On Being Included: Racism and Diversity in Institutional Life

by Sara Ahmed

What does diversity do? What are we doing when we use the language of diversity? Sara Ahmed offers an account of the diversity world based on interviews with diversity practitioners in higher education, as well as her own experience of doing diversity work. Diversity is an ordinary even unremarkable feature of institutional life. And yet, diversity practitioners often experience institutions as resistant to their work, as captured through their use of the metaphor of the “brick wall.” On Being Included offers an explanation of this apparent paradox. It explores the gap between symbolic commitments to diversity and the experience of those who embody diversity. Commitments to diversity are understood as "non-performatives" that do not bring about what they name. The book provides an account of institutional whiteness and shows how racism can be obscured by the institutionalization of diversity. Diversity is used as evidence that institutions do not have a problem with racism. On Being Included offers a critique of what happens when diversity is offered as a solution. It also shows how diversity workers generate knowledge of institutions in attempting to transform them.

Genres: Nonfiction, Race, Education, Feminism, Social Justice, Sociology, Academic

256 pages, Paperback

First published March 28, 2012

About the author

Sara Ahmed is an independent queer feminist scholar of colour. Her work is concerned with how power is experienced and challenged in everyday life and institutional cultures. Her most recent book is No is Not a Lonely Utterance: The Art and Activism of Complaining which came out with Allen Lane in September 2025, and which is a companion text to The Feminist Killjoy Handbook which was published by Allen Lane in 2023. Previous books include Complaint! (2021), What's The Use? On the Uses of Use (2019), Living a Feminist Life (2017), Willful Subjects (2014), On Being Included: Racism and Diversity in Institutional Life (2012), The Promise of Happiness (2010) and Queer Phenomenology: Orientations Objects, Others all published by Duke University Press. She blogs at feministkilljoys.com and has a newsletter https://feministkilljoys.substack.com/.

Reviews

[Kony · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not what I expected, but informative. From the title, I was hoping for a fine-grained narrative account of what it feels like to "belong" (or not) in a university. Instead, this is a theory-driven study of how pro-diversity policies do (and don't) produce changes in institutional behavior. Basically an analytical account of how bureaucracy limits, stifles, and co-opts lofty ideals.

The author opens with a theory of institutions and how they evolve; then she analyzes interview data to explore why the trendy goal of diversity isn't working to produce desired changes in institutional practices. She reveals how happy "diversity discourse" has displaced blunt talk about race/racism, thereby diluting and obscuring the real culture-changing work to be done.

Overall, it's a well-written, but very academic, sociological critique of universities as bureaucracies. Less about inclusion per se, and more about bureaucratic obstacles to creating an inclusive institution.

[Tara Brabazon · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am torn as I write the review for this book. I have been so looking forward to reading it. There are challenges that are both methodological and theoretical. This book was founded and based on interviews with diversity practitioners in higher education institutions in Australia and the United Kingdom. This is an absolutely fascinating project. Yet these interviews have left few fingerprints on the book. Testimony is cited, but in terms of using this rich interview material to create an argument and ontological disruption, this next stage of analysis did not emerge. In terms of methodological discussion of the interviews, this is placed in footnotes 6, 7, 8 and 9. Interviews were used as illustrations for an argument, rather than the foundational evidence to make an argument.

As we expect from Professor Ahmed, there are fascinating statements made about diversity as an apology, as public relations and as an excuse for higher educational institutions. She is absolutely right. While Homi Bhabha's theorization of diversity receives a paragraph the text, his powerful commentary about class, mobility and diversity could - indeed - have transformed the entire trajectory of the book. Perhaps 'diversity' is actually more a statement about class than race.

Considering the research was based on diversity practitioners in Australian and UK universities, a deep discussion of the profound differences between Indigenous citizens and other citizens of colour would have been welcome.

Similarly, a deep discussion exploring the different local and regional histories of race in the United Kingdom, such as probing the important and distinctive history of the Black citizens of Liverpool which arches a century before the arrival of the Windrush, would have reinforced statements about localism rather than nationalism. Instead of looping into a discussion of the narrative of Bend it like Beckham, it would have been powerful to reveal the rich texture of these rare, precise and important interviews.

This book is important. I note that intersectionality made an appearance through footnote 18. However the diversity explored in this book is with regard to race and racism, with secondary attention to gender, and some exploration of sexuality. Dis/ability is not a part of this study, although it is key to many institutional diversity policies.

[amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book evokes and unpacks the stifling experience of doing diversity work in institutions of higher education. A major theme is materializing through reference. Examples include 1) how bringing up racism opens one to the charge of invoking/creating it; 2) how diversity / equity / equality policies allow institutions to conflate the creation of documents with the practice of diversity, by referencing the existence of such a document as a credential; and 3) a pattern of repeatedly invoking commitment, as if referring to a person's or institution's commitment to diversity were [enough] to make it a new reality. Ahmed argues that the way institutions handle diversity work merely serves to reinforce and protect the institutional default, which is whiteness. I found the discussion of what it means to "institutionalize" to be especially helpful: normalizing something to the extent that it becomes background.

[Ari · Rating 5 out of 5]

[read as part of master's thesis research] eye opening. should be required reading for both students and staff in higher education.

[Carmen Thong · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent work for what it is - a sort of close reading exercise with a mix of polemic of institutional documents regarding racial equity.

Very well written and moves smoothly from point-to-informative-point, unlike Strange Encounters by the same author which was unnecessarily repetitive and in some parts very redundant. Extremely useful read for anyone vaguely interested in the rhetorics of diversity, and urgently necessary for those who are NOT interested, though of course, that's the problem isn't it.

I'm not giving it a 5 stars more so because I wish Ahmed went further with her analysis. This could have used a lot more documentary material. I get that she started with a vaguely sociological method and had to cease, but she took it halfway in her book without going for the touch down. I can't believe I'm saying this but more examples please! I also wish this had a lot more exposition about the history of words like equal opportunities, affirmative action, inclusion, diversity, etc. Just one chapter - or she could have very explicitly referred the reader to another book with such histories if there is one, but if there isn't, all the more reason to include it!

Very close to 5-star superbness but still very much recommended.

[Myriam · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must read for anyone interested in how racism (and other prejudices) become systematized and institutionalized. Ahmed, a brilliant theorist, utilizes her administrative experience with diversity in higher learning (committee work and internal studies in the UK) to examine how racism, in particular, is maintained in university systems. Particularly insightful in the analysis of the language of diversity utilized in both UK and US universities (that leads absolutely nowhere, or back to the past). There is a penchant for repetitious phrasing that sometimes adds nothing to the analysis but otherwise a very good read.

[Ghada D. · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've been a fan of all Sara Ahmed's work and its been deeply influential during my school years, and now in my career. This is a book I've been wanting to read for a long time and I enjoyed the nuanced critiques of 'diversity discourse' that are presented. My only issue with it is that the language at times felt clunky and repetitive.

[Sarah Cavar · Rating 5 out of 5]

The result of meticulous theoretical and on-the-ground research (and, most specifically, the grounded theoretical interventions emergent in conversations among faculty of color across campus contexts), On Being Included is a much-needed takedown of University-level "DEI" policy that goes beyond typical left-critiques.

Rather than focusing only on the false promises of improved "representation" rested on the backs of administrative committees, Ahmed takes aim at the paradigm of DEI itself, and the glorification of inclusion in a violent university project whose goal is to eliminate the most disruptive, and most necessary, aspects of human difference. Within the university structure, Ahmed argues, to point out the continuous violations of one's personhood required to "fit" the narrow confines of white academic institutions, is to become the false embodiment of said violence, to call to mind unpleasant and ongoing histories the white powers-that-be choose, with nominal diversity efforts, to push out of view.

The formation of DEI committees, then, becomes a multifold project of assigning a scapegoat for the problem of (visible) racism at the university level, as well as the false promise of a solution (after all, the thinking goes, to establish a DEI committee must be tantamount to ending the discriminatory practices that warranted their creation). The material and affective labor of sustaining inquiries into institutional racism, as well as the burden of "being the problem" by having the problem, is once more isolated to those faculty of color selected for the often-unpaid position of diversity worker, and/or those who become ad hoc diversity workers due to their status as First / Only in their department.

With all of her trademark brilliance and dexterity, Ahmed paints a picture of the foibles and limited promises of diversity work within a white supremacist, colonialist university setting that I will undoubtedly keep returning to for years to come.

[Annabelle Berthiaume · Rating 4 out of 5]

Understanding can be practical. Diversity workers, as institutional plumbers, are the ones who point out was is getting blocked. To point out what is blocked, is to be experienced as the blockage point, as the ones who are getting in the way of a flow. The flow, in other words, is a fantasy that is protected by blocking the exposure of a blockage.

- conclusion

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought this was an incredibly thoughtful reflective work that shows the complexity of working towards greater thoughtfulness around diversity within institutions.

