2008 UW Diversity Forum
A New Day for Diversity
A New Day for Diversity
Bonilla-Silva learned that ideal weight was defined by Euro-Americans for Euro-Americans and then applied to everyone as a universal standard.
And it is the need to find something new — that hasn’t been ingrained with a specific cultural approach that is driving Martin’s thinking. “You can bring all sorts of
people together in a space — although this is a somewhat big and unwieldy space so it is not clear what will happen when you bring people into it or what ‘into
it’ means — but if it doesn’t change the way we interact with each other or the way we, as a group or as individuals, think about the world, then it will do some
good, but it will have constraints on the good that it does,” Martin said during her closing address. “Here’s what I think we need to think about. I’m old now —
pretty old — I would say in this country there have obviously been a number of things over the course of my lifetime in which various kinds of efforts to persuade
those people who are in various situations in the majority or seem to have the greatest influence or do, in fact, have the influence and the greater authority to
see the world in different ways. And I think some progress has been made. But maybe we need to come up with some as yet unforeseen ways of interacting with
each other in order to get that message across. I don’t think the sort of rigid oppositional approach where it is White men and everyone else and we imagine that
somehow hammering away at Whiteness and maleness will do the trick. I think that is not going to do it. This is where I think the more integrated approach is
crucial. It has to be a part of how we educate and excite one another. If it is viewed as or experienced as punitive on whatever side of the issue, it’s not going to
get people excited about the real potential of engaging diversity.”
Seema Kapani, UW diversity education coordinator, is excited about the possibility of taking the UW’s diversity efforts to the next level. “I think Damon has
done a beautiful, beautiful thing of saying ‘I need to first look at what is already here,” Kapani said.’” Damon often talks about the fact that at this university, we
have done a lot more than many other universities. It’s just that we do not have an opportunity to sit and take stock of what we already have. I think that is really
important. He also said today that we need to celebrate what we have already done. And at the same time, as Eduardo, our keynote speaker was telling us, we
haven’t really gone that far in the past 20 years. So in some areas, I think we are still struggling. In other areas, I think we are doing better. And I am an eternal
optimist. I believe that we have a fabulous chancellor, Biddy Martin, whose feet are firmly planted here. She is not the kind of person who is going to be pulling
ideas out of the air to humor us and to make us feel good. She knows the campus. She is an alumna. She is a graduate of this campus. She understands the
climate and is totally committed to working on it with us. So it’s not going to be this top down thing, which is also wonderful about Damon. He’s looking at the
whole opportunity to create all of these different areas where people come together who are doing this work, but the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is
doing. So making and leveraging those connections I hope will help us really turn the corner on this.”
Like Martin, Kapani feels that we need to find a way to engage and interact with those who are different than us. The quantity of the interactions is not as
important as the quality of the interactions. “What we need to do, if you are looking at issues of making this campus a truly diverse campus, then we also need to
look at what does that mean for us,” Kapani said. “When we cross paths with those who are not cut from the same cloth, how will we engage them? How will we
engage their perspectives? How will we really bring their perspectives into the mix to create excellence? We cannot have excellence without diversity of
perspectives. So in order for us to do that, we need to hone our capacities. We need to hone our competencies. And we need to hone our confidence in
becoming savvy border crossers. ‘I can come into your world and you into mine and we don’t have to kill each other.’ We can go in and out of these incredible
worlds that exist that each community represents. We can go in and out of those worlds and we can still make meaning and still move forward together. And I
think that is something I feel we really need to not simply invite the voices, but once we invite the voices, genuinely have a space for them for their voice to
actually be heard and not just count off the numbers. That really doesn’t do anything for us. So in our curriculum, how will we get all of us reflected with different
voices cut from a different cloth? How will our voices be represented in the classroom? How will we be reflected back on the street when we walk down State
Street? How will we be reflected back in the community, let’s say at the east side festival?”
In Kapani’s view, striving for diversity and excellence must move beyond the walls of the university. “I am looking at schools and what is happening with our
teachers,” Kapani said. “Who is teaching our teachers? And who is teaching our children? And our teachers haven’t been taught to walk, live and experience a
world that does not simply stop where their world stops. Almost 45 percent of the students that we have in the pipeline are students of color. And the majority of
our teachers are going to be Caucasian. It is no fault of theirs if they are not taught how to teach in a classroom that is so very different from their own classrooms
where they grew up and studied. If they do not have that capacity, how will they do this work in a meaningful way? So I have a feeling that to prepare our
community, to prepare our teachers, to prepare our schools, we need to make the boundaries of the university permeable so that there is no ‘ivory tower’ here and
the community there.”
The real change, in Kapani’s view, will not happen overnight, is not something we can say we accomplished and move on. The effort or consciousness
must permeate to the core of our being. “The consciousness is not of increasing numbers alone,” Kapani said. “The consciousness is really building excellence.
