Thread by @shengokai

The most cutting refutation of the institutional obession with optics I've ever read was in Sara Ahmed's "On Being Included:"

https://twitter.com/Jessifer/status/1400503621524066308

To be clear, every time I've attempted to do diversity work, accessibility work, or any other work that could be enfolded into the broader class of "image work" in ways that moved beyond changing perceptions, institutions have fought tooth and nail to avoid committing.

Moreover, it is my position that every "institutional metric" used in institutional work is aimed at either refuting an "image" of the institution or revealing the "true image" of the institution. Either way, you're dealing with perception.

Now, the issue isn't dealing with perception: without addressing how the institution is perceived as hostile, racist, sexist, inaccessible by its members, you can't begin the process of changing the institution. The problem is when institutions are only concerned with image.

That is, institutions are focused on how they are seen by external entities, and less about the experience of the people who make up the institution. So, "optics" becomes a way of dealing with how the institution is seen, and not how it is experienced.

Put simply, if you're not concerned about how the institution is experienced, you're condemned to maintain the very conditions that give rise to how your institution is "seen."

Unless you have the money or clout to make the "image problem" go away by burying the "problem.:

This latter is, point of fact, the majority of what institutions do to people who "damage" the image of the institution by revealing the depths of its ugliness.