In this clip, a woman of color first-gen teaching professor without tenure speaks on the heightened nature of oppressive structures in the institution. In particular, she shares about the inability to “turn away” towards reprieve when meetings were conducted on Zoom. At the height of the pandemic, she reflects on one particular example in which white leadership made light of the pandemic, unaware of what their students or colleagues were going through.
It’s one thing to be in a predominantly white institution and in mixed spaces, whether that’s meetings or programmatic events or whatever, and physically navigate those spaces. You know how we try to find our people in the room and someone to connect with while we’re also doing that very performative engagement with our white counterparts and with men in power. But when we were online, some of those strategies were not possible.
