When my work began as the supervisor of Cultural Proficiency and Inclusiveness with Austin Independent School District in 2010, my role was to support staff members to create safe, welcoming, and inclusive schools for about 80,000 students.
By the 2017-18 school year, I was still the lone staff member providing antiracist professional learning, coaching, and capacity-building for some 11,000 district employees. I was responding to racist incidents and viral videos; some included hateful words and phrases like:
“It’s N-Word Day.”
“You have bombs in your purse.”
“If you can’t speak English, then you need to go back to Mexico!”
These incidents went viral on social media, and some made the news.
Even as I was writing this piece, I received a call asking me to help an Austin school navigate the fallout from a racist incident. Today, many schools deal with these situations with little to no professional support.
That’s because some schools are eliminating top diversity and equity officer roles in response to political pressure and legislation aimed at silencing educators . Here in Texas, a ban on DEI initiatives addresses higher education , but its message seems to have trickled into K-12 school districts. Meanwhile, a committed opposition to DEI professionals argues that their work is bureaucratic and harms the students they intend to support.