And excellence cannot come without places and spaces where everyone can come to do their best learning and work. How do we create those places and
spaces if people have not honed their capacities, their competencies to lead successfully and effectively in a global, multicultural world? So I think that kind of
learning is every day. A five year old needs it. A 50 year old needs it. What I’m saying is that this learning is never done. It is life-long. So this is going to be a
huge piece for us that we hold each other accountable to say ‘How are you walking all this?’ We have beautiful words and beautiful rhetoric. But how are we
breathing life into it every single day together?”
In the end, diversity is about truly hearing and seeing each other.
And it is the need to find something new — that hasn’t been ingrained with a specific cultural approach that is driving Martin’s thinking. “You can bring all sorts of
people together in a space — although this is a somewhat big and unwieldy space so it is not clear what will happen when you bring people into it or what ‘into
it’ means — but if it doesn’t change the way we interact with each other or the way we, as a group or as individuals, think about the world, then it will do some
good, but it will have constraints on the good that it does,” Martin said during her closing address. “Here’s what I think we need to think about. I’m old now —
pretty old — I would say in this country there have obviously been a number of things over the course of my lifetime in which various kinds of efforts to persuade
those people who are in various situations in the majority or seem to have the greatest influence or do, in fact, have the influence and the greater authority to
see the world in different ways. And I think some progress has been made. But maybe we need to come up with some as yet unforeseen ways of interacting with
each other in order to get that message across. I don’t think the sort of rigid oppositional approach where it is White men and everyone else and we imagine that
somehow hammering away at Whiteness and maleness will do the trick. I think that is not going to do it. This is where I think the more integrated approach is
crucial. It has to be a part of how we educate and excite one another. If it is viewed as or experienced as punitive on whatever side of the issue, it’s not going to
get people excited about the real potential of engaging diversity.”
Seema Kapani, UW diversity education coordinator, is excited about the possibility of taking the UW’s diversity efforts to the next level. “I think Damon has
done a beautiful, beautiful thing of saying ‘I need to first look at what is already here,” Kapani said.’” Damon often talks about the fact that at this university, we
have done a lot more than many other universities. It’s just that we do not have an opportunity to sit and take stock of what we already have. I think that is really
important. He also said today that we need to celebrate what we have already done. And at the same time, as Eduardo, our keynote speaker was telling us, we
haven’t really gone that far in the past 20 years. So in some areas, I think we are still struggling. In other areas, I think we are doing better. And I am an eternal
optimist. I believe that we have a fabulous chancellor, Biddy Martin, whose feet are firmly planted here. She is not the kind of person who is going to be pulling
ideas out of the air to humor us and to make us feel good. She knows the campus. She is an alumna. She is a graduate of this campus. She understands the
climate and is totally committed to working on it with us. So it’s not going to be this top down thing, which is also wonderful about Damon. He’s looking at the
whole opportunity to create all of these different areas where people come together who are doing this work, but the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is
doing. So making and leveraging those connections I hope will help us really turn the corner on this.”
Like Martin, Kapani feels that we need to find a way to engage and interact with those who are different than us. The quantity of the interactions is not as
important as the quality of the interactions. “What we need to do, if you are looking at issues of making this campus a truly diverse campus, then we also need to
look at what does that mean for us,” Kapani said. “When we cross paths with those who are not cut from the same cloth, how will we engage them? How will we
engage their perspectives? How will we really bring their perspectives into the mix to create excellence? We cannot have excellence without diversity of
perspectives. So in order for us to do that, we need to hone our capacities. We need to hone our competencies. And we need to hone our confidence in
becoming savvy border crossers. ‘I can come into your world and you into mine and we don’t have to kill each other.’ We can go in and out of these incredible
worlds that exist that each community represents. We can go in and out of those worlds and we can still make meaning and still move forward together. And I
think that is something I feel we really need to not simply invite the voices, but once we invite the voices, genuinely have a space for them for their voice to
actually be heard and not just count off the numbers. That really doesn’t do anything for us. So in our curriculum, how will we get all of us reflected with different
voices cut from a different cloth? How will our voices be represented in the classroom? How will we be reflected back on the street when we walk down State
Street? How will we be reflected back in the community, let’s say at the east side festival?”
In Kapani’s view, striving for diversity and excellence must move beyond the walls of the university. “I am looking at schools and what is happening with our
teachers,” Kapani said. “Who is teaching our teachers? And who is teaching our children? And our teachers haven’t been taught to walk, live and experience a
world that does not simply stop where their world stops. Almost 45 percent of the students that we have in the pipeline are students of color. And the majority of
our teachers are going to be Caucasian. It is no fault of theirs if they are not taught how to teach in a classroom that is so very different from their own classrooms
where they grew up and studied. If they do not have that capacity, how will they do this work in a meaningful way? So I have a feeling that to prepare our
community, to prepare our teachers, to prepare our schools, we need to make the boundaries of the university permeable so that there is no ‘ivory tower’ here and
the community there.”
