Reversing the riptide of power in the room
A few weeks ago, I attended a conference where many found themselves struggling with the power in the room—in wielding it, and in resisting those wielding it against them. Junior scientists of color who were attendees, not facilitators, were being asked to provide personal testimony and lead conversations that were originally about academic texts, rendered experts without their consent. It was a subtle shift, but one noticeable to us as it happened.
I’m used to noticing power in a room, but it’s these shifts that often trip me up, because I usually end up feeling crazy. (I don’t use the term “crazy” lightly; I use it explicitly to refer to the ways recognizing how power works is pathologized in our current society — cf. gaslighting, mass criminalization, medical incarceration). It’ll happen in a work meeting when a “diversity” subject comes up and people ask me to volunteer my time. A professor might email me to “reach out” and offer help that I didn’t ask for. A bystander intervention training might require me to divulge trauma that is nobody’s business. I’m asked to do an immense task for the diversity committee while I’m in the middle of reporting someone for bullying.
And then things go back to normal. I tell a white peer what happened and they say, “I think they were just giving you opportunities. I think they were respecting your expertise. You were brave for speaking up about your lived experience.”
Power as a riptide
Power is like a riptide, hiding under the surface from those with pull — while those without it have something like polarized sunglasses, which allow us to watch it tug on us. And when the tides shift, those in power will say, what tides? Over time, who do we trust, our senses and instinct and experience, or what we hope to be objective observers around us, who turn out to also be part of the tide (however inadvertently)?
These shifts can happen at a conference, on a committee, in lab and administrative meetings…anywhere you can imagine semi-informal meetings that have power dynamics due to mixed career stages or identities. It’s these tides in these transient (not-quite-third) spaces where a real test of being an accomplice lies. Accomplices (or allies, if you so choose) need to do constant, active work to avoid the tide or reverse it.
Extractivism is when the riptide is pulling away from you. Extractivism, regardless of workplace — and let’s remember that these are workplaces, not special and separate from other labor — is built into the hierarchy of work. You don’t have to be at the same institution as someone junior to be able to leverage your power. You don’t have to have a specific title, nor identity, to be in a power dynamic with the potential to extract.
In this two-part piece, Mia de los Reyes discusses “institutional inertia” after many promises of justice from research organizations and bodies after the murder of George Floyd, including efforts that betray a focus on “individual anti-racism efforts” rather than structural changes to anti-Blackness. I’ve seen numerous reading groups and listening sessions go the way of people in power asking those without it — typically junior Black scientists — to testify, to “prove” the problem, to bubble up and then assuage their white guilt.
The thing is, for you, a person with power, it can seem benign or even humble to say, “I want to learn from you” to someone junior and marginalized. Even with your best intentions, power, by definition, alters the ask: they will necessarily feel they have to comply, or censor themselves — or leave. That power is very tangible and present to them, especially when accelerated by identity. Further, while the person may eventually exit the scenario, they will likely have to work with you again and face the same extractive “asks.” And, unfortunately, many with power do not have the best intentions, but have their eye on their own guilt, committee, or grant.
When you have power, and don’t do anything to allay it, an “ask” is a command. And what are you even asking for?
Because…our trauma won’t save you
One of the latest institutional co-optations is of the concept of “lived experience,” a term from social science that has especially been used by Black and other minoritized scholars to disrupt what is seen as “data,” among other uses. Diversity committees, HR departments, and the other institutional powers that be have turned “lived experience” into a new type of currency to meet certain benchmarks or to “listen and learn” in the wake of extremely traumatic events.
And so marginalized, junior scientists, usually few in numbers, are expected to fill a specific kind of diversity “role” in a space — one of teacher, where the lessons are “lived experiences,” i.e., narrativized trauma. If you have ever ended up in this role, though, you know that even in this extractive dynamic, you’re not allowed to be blunt; your narrativized trauma has to be digestible. You have to bare it all, but you have to be polite about it, in case you hurt someone’s feelings or demand too radical a change.
So many junior people of color in STEM are expected to fill contradictory roles — be polite, be subservient; serve someone’s diversity agenda with an “authenticity” that is toned down so as to be respectable; teach but be an infant; do more of this housework than your peers (Mcfarlane and Burg, 2019) but also not “belong here.” This is work: unpaid, typically invisible, and retraumatizing.
This trauma we’re asked to speak or work from ranges from sexual assault to the stochastic trauma of harassment and microaggressions in predominantly white spaces, police brutality, the threat of deportation, poverty, anti-trans bills, gender violence, denial of disability accommodations in the middle of a pandemic. These issues affect some of you, too, but when you add in precarity, further power dynamics as students/ECRs, and pitiable grad pay, extractivism necessarily ferments. (Meanwhile, junior cohorts are typically more diverse than faculty, at least in my field.)
