One of the most profound lessons I’ve learned in my journey as the President of Compton College is the importance of genuinely immersing oneself in supporting greater racial equity in higher education. We hear the word “equity” and “racial equity” thrown around a lot – but what are you really doing to support it?
There are so many ways that we can show up for our students. For example, engage the people in your circle if you are a leader or organizer. If you are an author or social media influencer, inspire others through your writing. If you work in outreach, recruitment, and retention services, reach out to groups you’ve never touched. Determine how to contribute your talents to the students who need you most.
The call to champion racial equity for community college students requires not just speeches, press releases, or even policies on paper. True equity demands understanding, action, and a genuine commitment to the cause. It means stepping out of the comfort to understand the unique challenges our racially diverse student body faces.
To be practitioners, we need to listen more than we speak. We should be regularly involved in dialogues, forums, and workshops that engage and uplift voices that often go unheard and frankly ignored. We must take the time to understand the systemic barriers our students of color face and work collaboratively to dismantle them. Dismantling systemic barriers for students is hard work and often takes a lot of time.
It means acknowledging missteps, being open to criticism, in some cases, racism, and learning from our students as much as they learn from us. Over the past year, I learned that the change-of-major process, the student petition process, and who participates in graduation ceremonies are barriers at my institution. I acknowledge these limitations, and have established small decision-making workgroups to address those barriers and provide solutions.
Our role as educators is not to teach but to also learn continuously. If we are to see true racial equity in higher education it will take each of us diving deep into the work, embodying the change we wish to see, and always remembering that our actions speak louder than our titles and the organizations many of us represent.