Ruha Benjamin
Appearances
What Now? with Trevor Noah
RIP… D.E.I. with Ruha Benjamin [VIDEO]
It's actually a source of pride because you're infusing love. You're led by love, not necessarily a need for status and accolades and professional sort of titles. And so I embrace that. Let me say, this lady has a MacArthur.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
RIP… D.E.I. with Ruha Benjamin [VIDEO]
Yeah, I think that's, you know, there's layers to it because I don't necessarily think it's a new phenomenon that this sort of lack of capacity to engender constructive conversation. I would say that is distinct from the kind of debate bro style of someone like Shapiro where it is very combative. It's not about us gaining knowledge together, but it's really about me winning and
What Now? with Trevor Noah
RIP… D.E.I. with Ruha Benjamin [VIDEO]
Oh, it's about owning people. Yeah, definitely. We should be able to wrestle with difficult conversations. And so I think part of the exceptionalism around Palestine that we've seen in the last year in particular has a lot to do with the idealization of what the university should be, which it hasn't ever been.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
RIP… D.E.I. with Ruha Benjamin [VIDEO]
for the vast majority of people and really the economic underpinnings of these institutions. One person described it as a hedge fund that offers classes. So to really think about really this idea that these are this enlightenment model of learning and so much of it is profit-driven and these profits are deeply intertwined with the military, military-industrial complex, weapons manufacturers.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
RIP… D.E.I. with Ruha Benjamin [VIDEO]
Like, it's not just about disclosing and divesting specifically when it comes to Israel-Palestine, but the fact that these institutions are in bed with the military so that the calling into question of that entire infrastructure is really... like getting to the foundation of what's holding these places up. And so the crackdown that we think, oh, this is so disproportionate.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
RIP… D.E.I. with Ruha Benjamin [VIDEO]
These students are just trying to talk about this or that. It's because what they're talking about is really getting to the foundations of what's holding these institutions up.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
RIP… D.E.I. with Ruha Benjamin [VIDEO]
Trevor, we, the three of us and many others like us, we have to navigate a world that was not built for us. So by a matter of survival, we have to take other people's position. We have to know how we're being seen at all times and in order to navigate, to stay out of danger. It's a capacity that we have grown. We've had to grow. So we're constantly shifting positions.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
RIP… D.E.I. with Ruha Benjamin [VIDEO]
You know, we have language for this. Du Bois called double consciousness, you know, looking through different lenses. And so this is part of how we see the world is not to only see it through our own lens. And so the fact that people cannot switch perspective is a luxury. It's a privilege that means that, oh, you can only navigate the world only through your lens.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
RIP… D.E.I. with Ruha Benjamin [VIDEO]
You don't have to take other people's positions. So when it comes to something like the Trump phenomenon or just thinking about what on the outside appears like hate and vitriol and evil even, part of what we have to reckon with is how from the inside of that perspective, it's not experienced as hate and vitriol. In some cases, it's actually affinity, love.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
RIP… D.E.I. with Ruha Benjamin [VIDEO]
People are bonding over these perspectives and outlooks. And so I remember a few years ago, I saw this really heartbreaking video, this cafeteria scene of kids that I think it was right after he was elected the first time, these kids were chanting, build that wall. And they were pointing at this little Latino boy in the cafeteria, build that wall, build that wall.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
RIP… D.E.I. with Ruha Benjamin [VIDEO]
And so I was thinking about not just those kids, but the parents of those kids who see The building of that wall, the bordering of our world, not as an evil infrastructure, not as motivated by hate, but motivated by a distorted form of love for their own children.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
RIP… D.E.I. with Ruha Benjamin [VIDEO]
So the idea that we have to do this to protect our children, their jobs, their futures, it's really what Fanon would call this perverse form of love. I remember reading as a grad student a book called Women in the Klan that was talking about women's very prominent role in the Ku Klux Klan. Hashtag diversity.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
RIP… D.E.I. with Ruha Benjamin [VIDEO]
Thank you. Thank you. Point, point. And how, you know, the ethnographer who really infiltrated and went inside these organizations and, you know, befriended, in quotes, these women, she writes about how, you know, they had potlucks. They took care of each other's kids. You know, there was so much affinity and love in the inside that then got expressed by who they hated.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
RIP… D.E.I. with Ruha Benjamin [VIDEO]
Like, they bonded over who they hated.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
RIP… D.E.I. with Ruha Benjamin [VIDEO]
So unless we can understand that, the kind of internal workings... And we only think of it as what is experienced from the outside. We won't get to the root of the problem, which is people seeking bonds with other human beings, but only being able to do it by having something to be against. And that is not inevitable, right? That's just the pattern, but it's not inevitable. Right.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
RIP… D.E.I. with Ruha Benjamin [VIDEO]
School should have been set up in such a way that would allow you to express your... I think we're going to disagree on this, but we'll come back to it.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
RIP… D.E.I. with Ruha Benjamin [VIDEO]
Yeah, and I think it's different that, you know, like you can understand something and not abide it at the same time. You know, I can understand it, but I also feel very strongly that part of what sometimes gets lost when we talk about abolition is accountability, right?
