A review by laurareads87
On Being Included: Racism and Diversity in Institutional Life by Sara Ahmed

challenging informative inspiring reflective slow-paced

5.0

Sara Ahmed's On Being Included: Racism and Diversity in Institutional Life focuses on the 'doing' of equity and diversity work within universities: the ways this work can become image management work, can become performative, can put equity workers 'at odds' with the employers that hire them, can be held up as indicating 'diversity success' in ways that obscure racism and institutionalized whiteness. Ahmed demonstrates how equity workers come to have particular insights into the 'brick walls' they face in universities: walls that remain invisible to those who 'fit in' and who are not doing this work. I highly recommend this book, particularly to those interested in doing social justice work in university contexts but really to anyone who works in post-secondary education in any capacity. It is a much needed reminder in many respects: a reminder that producing documents gets conflated with "doing the work" in problematic ways, that diversity statements do not create what they name, and that the language we use matters tremendously given that 'diversity talk' can and does work against the naming and challenging of racism.
Context note: I read this book as part of a reading group I co-facilitate as a part of my union's equity committee; as a union made up of university contract faculty and academic workers we are selecting books that specifically address doing equity and anti-oppression work in the post-secondary context.