DEI as a Practice of Assembling: Translation and Transformation

Abstract

As much as DEI work requires an aspiration towards futures free of oppression, ones that are more just and equitable, critical DEI carries within it the tension of the status quo and the possibility of liberation. Utilizing la paperson’s conceptualization of the --as a concept that identifies the messiness of agitating towards change within a system that is designed to maintain the status quo --I describe what critical DEI looks like within a tuition-charging preK-12 institution. I begin with describing a DEI from below from my location within a local landscape where DEI wars are waged in the classroom. I then discuss the strategies and conditions through which I labor, against front and backlash, and also against capitalism in its many insidious forms, as an act of self-preservation. And finally, I examine why I stay in this work and return to it over and over again through a sense of shared purpose and radical love.