What Now? with Trevor Noah
RIP… D.E.I. with Ruha Benjamin [VIDEO]
And so it's not that we can just hurt each other, harm each other, say whatever we want, and just walk through the world sort of unaccountable to each other. So I think hand in hand with this worldview is this idea that we have to build a social fabric that when I hurt you, I'm both going to be accountable to and I'm going to take action to ensure it doesn't happen again.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
RIP… D.E.I. with Ruha Benjamin [VIDEO]
So when it comes to school and what we will call like the school to prison pipeline and all the ways that we incorporate in carceral processes and logics in school, including suspension and detention and all of these things, it's a lack of creativity. It's a lack of thinking, how else could we organize this such that we don't conflict?
What Now? with Trevor Noah
RIP… D.E.I. with Ruha Benjamin [VIDEO]
cut off people who have a bad day or are, you know, sort of wrestling with something and can't express why it is so they act out in this way. There's examples of schools and communities that are experimenting with that.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
RIP… D.E.I. with Ruha Benjamin [VIDEO]
And a lot of it comes down to, again, this prioritization of order and excellence over really play and imagination and thinking about the fact that oftentimes the first things to go from many schools when there's budget cuts are
What Now? with Trevor Noah
RIP… D.E.I. with Ruha Benjamin [VIDEO]
recess and art like the very places that people would be able to have self-expression and even our language of like black excellence like as something to strive for has a huge underside you know going back to what we're joking about the kind of like Nigerian parents like there's so much that gets lost and repressed and discounted when we strive for a very narrow form of achievement and
What Now? with Trevor Noah
RIP… D.E.I. with Ruha Benjamin [VIDEO]
There's so many forms of intelligence and genius and creativity that gets shut down that we never get to experience because we want everyone to sit behind their desk for eight hours a day, raise their hand, walk in line, you know. And so part of it is to rethink even what we consider education and excellence and achievement because everyone could ultimately benefit from those changes. Yeah.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
RIP… D.E.I. with Ruha Benjamin [VIDEO]
So a couple of things. One is, you know, if the kind of phenomenon you're describing of people being pulled out or expelled, let's say if it was an equal opportunity expelling, you know, where all kids were treated with the same level of scrutiny, et cetera, that would be one conversation. But what you're describing is there's a very strong selection effect in terms of which
What Now? with Trevor Noah
RIP… D.E.I. with Ruha Benjamin [VIDEO]
young people's behavior is deemed so troublesome as to warrant expelling. We have very stark disparities in the percentage of Black students, Native students, et cetera, who are expelled. And if you look country by country, there's another level to this where the rates of punishment that we think of as normal let's say in South Africa or the U.S.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
RIP… D.E.I. with Ruha Benjamin [VIDEO]
or et cetera, somehow magically other societies have been able to organize their schooling such that they don't have those outcomes. They're not expelled. So what we normalize and think this is the only way we can deal with this issue of the average and gifted, et cetera, Somehow it's not universal.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
RIP… D.E.I. with Ruha Benjamin [VIDEO]
That should be a clue for us that it's possible to approach education in a way that's not like a factory, you know, where we're graduating batches of kids. And if you don't, if you have any little problem with the product, you have to pull it aside. And so partly is to really rethink our model of education that we've inherited as normal and say, what if...
