Like many African American professors, I teach at a predominantly white institution (Wheaton College) and live in the largely white small city where it’s located, outside Chicago. When people think about the difficulty of being Black in largely white spaces in America, they tend to picture overt racism. While diversity, equity and inclusion efforts have their flaws in content and implementation, one of their unsung values is that they can help reduce this kind of strain on Black faculty members and students on majority-white campuses; more diversity can help ease our sense of not belonging. Despite the ongoing hysteria around diversity and hiring in higher education, Black faculty members are shockingly uncommon — only 6 percent of professors in this country in 2021. Black faculty members at largely white schools can be subjects of scrutiny based on assumptions that our race rather than our talent won us our positions.

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Organizations: Wheaton College Locations: it’s, Chicago, America, Wheaton