I will no longer be made to feel ashamed of existing. I will have my voice: Indian, Spanish, white. I will have my serpent's tongue - my woman's voiceâŠ. I will overcome the tradition of silence.
âGloria AnzaldĂșa
Writing from a jail cell in Birmingham, Alabama, Martin Luther King, Jr. (1963), the civil rights activist, and arguably, one of the architects and forerunners of twentieth-century social movements, penned the words, âI am in Birmingham because injustice is hereâŠ. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its boundsâ (para. 3). Praised for his compelling vision of American community and possibility, he spoke powerfully and wrote soberly about a place where all are welcome, where all can succeed, where the only limits are those we place on ourselves. His vision and that of others like him sparked and sustained over a half-century of activism and change-making that have transformed the world in which we live.
His notion that anyone living in the âUnited States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its boundsâ remains aspirational and an unfulfilled dream for some. It remains the possibility and the opportunity, the hope and the long-awaited desire. For others, it is a fear, the outcome of letting go and losing it all; the result of becoming ordinary, truly one among many. It is the nightmare to which one must never succumb: the loss of control of the essential, identity, and all its attendant privileges (Ahmed, 2012; Mohanty, 1984).
So, on the outskirts of Kingâs American community remains an in-between place; a borderland in which those defined as âotherâ reside (see AnzaldĂșa, 1987). It is a place of struggle, fear, and hope. A place where the rights of full citizenship are just a few paces away, yet feel otherworldly and unattainable.
Living in the in-between place is the experience of not being quite âoutsideâ or quite âinside.â It reflects and perpetuates an in/out duality. This in/out duality marks the tension that will be the refining and defining force of the twenty-first century in the U.S. This duality and its attendant tensions is one of the reasons for contemporary social, political, and institutional ruptures. It has fostered an identity crisis, a nation with two faces: on the one side, equality holds court, promising opportunity to all, easy access, and open doors. On the other side, inequities reign, disciplining and punishing through boundaries, exclusion, and unequal standards. We are a nation that, hundreds of years after the ratification of the constitution in 1788, is still under construction.
As this work goes on, we continue to grapple with how to negotiate, manage, and, for some, undo this duality, both in its historical and contemporary formations. Indeed, the current historical moment is rife with tensions because of the manifestation of this duality through persistent racial and gender formations: the #BlackLivesMatter and #MeToo movements reflect these tensions. Importantly, the manifestation of contemporary social challenges suggest that the past continues to play a far-reaching formative role in institutions, human interactions, and in determining the limits and boundaries of access, agency, and equity. These social problems speak to ongoing struggles to manage this in/out duality.
Over the years, this duality has been embraced by some and rejected by others, but always reaffirmed. It is reaffirmed in and through class inequality. Racism, sexism, xenophobia, homophobia; these are the vehicles of its passage through social and institutional life (see Neville et al., 2016; U.S. Department of Justice, 2019). As a fundamental institution, higher education has emerged as a battleground in the ongoing acceptance by some, and rejection by others, of this duality. Over the last few years, we have seen evidence of this struggle through protests and counter-protests, the suspension and firing of officials deemed âtone deaf,â legal pushback against affirmative action in college admissions (Kramer, 2019), fierce conflict over institutional symbols and landmarks deemed offensive (fnsnews, 2016; Brown, 2019), and equity demands presented by students to institutions deemed unsafe, unwelcoming (Editor, 2016), and oppositional to their success. More than ever before, these tensions are spilling onto university campuses in the U.S., which already have unique diversity, equity, and inclusion challenges (DEI). With the goal of advancing community, illuminating the impact of the in/out duality and its operationalization in contemporary higher education, and reaffirming through lived experience, the necessity of fostering educational spaces that cultivate true inclusion and belonging for all, this volume is presented as a sober reflection of where we are, and an invitation to explore the infinite possibilities of community.
TENSIONS RISING
In the following section, I illuminate the general backdrop warranting this volume. The Midwest experienced a contentious fall in 2015, when a series of universities were forced to grapple with tensions over diversity issues. At the University of Missouri-Columbia, students responded to ongoing acts of racial marginalization and prejudice as one voice: Concerned Student 1950. This coincides with the date the university admitted its first African American student (Latham, 2016). Concerned Student 1950 presented a list of demands, chief among them was the resignation of Tim Wolfe, University of Missouri System President. Over a two- to three-month period, students used social media to agitate for change, initiated a hunger strike, and the football team announced its intent to abstain from its official duties. The result was Wolfeâs forced resignation (Latham, 2016).
In the midst of unfolding ruptures at the University of Missouri-Columbia, a number of...
