Thread by @danawanzer

I've been a little quiet lately. I sincerely apologize for my general silence pretty much all of my life.

I have been working on understanding my white privilege and the white dominant culture we live in for the past year or so. It's been a long and ongoing journey.

/Thread

It started with my job talk when a student asked how I incorporate social justice into my #eval work. My knee jerk reaction was, "I don't."

And it was true.

I never internalized any of that into my #eval. I originally blamed my education, but the fault was my own.

But since then, I've been learning and unlearning. Grappling with ideas. Reading books, watching webinars, watching TV/movie shows, following social justice and equity focused organizations on social media.

I've learned a lot, & mostly that the learning is not enough.

People are dying and have died at the hands of this white dominant culture for a long time. Although the learning was and still is necessary, my silence was keeping me standing on the conveyor belt of racism.

It is time to act.

I'm finally in a financial place to donate money to organizations that need it (some ideas right now are @MNFreedomFund @BlackVisionsMN @reclaimtheblock).

I attending my first protest, located in our little town of Menomonie, about 1.5 hours away from Minneapolis.

But there is still so much more for me to do.

Here are some the actions I have been taking or will work towards (your feedback and suggestions are most welcome here):

(in spirit of the thread by @tgarchibald which you can find here:

https://twitter.com/tgarchibald/status/1265732215830388737

)

1. Read and cite more BIPOC #eval-uators.

2. Include more BIPOC voices and social justice, equity, culturally responsive, indigenous resources in my eval courses. Not as supplemental, but as core to the course.

3. Teach the psychology of identity, bias, race, racism, etc. in my intro to psychology courses.

4. Teach the data equity framework in my statistics courses and have students review the "Is Statistics Racist?" article medium.com/swlh/is-statis….

5. Speak out to friends and colleagues who promote racism and oppression. I had fear of doing so as a grad student and still do as a tenure-track assistant professor, but I have privilege as a white person and I need to leverage it towards promoting my values.

∞. Reflect on and revisit these action statements. Evaluate my actions and progress. Modify and add as necessary.

Look at the mirror regularly and ask the question Stafford Hood challenged us with: "What have I done for the cause today?"

https://twitter.com/work_with_libby/status/1195783477440000000