[Kristy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an academic (but very readable) look at the act of doing and being diversity in an institutional context. The foundation of Ahmed's book is a series of interviews with diversity professionals at universities in the UK and Australia, as well as her personal experience as a woman of color in the institutions where she's worked. Ahmed doesn't give the reader any easy steps to take, but instead brings us a clear look at how institutions work and what that means for the people or groups who are trying to change an institutional culture that reproduces and favors whiteness.

Much of what she talks about reflects concerns and experiences I've heard from friends and colleagues of color. Other topics shone a light on things I'd never thought about, but that I recognized as an obvious part of the institutional foundations I've experienced. Ahmed's narrative includes looking at the language we use to describe this work (including why "diversity" is such a beloved term), how whiteness as the norm impacts workers and students of color, what actually goes on in committee meetings, the way an institution can be personified, how documents can help and hinder communication, and she ultimately explores some philosophical approaches to thinking through these efforts in a fresh way.

Although there are aspects of the interviews and assertions that are unique to a UK context, most of what Ahmed discusses is just as applicable to institutions in the United States. And while her philosophy and academic background can sometimes make this a dense book, her clear writing style makes it an easy read (and one that made me want to underline every spot-on sentence). I'd really recommend this book for anyone interested in picking apart the successes and failures of institutional diversity efforts (particularly in higher education).

[Lucy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sara Ahmed can do no wrong in my eyes. Her writing always makes me remember why I started to care about cultural studies, and her distinctive voice as a writer makes me want to keep striving to find my own voice as a writer. In this book, Ahmed incisively traces the language of diversity and the ways in which institutional racism and institutional whiteness are obscured through the institutionalization of diversity: this brings us back to Ahmed's observation elsewhere that by identifying a problem, you become a problem. To me, the book made explicit a lot of things that I'd felt without finding the words for them. Ahmed compellingly traces how the language of diversity can be used to claim there is no problem with racism (because diversity is "there"). Informed by rich interview-based material, extensive research and personal experience of doing diversity work, Ahmed traces the gaps between symbolic institutional claims about diversity and lived experiences of those deemed to embody diversity. While Ahmed gradually moves further away from her interview material and into broader philosophical and cultural theoretical territory in later chapters, this study is full of rich insights for critically revisiting the politics of diversity work and the language of diversity - it made a lot of dots fall into place for me, at least. Ahmed focuses on racism and less on other (intersecting) aspects of "diversity work" (e.g. ableism, classism, misogny and homophobia). However, this is not a weakness but a choice about focus. She (importantly) points out that conversations about racism garner a particular kind of institutional resistance and erasure, that operates differently from conversations about class (for example), where the institution often points to financial grants to "exemplify" its DEI success, while further obscuring its inaction on institutional racism, misogyny and so on. The mantra with which Ahmed ends the work can apply beautifully to all (intersecting) expressions of resistance: "Don't look over it, if you can't get over it!"

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[Nat Le Fave · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this one for one of my graduate courses, and it was very interesting! The book explores the way racism is reproduced within higher education institutions; with a focus on what is diversity and what is it doing. It is definitely written as a long academic journal, but the author made many attempts to explain the information in many different ways. I appreciated that she drew on personal experience and informal conversations to make her arguments.

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent ethnographic research. Well written. Excellent critique of diversity efforts. Functions as a map for the issue rather than a being structured around a narrative format making it feel pretty dense at time.

[Tatiana · Rating 3 out of 5]

Don't look over it, if you can't get over it

[Althea Mcintosh · Rating 4 out of 5]

(4.5/5)

[Kayla Johnson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had to read this book for class and we all agreed this should be a Book Club pick for higher education! We all enjoyed it so much. It was deep, thought provoking and filled with research to validate the author's claims. Highly recommend!

[Taylor Hughson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cutting, insightful, clear & accessible

[Joe Olipo]

During several nights when I could not get to sleep, a recurrent crackling noise in the [brick] wall of our bedroom became noticeable at shorter or longer intervals; time and again it woke me as I was about to go to sleep. Naturally we thought of a mouse [. . .] but having heard similar noises innumerable times since then, and still hearing them around me every day in day-time and at night, I have come to recognize them as undoubted divine miracles
— Daniel Paul Schreber, Memoirs of My Nervous Illness (1903)

More on "Ways of Not Seeing"

British pantomime, in its modern form as family entertainment, lives or dies on the basis of its audience, or rather by its active participation. You'll know it's coming off well when child-theatregoers can be made to shout, "He's right behind you!" as the pantomime-villain is spotted behind the hero's back. The great frustration — and great fun — is that by the time our thick-witted hero has turned to look, the villain has already made his escape. (Such stupidity!) The suspense at play here, that the pivotal encounter might be missed, seems to be an element of mature theatre caught up in a bit of children's entertainment. (On the stage as in life!) One wonders to what extent it might be possible to expand upon this moment. What fun might be had — and what suspense! — to experience a so-called thick-witted work (with the intentionality of mature pantomime) producing villains behind its own back and then, for our pleasure, taking its good time turning about.

