"This Is Not For Me": A Counterstory on BIPOC Experiences of DEI Trainings

The health professions education literature often assumes that diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts naturally uplift Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC). However, when the most common manifestation of DEI efforts, DEI trainings, are examined, there is little evidence to support this assumption. Metanalyses show evaluation and research studies on DEI trainings seldom ask about the experiences of BIPOC participants, and the few that do complicate this happy narrative. To do DEI work that is transformative, we need to center the perspectives and experiences of individuals who share a history of oppression.

This study began in 2022 as an evaluation of a DEI training program. It evolved into a case study after the discovery of identity-based harm in a subset of participant surveys. Using a critical lens, this research centers the experiences of those who identified as BIPOC. A semi-structured interview guide based on the evaluation findings was used to interview eight BIPOC individuals, five faculty and three staff members. Two researchers analyzed the interviews using reflexive thematic analysis to generate themes. Then, the primary author used Critical Race Theory's counterstorytelling methodology to synthesize the interview themes, evaluation findings, fieldnotes and research artifacts into a counterstory on DEI trainings.

The counterstory confronts the dominant narratives about DEI training. Such training is not always a transformative education process that uplifts everyone. The counterstory problematizes pedagogies that instrumentalize racial trauma for the benefit of white learners, instructional content that activates racial trauma without the means to process it, and DEI efforts that are performative rather than transformative.

This counterstory identifies the ways in which oppressive and racist structures are felt and reproduced in settings meant to uproot it. Although there are no neat answers as to how we might interrupt these systems, critical questions can help to interrogate our assumptions about DEI trainings and (re)-center those pushed to the margins so that we may find our way forward.