What Now? with Trevor Noah
RIP… D.E.I. with Ruha Benjamin [VIDEO]
We could approach things in a way that wasn't so mechanical, that wasn't so rigid from the start, right? And we don't have to, you know, we don't have to come up with Scratch because there's other places that are already doing this. One of the examples that I've discussed is how in Finland, like kids, they're not really focused on reading and math, et cetera, until the kids are older.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
RIP… D.E.I. with Ruha Benjamin [VIDEO]
They really take play seriously. So the teachers are like studying the kids' play, you know, and like getting all these lessons.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
RIP… D.E.I. with Ruha Benjamin [VIDEO]
Play tells you everything. And so they're really taking it seriously. And what's so kind of paradoxical in a way is that when they administer these universal tests across countries, you know, to rank which country is doing better or worse.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
RIP… D.E.I. with Ruha Benjamin [VIDEO]
Finland out-tests all the other countries, like the place that's not focused on testing, that's focused on play and imagination and expression and cooperation and learning how to fight, learning how to compete, you know, productively. It's not like, it's not kumbaya. It's like, how do we manage conflicts? You know, if you can't practice that...
What Now? with Trevor Noah
RIP… D.E.I. with Ruha Benjamin [VIDEO]
As a kid, like, of course you don't have adults that can do that. If you don't learn how to negotiate that when you're younger and you always have a teacher to step in and say, pull this aside, pull Trevor aside, expel him. No, let's figure out how to conflict and fight productively in a way that we can, you know.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
RIP… D.E.I. with Ruha Benjamin [VIDEO]
So part of it is to recognize that spending time and investing in this actually leads to happier, you know, more well-rounded human beings and people who can take tests if you really care about that, you know.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
RIP… D.E.I. with Ruha Benjamin [VIDEO]
Yeah, I was never a big booster of DEI. So to see it coming down, I feel for those who were genuinely invested in that as a potential to transform institutions and industries. But it always felt like a concession, a placeholder for something that could be more transformative. And so like with placeholders, I think they become permanent.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
RIP… D.E.I. with Ruha Benjamin [VIDEO]
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
RIP… D.E.I. with Ruha Benjamin [VIDEO]
As opposed to being a stepping stone, it becomes this kind of, you know, safe way of corralling those who would sort of cause trouble. And so, you know, you could say it was bound to fail or it could say it's doing exactly what it was designed to do. And so I think we shouldn't be satisfied with kind of these sort of token failures.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
RIP… D.E.I. with Ruha Benjamin [VIDEO]
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
RIP… D.E.I. with Ruha Benjamin [VIDEO]
fleeting forms of attention because as we're seeing now, they come and go very quickly. So many of the people who were hired under DEI programs after the killing of George Floyd are now losing their jobs. Entire programs are going up in smoke. So I think we should rethink what our demands are.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
RIP… D.E.I. with Ruha Benjamin [VIDEO]
, , , , , , ,, in P P P P P P P P P,實,實, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , to P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P and la� la� la� la� la� gi la la,G boG boG boG boG boG boG boG boG boG boG boG boG boG boG boG boG boG boG boG boG boG boG boG boG boG boG boG boG boG boG boG boG boG boG boG gener la in in in in in in in in la gr la gr la gr
What Now? with Trevor Noah
RIP… D.E.I. with Ruha Benjamin [VIDEO]
And I do think that one of the ways that I think of these technologies as useful is as Trevor described as a mirror.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
RIP… D.E.I. with Ruha Benjamin [VIDEO]
But that presumes that... People are motivated by data and facts and information, like that seeing is believing. And we know through studies that have presented hard data to people to show them this disparity exists, this inequality exists. Seeing that information or data often has them double down on whatever their priors were. You know, there was a study out of Stanford a few years ago.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
RIP… D.E.I. with Ruha Benjamin [VIDEO]
They presented data on incarceration to white Americans in San Francisco and New York. Said, look at these black people being warehoused at disproportionate rates in our jails and prisons. And when they were exposed to the data, they became more supportive of the policies that were creating that effect. Stop and frisk in New York, three strikes law in California.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
RIP… D.E.I. with Ruha Benjamin [VIDEO]
So many stories I could tell. One is as a graduate student, I was in that kind of position of being enrolled to be the black face of a scientific program that was trying to recruit more black patients to undergo a very experimental treatment. So I was enrolled to be that person that was supposed to help win over the trust of black this community that was needed for this program.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
RIP… D.E.I. with Ruha Benjamin [VIDEO]
And so partly is to reckon with, yes, these systems can be a reflection of society, but the facts alone will not save us. This is not, people are not simply motivated by information, but by stories, by stories.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
RIP… D.E.I. with Ruha Benjamin [VIDEO]
But then when it comes to like the examples you offered, which I think are really important, whether in healthcare, you know, you talked about the breast cancer screening or an education, more tailored learning. There are, again, studies that are showing that many of these systems are just reproducing and hiding existing problems in these institutions or in these industries.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
