Effective internal education: Know your audience
Originally published on Toward Decolonizing Physics
Self-education is a must for anyone who wishes to engage in effective activism from a position of privilege. In recent years, I have watched a number of physics departments found reading groups (formal or informal) ostensibly with this purpose, typically centering on topics of race and/or inclusion in physics more broadly. And this is on top of the guest speakers, lecture series, and town halls that already exist to attempt to educate physicists within our own departments about anti-oppression.
However, having participated in a number of internal education initiatives myself, I have often found that their structure ends up impeding their stated purpose. They quickly become dominated either by already-radicalized activists — important, but rarely who the material is actually chosen to target — or else held back by a couple of individuals who wish to seem inclusive but are unwilling to examine their own privilege.
Since this topic has been brought up by my followers, I thought I would share some pointers from my own experience participating in and facilitating internal education within physics. I will focus on one big one for today:
Internal education doesn’t work without specifying the audience.
Though it is tempting to want to include everyone in the department in the same event, the reality is that not everyone is at the same point in their journey. Attempting to tailor content toward everyone only results in superficial-level discussions that benefit no one.
Though there is a lot of gradation, I think it is helpful to break down people’s journey into a handful of levels. There is benefit to content targeting any of these groups, but it is important to be intentional about who you’re targeting (even if an event is open to everyone). Not everyone’s journey goes through all these steps — in particular, being multiply-marginalized tends to short-circuit the earlier milestones — but given the preponderance of cishet white people in physics departments, it’s still a relatively useful mental model to consider when planning an internal education event.
Pre-beginners — those who are opposed to or actively disinterested in equity work. Directly targeting this group, in my experience, is rarely effective except in the immediate aftermath of a crisis (e.g. a blatant racism or sexual harassment scandal). It is generally less effective to attempt to change obstinate minds than to provide a welcoming space for those moving on from this stage of their own accord.
Beginners — those who are beginning to be awakened to the importance of equity work, and who are of a generally open mind. To reach this demographic, popular articles and lectures with statistics and anecdotes are useful once or twice, but it is critical to dive deeper right away too. I typically eschew overt discussions of critical theory with this audience, while also beginning to try to introduce the idea that oppression is systemic and (for white women) not just about gender. I try to keep discussions grounded in articles about physics or the sciences or specific issues (e.g. trans inclusion), but also show how issues extend beyond. I try to encourage physicists at this stage to critically examine their own departments.
Deepening — those who have begun to understand that oppression is systemic and extends beyond the actions of an individual person. Here I try to introduce significant key concepts from critical theory as well as articles that facially appear to have nothing to do with physics. This is also where I begin to challenge physicists to critically examine not just their departments but their own behavior and biases, and where I just begin to introduce concepts such as decolonization.
Maturing — those who are already deeply committed to anti-oppression work and wish to go deeper to understand and target the root causes. At this point, self-education is more necessary than ever, but hopefully most people have arrived at the humility to see this, and self-education at this level is often spontaneously organized by activists out of their own desire.
Frankly, my own journey is probably hovering somewhere between milestones 3 and 4, though I’m not really the right person to tell — there are almost certainly more stages beyond, but I won’t speculate beyond my own level of maturity.
Anyway, what’s most important is knowing what level the content you’re sharing in an internal education group is appropriate for, and not seeking to target everyone in one fell swoop. As an interesting bonus, look through some of my popular past articles and see if you can tell what level I was targeting when I wrote it (and how good a job I did)!
