Resilient Resistance: Sustaining DEI Efforts During A Time of Crisis

In some ways, 2020 seemed like it would be a watershed year for diversity officers. Given the spate of high-profile murders of Black Americans, we witnessed a surge of national empathy. In a short span of time, many college and university leaders within predominantly white institutions (PWIs) rushed to support DEI initiatives. Perhaps you recall the riotous clamor for “courageous” or “fierce conversations” — basically, a hunger for “real talk” about the perils of white supremacy and anti-Blackness in our world. But that brief window closed swiftly.

Dr. Nimisha BartonAs early as 2021, we saw the beginnings of the anti-critical race theory (CRT) movement led by far-right politicians who claimed educators sought to indoctrinate students into anti-white racism (note: the data say otherwise). It did not take long for many to feel the unique psychological toll of trying to answer the initial call for change. Facing institutionalized resistance at every turn resulted in feelings of isolation and marginalization, particularly for women, queer-identifying individuals, and people of color in DEI roles.

What we knew then is that, even in a climate of perceived openness, DEI practitioners of color risked more when they adopted a radically candid approach with their white, white-passing, and white-adjacent colleagues in PWIs. That’s always been the case. These workplace interactions require deep cultural work; we can’t simply tack on practices of radical racial honesty when the climate is not ready. The current anti-DEI backlash is evidence of this. It’s a fearsome reminder that we occupy roles that were purposefully designed to run counter to the culture of PWIs, and that we run risks when simply trying to do our jobs.

Earlier this year at the annual conference for the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education (NADOHE), we weren’t surprised to hear that most DEI practitioners have fallen back on their pre-2020 coping mechanisms, including self-silencing, code-switching, and other varieties of what scholar Sara Ahmed has called “institutional passing.” As Ahmed explains in On Being Included: Racism and Diversity in Institutional Life, DEI practitioners must work diligently “in the effort not to stand out or stand apart.” She adds, “you might pass by trying not to be that kind of minority, the one who belabors the point about being a minority.” Why? “You do this in order to survive,” she explains, “to pass through safely, let alone progress.”

But attempts at institutional passing are simply not sustainable. They don’t align with the kind of values-oriented work we do. Instead, they contribute to cognitive distress, marginalization, and isolation. How else do you explain the extremely high turnover rate among DEI practitioners? How do we persist when we are all so publicly under attack?

Enter resilient resistance, defined as the ability to continuously adapt as a strategy to sustain the pressure necessary to influence systemic change. The resistance in question here is not the resistance to change within the organization, but the internalized resistance role played by DEI practitioners in organizations. The concept is borrowed from scientific literature that uses the ideas of resilience and resistance to describe how the natural environment responds to environmental factors (Luthar & Cicchetti, 2000). And it's a fitting way to consider the adaptive responses of DEI practitioners in this unstable climate.

Dr. Katherine PennResilient resistance is collective, not individual. It is about actively building and nurturing an ecosystem that acts as a foundation and aids individuals working against the system to sustain change efforts. DEI work is fundamentally relational, and belonging to a community of practitioners is critical to our resilience.