You cannot enter a space, identify, for example, the junior people of color in the room, and think — or say to them! — “you will teach me.” Nor can you invite someone to describe trauma that you then censor or twist for your own motivation. You generate an implicit expectation that we stand on call to recite our trauma, and, often, further prove that it is real and worthy of talking about. But trauma is not a currency, and certainly not one that others can spend on our behalf. It is not a stand-in for doing the reading. You can’t become a better person through osmosis from standing next to a person of color or their pain; that is your own soul journey.
I’m here when you’re ready to do the work. Just as plenty of people are waiting for me to do my own journey.
OK, how can I be an ally if I have power?
Many times, allies complain that they are entangled in numerous, seeming catch-22s, such as, “how do I listen and learn without putting the onus on someone vulnerable?” But I find that many of these paradoxes are really just nuanced situations and dynamics that take care, trust, patience, and open communication to navigate. Further, what do you mean about “listen and learn” — is that the approach for any and every issue? Or is it a way to avoid doing anything proactively?
The key is not to center your frustration. That we ask these questions is a good first step, but it has to go further: How are you seeking consent? What are the financial dynamics of a situation? Could you seek specific answers from sources like books, papers, and your own (non-minoritized) peers? What is the issue you’re seeking to solve, and are there already solutions?
There’s a difference between a facilitator of a bystander intervention training, a grad student in your field attending the same conference session as you, an active white accomplice who can connect you to resources, a peer of color who’s your genuine friend. These roles all come with different social contracts and forms of consent. It takes work to step into a room and evaluate your meaningful relationships — including ones about power — but it’s work we all need to do, and in a way that isn’t tokenistic or patronizing.
“Am I the expert in this room?”
“I need to make sure not to ask this person for something they didn’t agree to.”
“I recognize that this room mostly looks like me, and I have the power to help balance who gets to participate.”
“I need to pass the mic, but I will ask first so I don’t put that person on the spot.”
“I have not built the necessary relationships to speak on behalf of this community, and will use citational practice to make sure others get the credit they deserve, and work on this in the future.”
“I will keep an eye on the two junior people here.”
I argue that this work applies to white women triply, not because they hold the most power in these spaces, but because of the dynamics that white women often generate due to their own trauma under patriarchy — likewise for other minoritized people and/or non-Black people of color. If you relate to the experiences of those with less power in the room, put that into practice, and don’t equate the issues (as Marisela Martinez-Cola discusses in this incredibly illuminating piece about different roles among white mentors in academia). Don’t cry when you’re called in. Recognize what it means to take up oxygen, and stop taking so much. You have power — it may suck to hear, but it’s true.
For me, as someone who has recently left studenthood, this has been a big challenge. I suddenly have power that I didn’t before, power that I need to be using it in the right ways while ceding it in certain situations, particularly as a non-Black cis person. It’s a steep learning curve. It’s also just being a person. To really build an understanding of consent with any person, you need to communicate boundaries and recognize power.
A horizontal vision of allyship
Martinez-Cola describes the activities of true allies, laying out scenarios that describe horizontal, authentic relationships between people who have different power. Horizontality means that power does not define or become intrinsic to the structure of a relationship, whether it’s a friendship, a mentorship, or other professional configuration. The person with power does not wield the power or reify it or reinscribe it in their interactions — they use it to increase opportunities and offer defense when possible. Further, your identity doesn’t become invisible or immaterial to them, and you have mutual authenticity.
Elsewhere, I have framed advocacy as belonging to either a charity or a solidarity model (something to write on in the future): saviorism or extractivism that lacks meaningful, concrete goals vs. building capacity alongside someone to ensure your mutual success. As de los Reyes writes, “we can make progress through collective grassroots responses, focused on actionable goals and deliverable outcomes.”
This is the hitch in all of this: among all of our power, how can we tell when we’re building solidarity over charity? How can we tell what is extractive and what is genuinely empowering? I think the road to success is lined with mistakes — and apologies. You bring accountability and a practice of consent and I’ll bring patience. You bring your flaws — I’ll bring mine.
References
I would like to credit Karla Núñez, Nicollette Mitchell, Rachel Bernard, Thi B. Trương, and Raquel Bryant for helping me formulate and crystallize many of the ideas in this piece. Thank you for the brief little space we built together.
de los Reyes, M., “A year after #Strike4BlackLives/#ShutDownSTEM, Part 2: What more can we do?,” astrobites, June 20 2021. https://astrobites.org/2021/06/20/shutdown-stem-update-part-2/
Martinez-Cola, M. (2020). Collectors, Nightlights, and Allies, Oh My. Understanding and Dismantling Privilege, 10(1), 61–82. Retrieved from https://www.wpcjournal.com/article/view/20275
Macfarlane, B., & D. Burg (2019) Women professors and the academic housework trap, Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management, 41:3, 262–274, doi: 10.1080/1360080X.2019.1589682
Persaud, D. M. (2022), “A breakup letter to diversity work,” Medium. https://divyamper.medium.com/a-breakup-letter-to-diversity-work-4381454ceb92
