DEI: Culture, Not Color.
Denzel Washington Explains Culture Over Color
I love this clip of Denzel Washington explaining the difference between color and culture. I thought of it recently when having a conversation with a friend about DEI initiatives in the workplace because I think it perfectly describes what we’ve been doing wrong.
The “national awakening” in 2020 very much happened because of the plight of Black Americans and in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement. It is therefore, perfectly understandable that the impetus was to build DEI initiatives in a way that emphasized Race as an aspect of White Supremacy Culture. But DEI initiatives meant to address culture mistakenly focused on what people look like. Instead of using the moment as a long overdue acknowledgement that the culture and society that every American was born into holds up/embraces/elevates the rich, white, cisgendered, able-bodied, Christian, male person above all else, it was used to focus on identity. Honest, understandable mistake: the term “white supremacy culture” does include what appears to be an identity. And even as I have definted it above, it includes an identity. However, what we’ve really been trying to address and undo are the characteristics of white supremacy culture (i.e. binary thinking, individualism, paternalism, fear of open conflict, objectivity, one right way, to name a few.) and its role as both the origin of American culture and the substance on which it feeds.
“Culture not color” is an important distinction because, as many academics and scholars of racial and social justice have noted, white supremacy culture is “the air we breathe,” and “the water we swim in.” It is the stuff with which American culture is made. Every natural-born, socialized, or culturized American, regardless of skin color has breathed this air and swam in this water. Because of that, we all – every one of us – have work to do to course correct. Racism is just one of the features of white supremacy culture. It sits alongside its sisters Classism, Transphobia, Ableism, Xenophobia, and Sexism/Patriarchy. But because the manner in which we have explored, discussed, and/or implemented DEI initiatives in the workplace has been with a very heavy emphasis on Race/identity, “DEI” has become synonymous with “Race,” and in particular, Black. We can see the impact of this in the term being co-opted by people who intend it as a slur or an insult, but also in the swift disintegration of DEI initiatives in the workplace.
This racial identity-based approach has created hostile spaces, where people – in this case, particularly white people – are alienated. This is because we misunderstand white supremacy culture as being wholly related to identity. Please hear me when I say I am not advocating for creating spaces where white people feel comforted; our learning edge shares space with discomfort and that is necessary to this work. But in situations where they are so afraid to say anything because accusations of white privilege/white fragility are spewn back at them, we’re doing more harm than good. Fear is a poor advisor and fear-mongering a poor guide. Let’s instead be conscious of creating spaces where we can share hard things while at the same time holding space for those who might be harmed or activated by those hard things and focusing on culture as the culprit, not identity.
This racial identity-based approach also often leads to the explicit absence of the A – Accessibility - in these workplace initiatives. When we’re cultivating inclusive spaces, organizations often ignore or misunderstand that the space needs to change to help people from historically oppressed and/or marginalized backgrounds to actively participate in it. When Accessibility is part of the equation, it’s easy to understand that a space may not be inclusive for a deaf person, for example, if there isn’t a sign language translator or closed captions are not made available. Understanding this can help spark conversations about how to make spaces more inclusive to others while also highlighting Accessibility in a way that doesn’t just include disabilities we can “see.”
Both of those things pale in comparison to what I find to be the most damaging thing this racial-identity based approach does: allows people from historically oppressed or marginalized communities to maintain their own internalized concepts of white supremacy culture. The single greatest example of this is the pursuit of education by Black Americans which manifests itself mostly in the anti-Black riddled sentiment of “Respectability Politics.” It essentially identifies education as the “great equalizer” (Read: assimilation) and the tool to separate “us” from “them” (Read: differentiation between Black Americans) so that we could align with and adopt for ourselves white cultural norms. The intended result of this is that we’d thereby gain their respect and solidify our safety. Not only does this ignore centuries of history to the contrary, but it also urges us to take this poison, call it medicine, and then rely on that mired facade of health to pursue something that looks like equity but is merely an inverse of the current system where the systematically and historically oppressed class is “on top” and relegates the previous “superiors” to a permanent underclass.* This. Is. Not. Equity. And it is not Justice.
DEI initiatives done well have a purpose in the workplace and it should center real empathy and equity for all people. To be done well requires the steady hand of a learned DEI specialist whose practice and foundation is built on more than a marginalized identity. The places where we should focus on Race are precisely the places that are being pushed back on: education in the classroom, truth-telling in our discussions on American history, and laws to ensure corrections of injustices done in the past. DEI initiatives done well can galvanize those efforts (as opposed to stalling them) and ensure that George Floyd, Sandra Bland, Brionna Taylor, Tamir Rice, Philando Castille, Trayvon Martin, and Sonya Massey (among way too many others) did not die in vain.
*I call this the Kilmonger syndrome (which my Marvel/Black Panther fans can appreciate). It’s essentially the desire to turn American culture from being one where Black people are oppressed to one where white people are.