RIP… D.E.I. with Ruha Benjamin [VIDEO]
In healthcare, there was an audit a few years ago where they looked at a widely used healthcare algorithm that was discriminating against Black patients because it was trained on data in which doctors were not offering adequate services and time to their Black patients.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
RIP… D.E.I. with Ruha Benjamin [VIDEO]
So the smarter the algorithms get, the more racist and sexist they often become. Like intelligence is like learning. Well, they can become. Yeah.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
RIP… D.E.I. with Ruha Benjamin [VIDEO]
Not inevitable. So there's another counter example. And this is a positive one. I think that sort of lends itself to your optimism is that a group of researchers said, OK, we understand this phenomenon. It's getting reproduced in these systems. So what they did was trained A.I.,
What Now? with Trevor Noah
RIP… D.E.I. with Ruha Benjamin [VIDEO]
Not on doctors, the official medical reports, but they train the system to predict what a patient would say about their own experience of pain. So the AI's intelligence was based on patients' own self-reports.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
RIP… D.E.I. with Ruha Benjamin [VIDEO]
So it didn't have that anti-Black bias that is embedded in those doctors' reports. So it was not only more accurate, but less biased. So this is the lesson. It matters where we go looking for the data, the knowledge that we're training these systems on.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
RIP… D.E.I. with Ruha Benjamin [VIDEO]
If we only train them on the official records or the official data without being more creative and thinking what is being left out, what perspectives aren't in the official record that we need to actually train these systems on, then in this case, the embodied knowledge of patients who know what they're feeling. You know, whose pain is often discounted.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
RIP… D.E.I. with Ruha Benjamin [VIDEO]
We have to turn our attention and be more creative about, again, what even counts as knowledge. And so, so many of the things in education are trying to predict whether students are going to graduate or be successful or whether they're at risk. And they're reproducing the categories. Like if I say, guess which students are deemed higher risk by these AI systems. Right.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
RIP… D.E.I. with Ruha Benjamin [VIDEO]
You know who that's going to be. In my view, rather than pointing it to the students, let's figure out which adults are creating risks for these students. Let's train the AI to figure out which fields and departments are creating a hostile environment for these young people. But we never turn the lens to those who actually have the power to shape the experience.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
RIP… D.E.I. with Ruha Benjamin [VIDEO]
We always look at the most vulnerable and label them and stigmatize them.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
RIP… D.E.I. with Ruha Benjamin [VIDEO]
And it was a very uncomfortable position because I was at the one hand, you know, sort of touted and put up on a pedestal, but at the same time, very vulnerable. Because if I had said no, then I would have lost access to X, Y, and Z. So one is my own complicity.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
RIP… D.E.I. with Ruha Benjamin [VIDEO]
I'm still hybrid. I'm hybrid, yeah. I don't know what I would say. Actually, I'll tell you. I just came out of a two-day, hosted a two-day VR exhibit. I wasn't really... for VR. I've written about it and how it's manipulated and used for like trauma porn, et cetera. But I'm collaborating with an amazing team that's working on a project called Phoenix of Gaza.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
RIP… D.E.I. with Ruha Benjamin [VIDEO]
It's a VR exhibit that has footage from the last few years in Gaza before the devastation, many cultural everyday activities, weddings, sewing groups, children playing, people sharing poetry, and also now in the aftermath of this genocide. And so this is where you enter the world. It's very different from seeing something on film or on screen. Like,
What Now? with Trevor Noah
RIP… D.E.I. with Ruha Benjamin [VIDEO]
The kids are looking at you eye to eye, like you're standing over the shoulder of a teenager reciting poetry passionately. You're with a little boy on a skateboard going on the beach. He has the camera and you're riding with him. And so this experience of entering this world is one thing, but it's the fact that it's created by and for Palestinians.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
RIP… D.E.I. with Ruha Benjamin [VIDEO]
And I think it matters who's creating these technologies with what values and goals in mind. Like, You know, the stories that they're telling are about preservation. It's about rebuilding.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
RIP… D.E.I. with Ruha Benjamin [VIDEO]
It's about having now the footage of churches that have been demolished, mosques that have been demolished, but having the architecture there, you know, in this 360 camera with the idea that we are going to go home and we are going to rebuild this. And so the Phoenix of Gaza XR project is one of the few projects
What Now? with Trevor Noah
RIP… D.E.I. with Ruha Benjamin [VIDEO]
Then very recently in the last year, in my own institution, I've observed how Black administrators in particular are really being called on to do the dirty work. to write the threatening emails, to call students who are demanding an end to genocide aggressive and angry and a threat.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
RIP… D.E.I. with Ruha Benjamin [VIDEO]
You know, of these kind of emerging technology projects that I think of as truly liberatory in that the goal is to, you know, engender self-determination and cultural preservation and a return, a right to return.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
RIP… D.E.I. with Ruha Benjamin [VIDEO]
And so it's not the white president, but a whole flank of Black administrators who are the ones who are really doing the work of these institutions to repress free speech and dissent. And I think that that is very strategic because when that is the face of the message, people perhaps...