The real change, in Kapani’s view, will not happen overnight, is not something we can say we accomplished and move on. The effort or consciousness
must permeate to the core of our being. “The consciousness is not of increasing numbers alone,” Kapani said. “The consciousness is really building excellence.
And excellence cannot come without places and spaces where everyone can come to do their best learning and work. How do we create those places and
spaces if people have not honed their capacities, their competencies to lead successfully and effectively in a global, multicultural world? So I think that kind of
learning is every day. A five year old needs it. A 50 year old needs it. What I’m saying is that this learning is never done. It is life-long. So this is going to be a
huge piece for us that we hold each other accountable to say ‘How are you walking all this?’ We have beautiful words and beautiful rhetoric. But how are we
breathing life into it every single day together?”
In the end, diversity is about truly hearing and seeing each other.
By Jonathan Gramling
Part 2 of 2
The possibility of change is wafting around the
University of Wisconsin-Madison campus like that
first spring breeze that carries the aroma of newly
sprouted flowers. There has been a change of
leadership at UW-Madison — Dr. Biddy Martin as
chancellor and Dr. Damon Williams as vice provost
for diversity & climate — that also carries with it a
new way of looking at what has seemed an
intractable problem of increasing the number of students of color enrolling and graduating from
Wisconsin’s premier university.
While affirmative action programs have been treated as “add-on” numeric-based programs that
became an extra duty — almost a burden — for those operating the campus and educational
environment, Martin and Williams look at diversity efforts that are more closely connected to the
very mission of the university and intrinsic to it maintaining its academic excellence in an
increasingly globalized academic environment.
Martin, Williams and other rolled out their thinking on diversity efforts at the 2008 UW-Madison
Diversity Forum, “Beyond Plans and Promises: Active Leadership for the Future,” held at the
Memorial Union on September 23. The keynote speaker, Dr. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva laid out the
basic challenge faced by UW-Madison and other higher education institutions trying to diversify
their students and staff. How do they move beyond their roots as “Historically White Colleges and
Universities when all of the traditions policies and culture of the college that define it were
developed when it was “Historically White?”
Bonilla-Silva gave an example of this “racial grammar’ that defines the standards that everyone
faces. “I was in this Weight Watcher’s group,” Bonilla-Silva said. “The first thing we had to do was
report our weight. So I went to GNC and the scale said that my weight was 235 pounds and that I
was 50 pounds overweight. After getting depressed, I then negotiated. I knew the scale did not
include information on my muscularity and I used to be an athlete. But that wasn’t enough. And I
kept thinking and thinking. Then, all of a sudden, it hit me, ideal weight. Who did the measure for
ideal weight? So I started examining this notion of ideal weight and how we develop all of these
BMI and life tables that tell us if we are a certain height, then you are supposed to be this certain
weight.”
Wisconsin’s premier university.
While affirmative action programs have been treated as “add-on” numeric-based programs that
became an extra duty — almost a burden — for those operating the campus and educational
environment, Martin and Williams look at diversity efforts that are more closely connected to the
very mission of the university and intrinsic to it maintaining its academic excellence in an
increasingly globalized academic environment.
Martin, Williams and other rolled out their thinking on diversity efforts at the 2008 UW-Madison
Diversity Forum, “Beyond Plans and Promises: Active Leadership for the Future,” held at the
Memorial Union on September 23. The keynote speaker, Dr. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva laid out the
basic challenge faced by UW-Madison and other higher education institutions trying to diversify
their students and staff. How do they move beyond their roots as “Historically White Colleges and
Universities when all of the traditions policies and culture of the college that define it were
developed when it was “Historically White?”
Bonilla-Silva gave an example of this “racial grammar’ that defines the standards that everyone
faces. “I was in this Weight Watcher’s group,” Bonilla-Silva said. “The first thing we had to do was
report our weight. So I went to GNC and the scale said that my weight was 235 pounds and that I
was 50 pounds overweight. After getting depressed, I then negotiated. I knew the scale did not
include information on my muscularity and I used to be an athlete. But that wasn’t enough. And I
kept thinking and thinking. Then, all of a sudden, it hit me, ideal weight. Who did the measure for
ideal weight? So I started examining this notion of ideal weight and how we develop all of these
BMI and life tables that tell us if we are a certain height, then you are supposed to be this certain
weight.”
| Clockwise from top: Dr.Eduardo Bonilla-Silva (l) and Assistant Dean José Madera; UW-Madison Chancellor Biddy Martin; Seema Kapani, diversity education coordinator; The Winnebago Sons drummers perform at the end of the closing session; Jacqueline Scott (l-r), Sheri Williams Pannell and Talish Barrowperform in a skit about cultural sensitivity; Damon Williams, UW vice provost and chief diversity officer |