On Being Included (2012), in my experience, is a text that entertains on the basis of a similar suspense. There is a particular quality of attention here, in which certain "next steps" are, it seems, intentionally uninvestigated (perhaps so that the reader might be allowed to discover them herself). These are moments of great potential, but also sometimes an experience like, "banging your head against a brick wall" (26). Indeed, as Ahmed notes, "this experience of the brick wall [is] often described as an intrinsic part of diversity work" (26). For instance, on the second page of this text we read about a formative experience the author recalled during doctoral studies:

"It came to me as if it were reaching out from the past. The very reach of the past shows that it was not one I had left behind. It was a memory of walking near my home in Adelaide and being stopped by two policemen in a car, one of whom asked me, ‘Are you Aboriginal?’ It turned out that there had been some burglaries in the area. It was an extremely hostile address and an unsettling experience at the time. Having recalled this experience, I wrote about it. The act of writing was a reorientation, affecting not simply what I was writing about but what I was thinking and feeling. As memory, it was an experience of not being white, of being made into a stranger, the one who is recognized as ‘out of place,’ the one who does not belong, whose proximity is registered as crime or threat. As memory, it was of becoming a stranger in a place I called home" (2).

It's remarkable what this phrase "Are you Aboriginal?" does as a performative statement. As a policeman's "hostile address", it makes the author experience "not being white" and makes her "into a stranger". But the author, who is herself not Aboriginal, is also doing work of her own with the "hostile address". Using the "Aboriginal" woman as a generic source non-whiteness, the narrator includes herself in that category, while at the same time working to maintain the difference between her "brownness" and "Aboriginality". The narrator's contention with the policemen seems something other than a refutation of their racist assumptions e.g. "Why would you ask if I'm Aboriginal?" but instead the more expedient, "What makes you think I'm Aboriginal?" or rather, "No I'm not!" The experience of this scene recalls the "brick wall" in the sense that it stages frustration in a moment of reflection, which is itself unreflected, (one notes that this anecdote is the only mention of "Aboriginal" identity in the entire text), as if "the Aboriginal" were being called forth, but only to create an occasion in which it might to be dismissed for good.

One has to wonder what is going on here, in the sense that we have just read a particularly frustrating account of not seeing the diversity in front of one's face (or rather behind one's back) in what is explicitly a "diversity text". The "two-step" in which a particular difference is invoked so that, in the next step, it can be negated in the unitary category of "not being white" is perhaps more clever in its construction than its character as a pantomime villain would suggest. In fact, it seems to be a reflection of the institutional two-step Ahmed critiques in this text: In the first step the institution produces a document detailing what particular "diversity work" needs to be done, which document, in the next step, is used to negate any particular institutional change based on the assurance that a generic "diversity" is happening elsewhere. One common theme in Ahmed's interviews with diversity workers in this text is how, "having a policy becomes a substitute for action," (11), or rather how, "the brick wall might become all the more apparent [. . .] the more the institution presents itself as being opened up" (31). In one particularly humorous interview, a comprehensive policy detailing a particularly poor performance on diversity is taken by the institutional leadership to mean that exceptionally good work has already been accomplished:

I was surprised at one of these meetings when the vice chancellor, with a letter in his hand, referred to the race equality policy we had written [. . .] With an extravagant smile, and waving the letter in front of us (somehow the physicality of this gesture mattered), he talked about the content of the letter, which took the form of a congratulation (or which he gave the form of a congratulation), informing the university that it had been given the ‘top rank’ for its race equality policy. ‘We are good at race equality,’ he said, with a beaming smile, pointing to the letter. It was a feel-good moment, but those of us who wrote the document did not feel so good. What is at stake in this performance of good feeling? A document that documents the inequality of the university becomes usable as a measure of good performance" (83).

In Ahmed's account, the contradictory nature of diversity work seems to include the existence of diversity workers themselves, whose employment, at times, seems to be at cross-purposes with diversity itself. Diversity, which "should be everyone's business," is offloaded onto a few select individuals for whom it becomes a special project. Though the point seems to be that even though institutions will point to the existence of a dedicated diversity department as an excuse to not "do the work", these positions remain the major inroads to institutional change, "somebody the other day was saying to me 'oh there's equity fatigue, people are sick of the word equity.' . . . oh well okay we've gone through equal opportunity, affirmative action--they are sick of equity--now what do we call ourselves?! They are sick of it because we have to keep saying it because they are not doing it [laughs]” (61). The analogy to this text being, perhaps, that it compels the reader to keep "saying it['s right behind you!]", even as it continues in its way of not seeing.