What Now? with Trevor Noah
RIP… D.E.I. with Ruha Benjamin [VIDEO]
I love that because you can interpret that as, you know, him sort of pacifying or conceding to this sort of white fragility, let's say.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
RIP… D.E.I. with Ruha Benjamin [VIDEO]
But you could also understand it going back to how we started the conversation about, you know, sort of what we're being integrated into is that oftentimes we've seen when an oppressed group gets power, they reproduce the same forms of domination that they were once resisting. And so part of it is,
What Now? with Trevor Noah
RIP… D.E.I. with Ruha Benjamin [VIDEO]
The fact that his historical imagination is so keen that he knows that it's not out of bounds to think that, oh, if this is all you've known, this is how you've seen power exercised, that's all you've known, then once you seize it, you are very likely going to mimic or reproduce exactly what you were against.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
RIP… D.E.I. with Ruha Benjamin [VIDEO]
And so part of it is really to think about, you know, not just who is doing the action or saying the words, but really what are the logics behind it? And so language, you know, is a kind of technology in that way that can be wielded in various ways. My own sort of approach is really to try to stay keenly attuned to those who are
What Now? with Trevor Noah
RIP… D.E.I. with Ruha Benjamin [VIDEO]
you know, oppressed in any situation and thinking about, you know, language from that perspective. I just came from a conference where after I gave my talk, there was a backlash because people, I guess, don't like using the word genocide to describe what's happening to Palestinians. And so I said, but I also had a slide there about caste and caste hierarchies.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
RIP… D.E.I. with Ruha Benjamin [VIDEO]
I was born in India, and there's an image that I show of Dalit protesters saying caste is evil. And I said, you know, upper caste people who see that, I'm sure that makes them very uncomfortable. They're opposed to it. You know, I talk about how religion is used to naturalize caste and make it seem like it's ancient and inevitable and cultural, right?
What Now? with Trevor Noah
RIP… D.E.I. with Ruha Benjamin [VIDEO]
And so I said, the difference is those people, the upper caste who might be opposed to me showing that and talking about that, they don't currently have the power to impose their worldview on me. And I think it's a kind of hubris and it's a kind of supremacist thinking that you can tell me or tell an oppressed group how they can talk about their own oppression.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
RIP… D.E.I. with Ruha Benjamin [VIDEO]
That is a self, a symptom of supremacist thinking and hubris that I think people need to reflect on themselves.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
RIP… D.E.I. with Ruha Benjamin [VIDEO]
who believe in representational politics may be less likely to question it, be critical of it, to push back against it. So it's really a way of insulating business as usual with a cosmetic veneer of change and progress and inclusion that I really believe we have to look past and look through in order to see what's actually going on.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
RIP… D.E.I. with Ruha Benjamin [VIDEO]
It tells you a lot about power, who can impose their language on others, who can get people fired for using certain language or saying certain things. Yeah.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
RIP… D.E.I. with Ruha Benjamin [VIDEO]
I would say the most heartening and the most—surprise is the wrong word, but the breakthrough that you might say that I've observed is not about this kind of liberal speech exchange where we understand the other person's perspective, but it's been seeing specifically how Jewish students— have stood with many others in terms of being against genocide.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
RIP… D.E.I. with Ruha Benjamin [VIDEO]
And so that it doesn't break down neatly along identity lines, that they are able to understand, not despite their Jewishness, but because of their Jewishness, they're able to articulate how their values as Jews actually motivates them
What Now? with Trevor Noah
RIP… D.E.I. with Ruha Benjamin [VIDEO]
Their understanding that somehow this radical notion that all life is sacred, that their well-being, their security should not be at the expense of anyone else, like that to me has been the most heartening way in which... things are not reduced to identity and they don't simply live at the realm of speech, but at the realm of action.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
RIP… D.E.I. with Ruha Benjamin [VIDEO]
Like people actually, Jewish students putting their own, you know, their own status and, and wellbeing on the line in order to stand in solidarity. So I would point to that as a place where, you know, we're breaking old patterns.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
RIP… D.E.I. with Ruha Benjamin [VIDEO]
Yeah, yeah. And so I think, you know, it's like when I talk about the sisterhood is always with an eye to what... often gets assumed about the sisterhood. For me, the value of bringing together everyone that seems the same on one level is that you immediately realize how different you are. So for me, the great value of my Spelman education is I realized...
