Two founding principles of the JEDI Institute are 1) the need to give primacy to issues of race and 2) shifting our mindsets from being deficit-minded to becoming equity-minded. These concepts are thoughtfully articulated in the book From Equity Talk to Equity Walk: Expanding Practitioner Knowledge for Racial Justice in Higher Education by Tia Brown McNair, Estela Mara Bensimon, and Lindsey Malcom-Piqueux (2020).

In this video, "Tips for Engaging in Equitable Practices," Tia Brown McNair shares some of the core ideas from this text. 

As we ask ourselves why racial inequalities exist, question the privileges and biases in our systems and structures, stop using language that masks who our students really are, and stop believing that the accepted norm should be from the dominant/white culture's viewpoint (17), we will stay laser focused on these two core principles.

Giving primacy to race using a lens of intersectionality

McNair, Bensimon, and Malcom-Piqueux argue that “…a focus on equity must specifically examine racial equity because of its unique historical, sociocultural, and sociopolitical circumstances” (80). While many of us have spent our careers researching, writing about, and working from a lens of gender-based justice or socioeconomic justice, the JEDI Institute asks that participants shift their lens to racial justice above all, while also bringing in the lens of intersectionality, e.g., to understand why the experience of Black men in higher ed differs from the experience of Black women.

McNair, Bensimon, and Malcom-Piqueux explain: “The diversity of the undergraduate student population should make it impossible to ignore racial equity. However, we realize that for many institutions, the growing intersectionality of student identities, as well as the increasing equity divides among other defined groups, compels campus educators to examine inequities not only based on race and ethnicity but also across gender, sexuality, socioeconomic status, age, geographic background, disability, national origin, and religion to fully serve the students that higher education institutions seek to educate in order to make [educational] excellence inclusive” (80). 

Becoming equity minded rather than deficit minded

We have all heard colleagues in higher education bemoan the behaviors of our students. Who among us hasn't heard some if not most of the following laments: 

• Students are not prepared for college-level work. 
• Today's students skated by on "social promotion" in high school and don't realize college is different.
• They don't do the reading! They don't even bother to buy the book!
• Students today do not know how to take notes.
• Students can't think for themselves; they just Google everything.
• Their culture doesn't value education. 
• Students can't write anymore.
• They're so lazy. They just want everything to be easy.
• Students are not interested in learning; they just want to get my class "out of the way" or they just care about the grade. 
• Students lack self-regulation skills. Students lack time management skills.

All of the above are deficit-minded assertions. The focus is on the real or perceived shortcomings or failures of the students. It's far more rare to hear colleagues wonder why they are failing to reach the students that we have here at SCCC. 

The JEDI Institute aims to help colleagues shift their mindsets to stop blaming students and decrying the lack of the "ideal" student they have in mind and instead work toward becoming truly equity minded and helping our real, actual students. 

Equitymindedness is defined by McNair, Bensimon, and Malcom-Piqueux as "the mode of thinking exhibited by practitioners, who are willing to assess their own racialized assumptions, to acknowledge their lack of knowledge in the history of race and racism, to take responsibility for the success of historically underserved and minoritized student groups, and to critically assess racialization in their own practices as educators and/or administrators" (20). 

Quoting from America’s Unmet Promise, they add, “Being equity minded thus involves being conscious of the ways that higher education—through its practices, policies, expectations, and unspoken rules—places responsibility for student success on very groups that have experienced marginalization rather than on the individuals and institutions whose responsibility it is to remedy that marginalization” (93).

McNair, Bensimon, and Malcom-Piqueux further quote W.E.B. DuBois’ famous question in his 1903 The Souls of Black Folk about white people seeing Blacks as “a problem,” then flip it around to help higher ed practitioners look through a lens “to see racial inequity as a problem created and sustained by whiteness” (105).

Then we can pose questions like the following as they apply to our classes as well as to our libraries, counseling centers, tutoring centers, financial aid offices, etc.

• How does it feel to know that my practices, or those of my institution, are disadvantaging racially minoritized students?
• How does it feel to see data semester after semester that show racially minoritized students are having a deficient experience in my class or at my institution? 
• How does it feel to know that I don’t know how to be successful with racially minoritized students?

In this way, From Equity Talk to Equity Walk invites us to consider James Gray’s flipping of a focus on the issues and concerns of first-generation college students and challenge us to think about ourselves instead as “first generation equity practitioners” (106-107) so we can learn to ask, “Why is it that my teaching practices create a successful experience for white students but not for racially minoritized students?” (109). 

Once we begin to truly give primacy to issues of race in our daily worklives and shift from being deficit-minded to becoming equity-minded, we can move forward as a more successful and more truly just, equitable, diverse, and inclusive college. Not just in words but in our actions.