For me, the villain constantly "behind the back" of this "diversity text" is the sense that it doesn't seem to enjoy the experience of diversity very much. Certainly we should do "diversity work" for the sake of a better society (although the primary motivation for "institutions" appears to be the desire to avoid reprimand by meeting the minimum requirements specified in Commonwealth legislation), yet Ahmed's encounters with "a sea of whiteness" (35), are a source of discomfort without exception. Indeed, the text's attentive focus on diversity work as professional-advancement-for-people-of-color seems to be based on the assumption that it's never a pleasure. (As Derrick Bell notes, in the context of essentially segregated institutions, the common question is, "What opportunities are being denied people of color?" But were diversity conceived as a positive value, one could put the un-asked question: "What are the 'white' students missing out on?") Conversely, moments of enjoyment in the text are won at the expense of "the sea of whiteness". Ahmed describes the effort it takes to establish a protected space at an academic conference, and the enjoyment the group gets out of it: "Eventually, a white person left in recognition—and gave recognition—that we needed a space of relief from whiteness. A second person followed, but aggressively, saying we had made her unwelcome, forced her to leave. One by one the white people left, each offering an account of leaving, and a different account of why they had come. When the black caucus became itself, such joy, such relief! Such humor, such talk!" (37). The libidinal investment on display here, in which one is finally able to enjoy and relax, but only in a caucus of generic "non whiteness" seems to suggest a vision of diversity work as being about the construction of a set of (representational) silos (with the caveat that, one presumes, it is possible to imagine Aboriginal people present). Of course, as long as institutions remain essentially segregated, we ought to have such spaces as well. Coupled with the impossibility of even pleasant "cross-talk", however, result is another particularly frustrating account with the "brick wall".

One has to wonder what is going on here, in that we have just read into the experience of a diversity worker who seems to share (behind one's back) the same assumptions as the Good Old Boys i.e. that diversity is a zero-sum game. The "bad diversity worker", who is merely engaging in a territorial dispute, seems to be a reflection of the institutional assumption that diversity is inherently unpleasant. Their existence permits the reader to inhabit, for a moment, the perspective of "the sea of whiteness" from which all diversity work is considered as subtraction. Along these lines, Ahmed interviews a diversity worker who provides a third-party view of a pleasant conversation about breakfast: "Talking informally with a diversity practitioner, she told me of an occasion when she arrived at a meeting of the diversity and equality committee and the senior staff (who were all white men of a certain age) were talking about what they used to eat at Cambridge for breakfast (a conversation, she said, about bananas), a casual conversation about a shared history of consumption that is at once an institutional history. This conversation was a way of taking up space; it allowed these individuals to occupy the official space of the meeting" (133). One imagines what a member of the "senior staff" would say about this. Were he reflective and frank, perhaps he would declaim, "Yes, indeed we were taking up space, but such joy, such talk!" One sees how diversity workers continue to encounter "brick walls", when the surplus enjoyment derived from exclusionary "white spaces" seems to be their surreptitious source. The tension being that the "bad diversity worker", in the scenario detailed above, prefers silence to what some experience as pleasant conversation, and really seems to believe, against the grain of experience, that the function of her job is to be a "brick wall" against such enjoyment.

Of course, the diversity worker who constructs "brick walls" is merely the projected image of diversity as a zero-sum game as refracted through the lens of (white) institutional power. The role of the diversity worker, in their actual function, should be imagined as breaking down the institutional barriers to enjoyment. (And the text of On Being Included (2012) seems to be doing a very convincing pantomime in its portrayal of not seeing this.) For this text, the "brick wall" remains a "metaphor for institutional limits" to which diversity workers are opposed. Ahmed elaborates by analogy with the "glass ceiling":

"The glass ceiling refers to the institutional processes that stop certain categories of people from moving up (vertical mobility), whereas the brick wall refers to the institutional processes that stop certain values from moving across (horizontal mobility). Both metaphors point to the significance of visibility and invisibility: the point of the ceiling being made of glass is that you can’t see it. [. . .] With the brick wall, you cannot see it unless you come up against it. The metaphor of the brick wall points to how what is tangible and visible to some subjects, something so thick and solid that you cannot see through it, does not even appear to others. What some cannot see through, others cannot see" (199).

