white guys

The conference session started like so many before them. A panel at the front of the room, four chairs that faced dozens of them. And in each of those seats sat a white guy. The picture is becoming familiar, I think. During the introductions, one of the speakers acknowledged as much. "We're a panel of white guys," he said. "We need to recognize that we still have work to do. We shouldn't be the only ones in these seats."

I'm grateful that the entire day of speakers didn't all look like that panel. At least since 2020, more speakers are aware that it's a privilege to have your field recognize you as an expert. They also seem to be aware that no industry is a true meritocracy. But action remains the hardest nut to crack. Announcing inequality, calling it wrong, while you carry on as normal, is not the end goal of equality. What is he going to do about it? More to the point, what are we going to do about it?

Before people announced their privilege in public, we knew it was there. Hosting an all-white, all-men panel of speakers is more than bad optics. Attendees miss out on the worldviews and perspectives that we have to share. Solutions that should get purchase in these spaces spread more through word of mouth. We should have the power and influence to bring needed change to our own communities. We can do something about this. We can do something else.

stop investing in old structures

It was my choice to go to the conference. But I didn’t have to. I value the connections I made that day. But they’re not the only connections I could have found. Conversing and commiserating with other BIPOC folks is normal for me. But those of us who are there may be fitting ourselves to the space, not the other way around. These spaces could be transforming to accommodate us. How will we in the global majority recognize our own tokenism even in spaces we want to be in? What about in spaces that might enrich us in some way? Or enrich our social or professional networks? The real question here begins with this: many of us have spent years vying for a seat at the table. What if the table sucks? People are starting to notice the conditions of the world around us are not right. Meaningful change means leaving these conditions. I grow more convinced, year after year, that we cannot repair or reform systems designed to cause us harm.

We have to stop powering the old ways of being. We have to be willing to step away from what's not working. Both of these things may feel like a sacrifice at first. I hope the mindful pruning of our garden will give more light to the plants that will fill the empty space. Develop and expand on the standards you hold for the spaces you're in. For me, I want to take a step back from building professional circles within whiteness. I don't want to be the only person in any room who looks or thinks like me. I've spent a lot of time being "the only." I have had successes transforming that into "one of a handful." But those efforts were hard-won. My struggles didn't do enough to change the systems and structures around me. With more effort made outside of those systems of oppression, what else could I have achieved?

create something new

What would it look like to collaborate on something else? Years later, I am still charmed by concepts like generative refusal. This is a concept I learned from Leanne Betasamosake Simpson and reference all the time. She writes that large mobilizations, like the one at Standing Rock, "create zones – albeit often temporary, that perform decolonial life based on deep, shared, reciprocal relationality. Collective spaces where Indigenous peoples live their own visions of self determination and freedom, perhaps imperfectly and briefly, are tremendous manifestations of Indigenous alternatives to the colonial state and everything it employs." We don't have to play rigged games. We can choose to invest our time and energy in fairer ones. Many people outside of white dominant culture treat relationships in a different way. These relationships emphasize reciprocity over transactions.

We can also make meaning outside of spaces that say we don't matter. In my example above, it might mean creating a conference that centers what we find important. Mutual aid in a broad sense means we help each other achieve our goals and meet our respective needs. The Tapestry Institute describes knowledge as, "something that emerges from reciprocal relationships." They contrast that with the Western view that knowledge is the product of one person's mind. Knowledge at a conference flows in one direction, from the speaker to the listener. Reciprocity might look like a sharing circle where knowledge flows in all directions. A space for practitioners to share what they know doesn't have to mean a panel of "experts." What if we didn't prioritize people's experience in that way? What if we could show people we value them without asking them to lecture us?

create something we don't have the words for yet

I've spent weeks thinking about this section. Some people think that progress means putting more diverse faces in the same old machine. I don't want people of color to drive the systems that oppress us. I want to liberate all people from those systems. Thinking about my first example, is it enough simply to recreate the conference structure? The insider connections, the same people speaking every year. Is that the best we can do? One reason I'm pursuing a cooperative is because I don't want to continue the same practices that once held me down. I'm sure there's a comparative example in your own professional lives.

I'm convinced that we have to take approaches far outside of the norms of dominant culture. How do we create new ways of being that we can’t yet comprehend? I used to think this was impossibly daunting, like the inverse of "don't think of an elephant." More like, "imagine an animal that doesn't exist and that you can't define by comparing it to any other animal." Don't worry: we don't have to—we can't—do that alone. Plenty of people have been drawing on their own history and imagining the future. Mariame Kaba writes about this in Abolition is About Making Things, an essay of hers I keep coming back to: "[I]magining is not a solitary project or an individual action; it’s a collective practice. We have to struggle for different visions of society together. We need different words, alternate ways of thinking and of being." Within the struggle we can begin with what we value. I'm reminded of how Priya Parker recommends we plans events: focus on how we want people to feel. Start with those feelings and what you all hold close to your hearts. Build something new from there.

I'm grateful to the people who are already thinking about frameworks like these. Scott Nakagawa has a new essay titled, "What Happens If We Win?" He writes that we can't wait for the dominant society to fall before we figure out what to do next. "The resistance must begin reconstruction planning now, not after victory, not during transition, but now, while there’s time to think, negotiate, and prepare."

taking a different path

Many of us have spent our careers trying to bend white dominant culture in a different direction. What I know is that dominant culture is resistant to and even aggressive towards change. This makes any change, no matter how necessary or overdue, hard to achieve. I fear the changes we make will be far too meager and take far too long for the time we spent trying to balance the scales.

I don't plan to attend that conference again next year. I won't know if that same panel, or another panel, of white guys will get up to preach to the rest of the room. I won't know if they make a perfunctory acknowledgement, gesturing at their own whiteness. When we create a new world beyond them, they'll understand who inhabits the relics. Why are we still fighting for a seat at the table? Let's join the people dancing outside.