What Now? with Trevor Noah
RIP… D.E.I. with Ruha Benjamin [VIDEO]
how much difference and hierarchy there is among Black women, whether it's because of skin tone, region, where you're born, your class, your religion, your sexuality.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
RIP… D.E.I. with Ruha Benjamin [VIDEO]
And so the value is to actually undo the notion that we're all alike and that you actually get to wrestle deeply with the fault lines that you often don't have to get to do in predominantly white settings because you have to band together. Mm-hmm.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
RIP… D.E.I. with Ruha Benjamin [VIDEO]
And so the value of it is not to relish in some idealized notion of shared identity, but to actually say, crap, like we have all of these issues that we never, ever get to deal with because we always have to have this false sense of unity and sameness, right?
What Now? with Trevor Noah
RIP… D.E.I. with Ruha Benjamin [VIDEO]
And so there is definitely a function for that.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
RIP… D.E.I. with Ruha Benjamin [VIDEO]
I'm terrible at prognostication and prediction, in part because that's what AI… A real sociologist.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
RIP… D.E.I. with Ruha Benjamin [VIDEO]
But it's also like that's the whole, like so much of AI is about prediction and it closes off possibilities in my view, like closes off, you know, futures when we try to predict everything. And so part of it is like, you know, we think about these institutions, what we've been experiencing, I think is like pulling back the curtain on what was already there to begin with.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
RIP… D.E.I. with Ruha Benjamin [VIDEO]
It just has become more manifest to like these interests of big donors, for example, There was always there manipulating things behind the scenes, but now it's come to stark light because of the protest. So I feel like in this moment, it's an opportunity to be truthful about what these institutions are about, what our own complicities and obligations are.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
RIP… D.E.I. with Ruha Benjamin [VIDEO]
And to act on those truths rather than feeling disillusioned or we're going backwards somehow. Really thinking about who we join in community with to actually build the world. And the world is not some grand thing, but like the micro worlds, the reality that we have to function in. And I would say one thing that gives me hope.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
RIP… D.E.I. with Ruha Benjamin [VIDEO]
is that I'm in a department within a larger institution that is acting on different values, where we're not trying to be stars, but we're trying to cultivate a constellation, a community in which we're in this together. And so I feel tangibly that it's possible to do things differently, even if the dominant culture of whatever industry or institution we're in is moving in one direction.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
RIP… D.E.I. with Ruha Benjamin [VIDEO]
We have the power, especially when we band together and we work together to actually create a different way of doing things, perhaps like a seed that can grow and become a model for something that we want to develop over time.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
RIP… D.E.I. with Ruha Benjamin [VIDEO]
Absolutely. Thanks for having me, both of you.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
RIP… D.E.I. with Ruha Benjamin [VIDEO]
Simply put, we're not asking what we're being included into. And so, you know, whether we draw on something that Martin Luther King said in terms of being integrated into a burning house, or we think about the fact that plantations were very diverse places. But we would never say that they were progressive or liberal. So diversity and domination can go hand in hand.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
RIP… D.E.I. with Ruha Benjamin [VIDEO]
And honestly, many of the institutions that people are currently working on continue this plantation ethos. I just came back from a conference yesterday. where educators of color working in schools around the country, specifically independent schools, private schools, that so many of them got hired a few years ago are now being let go. They were used up. They were put on the face of the websites.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
RIP… D.E.I. with Ruha Benjamin [VIDEO]
They were used to make these institutions feel good. And now that they are actually using their voices, they're being let go. And so that means that it was never about true inclusion of people's insights and experiences, but it was there to make the institutions feel good about themselves.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
RIP… D.E.I. with Ruha Benjamin [VIDEO]
And so again, when we're offered two choices, exclusion or inclusion, we always have to ask ourselves what's being left off the table.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
RIP… D.E.I. with Ruha Benjamin [VIDEO]
Master of none, though. Master of none. Don't say that.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