What to make of this elaboration except to note that it seems to carry a couple contradictions. (Somewhat characteristic for Ahmed, whose writing often shows that a background in phenomenology via Husserl doesn't mean one is always careful with metaphor.) The brick wall "stops values from moving across" because it is "so solid and thick that you cannot see through it", which seems to be a quality it shares with plywood, and also "does not appear to others" so it's as if it were transparent — but somehow not see-through! The image of a "brick wall" in this text (page 27, magnified on the two-page spread 188-189), is a further complication. This image, like the pantomime villain right in front of our hero, does not depict what its caption would suggest — this is not a "brick wall", but merely a façade. The pictured brick is part of a non-structural veneer. (One can tell by its pattern.) It provides no structural support — being merely one layer deep — but remains a pleasant way of finishing a building's exterior.

The brick façade seems to be a particularly loud example of "not seeing" — not only has the image been read improperly, but the metaphor of the exterior façade, were it recognized, would seem to work better for the text. From her work within an institution, I reckon a diversity worker continues to encounter a series of exterior façades, as if, despite her interior position, she were nonetheless on the outside. The metaphor also seems to serve us better as readers of this text, who have been reading with the assumption that we have only been glimpsing its exterior façade, and so all apparent blunders have been recuperated on the "inside". The "faint crackles" of Socratic irony just past the façade must have something like what Schreber has called an "almost-miraculous quality". But I would (still) argue this is a better approach to such a text as this. To put oneself in a position to enjoy a text's peculiar way of not seeing seems certainly better than the alternative: Consider a text on diversity which seems almost intentional in its exclusion native peoples and the disabled, which conceives diversity itself as unpleasant part of a zero-sum game, which is inattentive with its metaphor and oblivious or merely indifferent to the political forces which threaten its very existence — it would be a travesty.

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

We read this as a part of a book discussion group for the library with a campus-wide focus, open to anyone who wanted to join. It gave me a much better framework for what inclusion is and is not.

[CTEP]

For my March book club I read On Being Included: Race and Diversity in Institutional Life by Sara Ahmed. In her book, Ahmed looks at the contradictory way that diversity work functions in higher education. The institutional context of higher education is fundamentally a white context that maintain itself by maintaining white supremacy. Ahmed’s main argument is that diversity work at universities serves to reinforce the institutional default of whiteness instead of actually working towards equity. Racism is framed as something that we can “get over,” erasing the way it continues to be institutionalized. She draws on her own experience as a diversity practitioner as well as interviews with other people in the field to highlight how diversity work can obscure the actual inequities at work. One way this happens is through the language of diversity; institutions create diversity documents and falsely equate using diversity language to practicing diversity. The practice of diversity would require an underlying shift in power, a painful process for those who benefit from the status quo and make decisions for the university. Performative commitments to diversity make those in positions of privilege comfortable while a reality of diversity is not experienced by those who are expected to embody diversity (students of color, disabled students, low-wealth student…). People who point out racism are accused of creating it and made into the problem as victimizers frame themselves as victims. The lack of institutional history, as students graduate every four years, allows continued inaction. Ahmed returns repeatedly to the image of a brick wall, as doing this work can often feel like running into a brick wall of institutional resistance, but she wrote this book because she believes a deep knowledge of the institutions is necessary to do transformative work.



I think this was an important book for me to read because it's important to recognize that these dynamics extend to institutions beyond higher education, although specific embodiment shifts with context. Even working in an institution with a clear commitment to equity and diversity, as I now do, it’s important to be critical of how our structures, practices, and language can work to normalize certain power dynamics. At an organization mostly made up of white women, what does talking about diversity do? Are we speaking in a way that aligns with transformative action, even if that action is uncomfortable for us and the organization. Or does our shared language allow us to feel as though we are “doing the work” without actually having engage with difficult dynamics.



I would recommend this book to any CTEPs looking for a theoretical framing to diversity work. It’s a fairly short but dense read that I enjoyed because it really provided context for my experiences in institutions. It also made me reflect on how adaptable white supremacy is and the way that I use diversity language or practices to protect my own whiteness which I think is valuable.

[Nina Keller · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book to learn more from the wise and practical Sara K. Ahmed, after learning so much from her book, Being the Change. This one is very different in that it’s very academic and focused on the institutional level. She gave me language to name the frustrations I have with academic culture as a barrier for moving forward with identity and inclusion work in schools, as well as to identify ways that I myself act as a barrier to change and liberation.

