In honor of Black History Month, we have two general body meetings this month focused on improving diversity and inclusion within our team. This week, Hiba Pirani gave a presentation on “Stamped from the Beginning” by Ibram X. Kendi, which touches upon the origins of racism in the United States. Hiba went over different points of view that are linked to racism, such as assimilationism and segregationism and the development process of racist ideas. Kendi argues that racist ideas begin with racial discrimination and end with ignorance and hate, not vice-versa.
Hiba also spoke about how to combat racist ideas, which led to a discussion about some of our own experiences with racism and about the differences between equality and equity. We applied these discussions to our team as a whole, which allowed us to develop a few diversity and inclusion initiatives relating to recruitment. We are currently refining our recruitment process by changing grading rubrics and expanding our reach across campus.
We are excited to hear from Gretchen Dietz, a Ph.D. engineering student, at our next general body meeting, where she will be speaking to our team about promoting Black engineers in the workforce.