How to reduce bias in performance evaluations, how and when to apply for promotion, how to get fair treatment in resources and publishing, change your name, and avoid tokenism.

The goal of this chapter is to introduce the concepts of Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion. It begins with a discussion of the American Dream, the notion that the US is a land of opportunity, equality, and the rule of law, and that anyone can be successful if they work hard. This notion of the American Dream is challenged by evidence and discussed from the perspective of Naima Coster, a Black Latina award-winning author. The chapter reviews some characteristics of minoritized communities in the US, how they experience discrimination and barriers to achieve the dream, and some popular myths about racial/gender progress. The chapter defines Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion, issues at the heart of demands to make the dream true. Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion represent a growing field of research, a set of initiatives, and social movements to rethink power asymmetries, how resources and opportunities are distributed, and why social hierarchies are maintained. The chapter includes a Food for Thought section on college student debt and the cycle of poverty. It ends with a discussion of Naima Coster, tokenism, and the need for structural change.

Black youth who attend school in non-Black spaces do not always feel welcomed or comfortable, and they regularly experience everyday racism that is interpersonal and institutional. Young Black changemakers use multiple strategies to resist racism. Resistance involved creating safe spaces in schools they could claim as their own, holding administrators accountable, and raising awareness of Black culture and experiences. Black youth noted the importance of authentic allies in non-Black spaces, and also shared the burdens that arise from the emotional labor of being in non-Black spaces and engaging in racial justice work.

This chapter provides an assessment of the shifting terrain of 1960s-era political radicalism through an analysis of Sam Greenlee’s novel The Spook Who Sat by the Door (1969/1973). It argues that the novel employs and challenges recognizable Civil Rights and Black Power discourses of social change to destabilize institutionalized racism and socio-economic discrimination and to begin to imagine untested paths to resistance. The chapter also considers how Greenlee uses espionage to reconfigure familiar political ideals and modes of leadership and to explore how the imagined integration of the CIA becomes a device for critiquing employment discrimination and the state’s half-hearted deployment of affirmative action. It closes by showing how spy training and spycraft offer Greenlee opportunities to rethink the connections among gender, sexuality, and revolution, while additionally illustrating how heterosexual masculinity dominates the space of the revolutionary. Through the frame of espionage, Greenlee reimagines Black identity and activism.

This chapter engages the history of key literary prizes that have been awarded to black and Asian writers. What is the impact of awards which prize otherness, celebrate diversity, and demand BAME writers to engage a fixed range of topics, arguably in a limited number of forms? While literary awards create visibility, stimulate sales, and direct critical attention to selected writers and texts, the trade-off is the required negotiation of thematic, formal, and identitarian templates confronting potential recipients.