Rocking the Boat: Women of Colour as Diversity Workers

Abstract

This chapter returns to some of the data I collected on diversity on higher education first discussed in my book, On Being Included: Racism and Diversity in Institutional life (2012), and then more recently in Living a Feminist Life (2017). In my work I have defined diversity work into two senses: the work we do when we are trying to transform institutions by opening them up to populations that have historically been excluded; and the work we do when we do not quite inhabit the norms of institutions. These two senses often meet in a body: those who do not quite inhabit the norms of an institution are often given the task of transforming these norms. In this Chapter, I show how for women of colour our bodies become meeting points; we end up doing diversity as well as being diversity. Discussing how a woman of colour lecturer describes “being a bit different,” as “rocking the boat,” the chapter explores what diversity work feels like; how we can end up stuck given assumptions about who we are and what we do. The chapter also considers how pointing out institutional sexism and racism is heard as “rocking the boat,” reflecting on how when you expose the symbolic emptiness of diversity, as a symbol of diversity, you are understood to be causing damage.