Then compounding that with the assumption that my social location gave me some special privilege, not to ignore Black experience as Judith suggests she did, but to appropriate those experiences by comparing them to mine. • Struggling to get over my own self-importance in the cause of anti-Black racism by being too proud of my own contributions and unable to get over my own mistakes. I also didn’t “die” after my public gaffe at the 2017 meeting in the morning session on breaking boundaries that Judith referred to. But I still fault myself for falling into the trap of making a typical “white feminist ally” move by suggesting a personal solution to a systemic problem (coauthoring an article with a Black colleague) that I compounded by asking my colleague in public to write with me. Then furthering the problem by asking her to deal with my pain when she called me out on that suggestion publicly, not only for finding a personal solution to a systemic problem but for asking her to help me solve it and contributing to the extra labor Black women are perpetually asked to perform in the academy. I found...