[Malcolm · Rating 5 out of 5]

In one of the more significant moments in recent British history, the McPherson report in 1999, investigating the police response to the murder in London of Stephen Lawrence in 1993, found the Metropolitan police to be institutionally racist. It wasn’t a new idea (institutional racism or that a police force might be so): the term first appeared in late 1960s – but the official imprimatur from its use in such a report was seen as a moment of hope for some meaningful change in the British state and many of its institutions. But as has been often noted, whiteness is a slippery, wily thing. Already, by the time this report was issued, many institutions had begun to find ways to address, or at least be seen to be responding to, the criticism that they remained places where white men ruled to roost in a system that reinforced their standing, simply by being a place of their comfort. Not surprisingly, one such system was the universities. This response was, and still is, the system that became labelled equality, diversity and inclusions (EDI).

In On Being Included Sara Ahmed explores the ways that EDI programme and policies are developed and instituted by working with EDI workers in British and Australian universities, and in doing so explores how institutional change is such a highly contested and contradictory site. In doing so she draws out ways that the language of diversity both provides an opportunity to change the system, to make it a more democratic space of belonging for a wider range of people, while also reinforcing the existing exclusionary power regime. This tension runs throughout the analysis – where EDI work offers both a potential for change and a reinforcement of the order it is supposed to be changing.

This tension, this contradiction, exists at multiple levels. There is a recurrent discussion of the ways that institutional performance cultures and the management regimes they produce sustain a situation where systemic and cultural factors are minimised, so racism for instance is reduced to a problem of individual attitudes and practices (as seen in the police forces’ responses to McPherson and subsequent cases, where they root out the ‘bad apples’). The contradiction may also be seen the paradoxes of EDI practice – Ahmed cites the case of the Vice Chancellor who cites the praise given to an EDI policy, developed to address an overwhelming lack of E, D or I, as evidence that the university was ‘good at diversity’, when the exact opposite is the case. She further draws out this strand of analysis to explore the ways that professed commitment to EDI becomes a way of not doing anything to enhance it.

This is not to say that Ahmed’s argument is that EDI work is a waste of time, or that the policy and approach is some kind of Machiavellian move to retain power, but more that she explores the ways that regimes of power protect their power. As an approach EDI without systemic transformation was probably always flawed – it is hard to see that the solution to a problem of an exclusionary system is a programme that draws into that system those excluded by it … unless, that is, the problem of systemic exclusion is not recognised. Throughout Ahmed makes the powerful point that a systemic response to its forms of exclusion being highlighted is often to make into the problem those who highlight the problem – it’s not racism that is the problem but calling out that racism: this is a potent and pervasive means of deflection.

While not in itself an analysis that points to the futility or otherwise of this EDI work, I can’t help but feel frustrated that although much of the field work for the book was done 15-20 years ago, and the book published 10 years ago, very little has changed. The level of the problem struck me forcefully in a university committee meeting not long after this book was published when we were looking at ‘diversity’ data by work unit, and I spotted that my overwhelmingly white work group was showing two ‘Black and Minority Ethnic’ staff members. When I asked my co-worker who had prepared the data, in a slightly perplexed manner, who the ‘other’ one was (one was clear) I was told it was me – a comfortably middle aged white bloke. We had three ‘white’ options for the ethnicity listing – White British, White Irish (neither of which I am, although almost exclusively of white, British and Irish descent) and White Other (which I had ticked): it turned out that White Other was one of the categories classed as ‘BAME’ – so enhanced our diversity data. This struck me at the time as a great example of the slipperiness of whiteness, and the non-performance of diversity. I began marking myself as White British.

Ahmed’s analysis is rich, nuanced, elegantly dialectical and theoretically sophisticated without being exclusionary – it is an academic text, but of the kind we’d be better off with if more of us made the effort to make our cases this engaging. It remains a vital text not laying out not only how racism and diversity are contested issues and sites in university settings, but of how institutions operate to sustain themselves and shore up existing power regimes. That is to say, it remains essential reading.

[Tanner · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very compelling, clinical look at the way diversity work and discussions of racism in the university (U.K. universities, in this case, though very viable for U.S. universities) can either propagate the "flow" of institutional whiteness and solidify it further, or can be an exhausting pursuit which necessarily alienates the pursuer. Rich examinations of rhetoric and institutional identity abound, as well as a hard look at a widespread failure to truly dismantle racism from educational systems (and society at large).

The book is written in a very straightforward way, and though this did make it a bit dry at points, it was very useful for comprehension: Ahmed's logical descriptions/analyses are very deep, but she is careful to avoid synonyms and complex sentence structures.