RIP… D.E.I. with Ruha Benjamin [VIDEO]
I'm happy to. And just quick clarification, I'm on probation for a year now. specifically for accompanying the students in a sit-in that took place in the spring.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
RIP… D.E.I. with Ruha Benjamin [VIDEO]
And I went in because they were concerned about, one, police brutality that we'd been witnessing at Columbia and other places, and also because up until that point, the administration was really distorting their activities and their motives. And so they wanted a kind of objective faculty observer. But the administration has rejected that idea.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
RIP… D.E.I. with Ruha Benjamin [VIDEO]
status and just said, I was with them and so now I'm on probation. And so to think about, again, at the very moment you mentioned the MacArthur, the day before I received the call from MacArthur that I won this award in September, I had just had a very tense call with the administration that was essentially investigating my role. And so when the award was announced,
What Now? with Trevor Noah
RIP… D.E.I. with Ruha Benjamin [VIDEO]
It was all over the university website, all of the accolades. So they take credit. And at the same time, they're investigating me for basically acting on what I was hired to do. And so they're happy for it to stay theory. They're happy for it to stay on the page. But when you start actually living what you're writing and studying about, then it becomes a problem.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
RIP… D.E.I. with Ruha Benjamin [VIDEO]
And so that is, again, this disjunction between liking things to be... controlled in the way that will benefit them. But as soon as you start to challenge them, then they try to put you in your place. Try being the operative word.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
RIP… D.E.I. with Ruha Benjamin [VIDEO]
you told me to shut up when I was protesting but I mean I guess you don't want to do it in that moment but yeah but I mean like Alice Walker came to Spelman she was an undergrad there she left after a year or two mats because they were really against her civil rights activism and now of Of course, you will be touted as a former student, even though she had to go to another school to graduate.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
RIP… D.E.I. with Ruha Benjamin [VIDEO]
So there's so many cases like that. And all of these schools we're talking about, you know, had students who were against apartheid, who fought, you know, like thinking about South African apartheid. It's like this touchstone in all of these places where they really, in hindsight, they're like, oh, yeah, we should have been against that when it was happening.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
RIP… D.E.I. with Ruha Benjamin [VIDEO]
And so now it's like part of the history. Students who are carrying that tradition, they can't connect the dots anymore.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
RIP… D.E.I. with Ruha Benjamin [VIDEO]
Yeah. So one is that my work is not tied to the institution. Like I carry on doing the work. This probation is like adult timeout. It's like if you do anything else, quote unquote, unprofessional, as that's the language they use, then you'll really get in trouble. So it's mild compared to those colleagues who have been fired. and were tenured and who've been penalized much worse.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
RIP… D.E.I. with Ruha Benjamin [VIDEO]
I love it. I love it. You know, the word amateur. There's a beautiful essay by Edward Said where he talks about, you know, the difference between professionals and amateurs. And he says, you know, at the heart of amateur is amor. It's love.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
RIP… D.E.I. with Ruha Benjamin [VIDEO]
The other thing is that, you know, I became a professor very reluctantly. Like when I was applying to grad school, my undergrad professors were like, really, you want to get a PhD? Because I was always... making trouble. I was always on the activist end of the spectrum. So they were actually surprised that I wanted to pursue this.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
RIP… D.E.I. with Ruha Benjamin [VIDEO]
And literally the day that I turned in my dissertation, I was still questioning. So I've come into this profession reluctantly, never fully wearing that coat tightly. It's always loose. And I always think of myself as more like a kindergarten teacher in professor drag. You know, like I'd much rather be talking to a room full of, you know, kids and teenagers. And I do often.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
RIP… D.E.I. with Ruha Benjamin [VIDEO]
And so I think partly is that I don't identify strongly with this very uptight, insulated world. sort of ideal of what it means to be an academic or professor. I have one foot in the academy and always one foot out. I will never turn to these institutions for my sense of self-worth or self or mission. It's like I don't give them my all. And so they can't take anything from me in doing this either.