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   Andrea is resting (thiswomanswerk@blacktwitter.io)'s status on Friday, 29-Mar-2024 22:50:55 JST Andrea is resting

   Our conversations about DEI need more nuance. In some spaces (like my former workplace) it was not taken up in good faith but put together quickly and thoughtlessly. It was raggedy and exploitative for marginalized workers (you know, the ones DEI is supposed to benefit?) who bore the brunt of emotional and intellectual labor while being hamstrung by administration and unable to do anything that was actually helpful. My experience working DEI was stressful and exhausting. However--

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     carl marks (tillshadeisgone@blackqueer.life)'s status on Friday, 29-Mar-2024 22:50:51 JST carl marks

     in reply to

     @thiswomanswerk I think something the fash aren't thinking about is that part of the strategy behind capitalist DEI was supposed to make the radicals shut up.

     They keep taking away the pacifiers that the rich have sent our way, and eventually they're going to be reminded of what happens to a non-pacified and deprived public.

     The radical arguments start to make a lot more sense when the centrists can't even implement their vision

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     Andrea is resting (thiswomanswerk@blacktwitter.io)'s status on Friday, 29-Mar-2024 22:50:52 JST Andrea is resting

     in reply to

     At the end of the day, I'm team "make black people's lives easier." DEI hasn't been that helpful for me in my experience, and I don't think it's a tool for liberation but simply a way to wield institutional power (yuck tbh) but there are black people who have benefitted from it. And if it's making the whites this apoplectic then somebody somewhere is doing DEI right (I guess).

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     Andrea is resting (thiswomanswerk@blacktwitter.io)'s status on Friday, 29-Mar-2024 22:50:53 JST Andrea is resting

     in reply to

     In places where DEI has been taken up in good faith, it's been helpful to make the space safer. This is more nuance what I've said about DEI in the past: I still think that it's used by a lot of companies just for them to say they have it and that in many respects it's just corporate assimilation culture wearing a dashiki (iykyk) BUT many black and brown people still have to navigate corporate spaces for their livelihood and it's materially beneficial IF it has been taken up in the right ways.

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     carl marks (tillshadeisgone@blackqueer.life)'s status on Friday, 29-Mar-2024 23:11:14 JST carl marks

     in reply to

     @thiswomanswerk I don't think unions are a substitute for DEI at all lmao, sounds like an argument a white leftist would make.

     I also think it depends on what the goal is. If the goal is to destroy racial capitalism (this is my goal) then I don't need to have organizing practices siloed under a program called DEI because the work itself requires centering the most marginalized by default, meaning that they are prioritized in all facets of organizing. I do think organized labor would be an important pillar of this work, although by itself that wouldn't be sufficient due to labor's long history of excluding Black folks, for example.

     Unfortunately, both DEI and labor orgs can be coopted by racial capitalism to fulfill their own goals so there's that too.

     Idk this is very disorganized thinking but there you have it!

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     Andrea is resting (thiswomanswerk@blacktwitter.io)'s status on Friday, 29-Mar-2024 23:11:16 JST Andrea is resting

     in reply to

     • carl marks

     @tillshadeisgone very true. I am caught between wanting to protect the pacifiers because they are being threatened by the fascists and wanting to throw the pacifier away bc of its inherently conciliatory yet non-changemaking nature

     But also I don't think unions are a good substitute for DEI as I've seen some claim here. That reminds me of obnoxious leftists who've never touched critical theory who say shit like "it's class, not race" 🤡