My only complaint is that the book does not really offer a workable solution to racial inequality. I'm a practical person, and was aching for even a hypothetical set of practices to rewrite our educational practices. Sadly, I think the lack of clear, actionable items arose from the predicament the book itself establishes. Can we face racism without further alienating the discriminated? Can we pursue equality without embedding inequality in our pursuit?

These questions bother me deeply, and I hope some reflection will bring some resolution.

If anything, I took away that we should not stop talking, we should not stop moving, and we should not stop addressing the deep social binds that allow damaging perspectives and practices to reproduce and propagate themselves in the modern academy. To be discouraged and give up is to be a part of the problem.

[Elizabeth Schlatter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Insightful but hard to read -- I couldn't have gotten through it if I hadn't been part of a book club at work. Ahmed essentially deconstructs the language and activity around diversity initiatives at colleges and universities, through interviews with diversity workers in Australia and England, and through her own experience doing that work as well. Her analysis is fantastic and thorough. My problem (and this is MY problem), is that the book is clearly written for a higher ed context, so there's loads of critical theory that Ahmed references to both buttress her arguments and to put forward her own ideas. Which makes sense -- she's a scholar. But it was tough going for a while. By the last full chapter though, I was "in the flow" so to speak, a little bit like reading Shakespeare, where it takes a while to understand but then when you get used to it, it's relatively fine. Of course, now that I've read this book, I can't be wholeheartedly optimistic about any sort of diversity work -- Ahmed shows that oftentimes the best intentions end up actually making situations worse for the very people that are intended to be helped, based in large part on power inequities and the inability of those with the power to understand how their situation and activities reinforce systemic issues. So ... sigh... that's a bummer... Nonetheless, I'm very glad I read the book.

[kaitlyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

incredibly articulate, clever, and thoughtful dissection of diversity work & racism in institutions. sara ahmed has a way of verbalizing challenging realities that are simultaneously obvious and hard to explain. more than that, though, she offers a voice for the realities that aren't obvious, especially for those who don't have to experience institutional obstacles when it comes to one's identity (i.e. white people) or work related to identity. her research offers a space for diversity practitioners to talk about their experiences, and this book creates a space to analyze these experiences and ahmed's in order to better understand how institutions work (or don't, when it comes to dismantling racism).

read this if you want to better understand how whiteness is reproduced in institutions; how institutions commit to diversity while blocking diversity work from affecting change; how diversity workers experience (and become exhausted from) their work; and how being included can very much be a way to preserve exclusion.

[Camille · Rating 4 out of 5]

The bulk of the book is a comparative study of diversity work in higher education in the United Kingdom and Australia. That portion of the book is interesting and has clear and obvious analogies to diversity committees and projects in business and government agencies. For those without a specific interest in diversity work itself, the book really comes alive in chapters 5 and the conclusion.

Using the wordplay that Ahmed is known for, Ahmed highlights how, when done well, diversity work generates knowledge of institutional barriers (walls)- that "which you do not get over." Addressing challenges to move beyond "identity politics," Ahmed reminds us that "it is not time to be over it, if it is not over. It is not even the time to get over it." Rather, this call to "be over" racism is exactly how racism is reproduced. It is a wall through which some bodies cannot go through, cannot get over, cannot overcome. The work of diversity, the work of justice, is to not to deny the wall but to see the wall and then transform it.

[Michael Farrell · Rating 3 out of 5]

couldve been 4. i liked its readablility and its behind the scenes bits. conclusion was weakest part of book. i didnt buy the phenomenological figuring of diversity officers. ahmed's description of their experience began to sound more and more like conventional bureaucracy, from the point of anyone (worker or public). at that point it seemed like reading kafka (studies) would be more worthwhile, or beckett. also weak when ascribing the experience of others, ie non-diversity officers, and in terms of what diversity pertains to more specifically, for anyone who doesnt work in academia, i.e. how it relates to hiring, treatment of staff, curriculum, student enrolment. mostly it seemed to do with staff only but it was not clear. nor was their any distinction b/w uk and aust institutiions, which i imagine do have differences as well as similarities.

[Alicia Easley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Like some of the other reviewers, I feel torn about my review for this book.

I recognize the merits of what Sara Ahmed was trying to present within her theoretical phenomenological offering to the discourse of diversity. Many of the points she painstakingly details make sense to my own lived experience both in academia and more fully out in the world.

That being said, I found this such a slow read—I would find myself annoyed with repetition often within the same paragraph and sentence. It made it hard to sometimes understand and follow the point being made. The times where it was amazing were often combined with interview notes and points on the interviewees—the flow was better there and made the arguments more engaging.