At my university and many others, “diversity” is like Frank’s RedHot sauce, “they put that sh*t on everything!”
It is drenched on mission and value statements. It is mixed into committees and task forces established to examine the ills facing Black and Brown students on campus. A few dabs are added to million-dollar projects to assess the campus climate. Institutions even create specialty sauces in the form of programs and scholarships specifically designed to recruit and retain “students of color.”
Human Resources likes to sprinkle a little bit into their search pools in search of “qualified” Black and Brown candidates. A few faces of color are splattered on the website occasionally to showcase what a “diverse” campus we are.
I love Frank’s RedHot sauce as much as the next person, but just like “diversity,” it is usually associated with “people of color.”
Many campuses approach issues of diversity and equity like it is something just for people of color. Institutions still operate under the mentality that simply increasing the number of “diverse” students, faculty and staff on campus, providing them a multicultural center and offering a few programs will effectively meet the goal of providing an inclusive and diverse campus. That is like taking a horribly bland dish, putting hot sauce on it and expecting it to be a five-star meal. It may make it edible for the moment, but it won’t change the fact that the dish is lacking the necessary ingredients throughout to make it delicious. Instead of changing the ingredients of the dish, we just keep adding hot sauce to the taste. Then it becomes the hot sauce’s job to make the dish better, rather than the cook’s.
In similar fashion, the burden lies on “people of color” or those “few good White people” to be the champions of diversity. We occupy the positions with “diversity” in the title or job description, teach the classes, attend the programs, mentor the students and basically are responsible for developing our own inclusive environment.
In the era of Trump, the rise of White nationalism and anti-everything-not-White, it is even more vital that diversity is not added as an afterthought, but deeply ingrained into the policies and actions of every area within the university. Have you ever marinated something with hot sauce? By letting it sit and soak, the hot sauce is saturated into every element of the dish. Then, when the heat hits it, it continues to be cooked into the dish, even when you no longer see it. But you taste it and smell its aroma. That is how diversity should be. It needs to be included at the beginning, rooted and inundated into every aspect of the campus so that all student, faculty and staff (not just those interested in the subject) are challenged by the sensitive nature of dealing with diversity.
