[ATTW-L] Announcing Present Tense Special Issue: "Diversity is not an End Game"

[Jessica E Clements]

Present Tense journal is pleased to announce the release of volume 9, issue 2<http://www.presenttensejournal.org/volume-9/ncte-cccc-cross-caucus-present-tense/>: “Diversity is not an End Game: BIPOC Futures in the Academy<http://www.presenttensejournal.org/volume-9/ncte-cccc-cross-caucus-present-tense/>.” This powerful text comes to you care of Christina V. Cedillo, Ersula J. Ore, and Kimberly Gail Wieser, special issue editors.

“Diversity is not an End Game: BIPOC Futures in the Academy” marks the final installment in a conversation across multiple journals that examines the injustices behind crisis-driven diversity initiatives within the academy and how these initiatives impact BIPOC across the fields of rhetoric, composition, and communication.

In this issue, BIPOC scholars critique universities’ pursuit of equity as only the latest institutional and/or intellectual trend, one often framed as work best left to already overworked minoritized people (O’Meara et al. 2018); a goal,  tool, or means to an end as opposed to an ongoing “holistic approach to change” (Safir and Dugan 2021); and/or yet another modality through which whiteness is reified as the main determinant of social and professional worth—and of one’s full humanity (see Birt, 2004). To situate diversity as the end game or final destination is to diminish the potential for an equitable future for higher education.

Using counternarratives, testimonios, critiques of tokenism, institutional allyship, and racialized time, the BIPOC scholars of rhetoric, composition, and communication studies featured in this special issue detail strategies for navigating the violence white scholars and the academy enact against BIPOC faculty under the guise of advancing diversity and inclusion. Though “Diversity is not an End Game: BIPOC Futures in the Academy” is the last piece of our immediate project, we trust that this will not be the final word on antiracism in our field nor the academy.

We invite your engagement with the following scholarship:

Pritha Prasad’s “Backchannel Pedagogies: Unsettling Racial Teaching Moments and White Futurity<http://www.presenttensejournal.org/volume-9/backchannel-pedagogies-unsettling-racial-teaching-moments-and-white-futurity/>”

Andrea Riley Mukavetz and Cindy Tekobbe’s “If you don’t want us there, you don’t get us”: A Statement on Indigenous Visibility and Reconciliation<http://www.presenttensejournal.org/volume-9/if-you-dont-want-us-there-you-dont-get-us-a-statement-on-indigenous-visibility-and-reconciliation/>”

Robert Mejia, Nina Maria Lozano, and Ariana Arely Cano’s “People Were Being Nasty”: White Fragility and Calls for Collective Violence against Scholars of Color<http://www.presenttensejournal.org/volume-9/people-were-being-nasty-white-fragility-and-calls-for-collective-violence-against-scholars-of-color/>”

Angie Mejia and Yuko Taniguchi’s “Art and Heart to Counter the One-hour-Zoom-diversity Event: Counterspaces as a Response to Diversity Regimes in Academia<http://www.presenttensejournal.org/volume-9/art-and-heart-to-counter-the-one-hour-zoom-diversity-event-counterspaces-as-a-response-to-diversity-regimes-in-academia/>”

J. Paul Padilla’s “A Shared Dream: A Letter to My Son Ricardo about Silencing and BIPOC Futurity in the Academy<http://www.presenttensejournal.org/volume-9/a-shared-dream-a-letter-to-my-son-ricardo-about-silencing-and-bipoc-futurity-in-the-academy/>”

Staci M. Perryman-Clark, Mariam Konate, and Jennifer Richardson’s “A Time to Dream: Black Women’s Exodus from White Feminist Spaces<http://www.presenttensejournal.org/volume-9/a-time-to-dream-black-womens-exodus-from-white-feminist-spaces/>”

Please read and share with colleagues and students in the months and years to come.

Jessica E. Clements, Managing Editor
John Pell, Managing Editor
Shreelina Ghosh, Multimedia Editor
Matt Cox, Annotated Bibliography Editor
Don Unger, Social Media Editor

Jennifer LeMesurier, Review Editor
Megan Schoen, Style Editor
Cristyn L. Elder, Style Editor
Ehren Helmut Pflugfelder, Editor-at-Large
Dana Comi, Technical Editor
Joshua Prenosil, Business Editor

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