The Lost Files, Ep. 4
A Special Edition of Fluency w/ Dr. Durell Cooper
In this specially commissioned series with Grantmakers in the Arts, The Lost Files, Dr. Durell Cooper invites artists, community organizers, researchers, cultural and racial studies experts, and scholars to think about the narratives driving the arts and cultural sector – as it intersects with systems of structural racism and economic exclusion – and what opportunities for narrative change exist.
A full transcript of this episode is available below.
Dr. Durell Cooper:
Hello, listeners. Welcome back to another episode of Fluency. I cannot be more thrilled today than to be joined by the amazing Dr. Rhianna C. Rogers. She is the inaugural director of the Center to Advance Racial Equity Policy and a policy researcher at Rand Corporation and just an overall incredibly dope individual, who has such an interesting trajectory in her life and career. And we definitely will have enough time to get into all that.
First, I would like to thank Grantmakers in the arts for being such a generous sponsor of this series of Fluency that we're doing here. And welcome, welcome Dr. Rogers. How are you?
Dr. Rhianna C. Rogers:
Thank you. It's great to see you, Dr. Cooper. It's so wonderful to be back. We can drop that because I'm the anti-doctor doctor. I'm going to say Rhianna and Durell. There you go.
For everyone who's listening, thank you for listening. I'm excited about the conversation we're going to have today.
Dr. Durell Cooper:
I am too. Let first get into your origin story. What was it like for a young Rhianna growing up? What was your family dynamic? Anything that you would care to share about your origin story.
Dr. Rhianna C. Rogers:
Sure. I've led a very eclectic life, so I'm going to start with that. Although I know women aren't supposed to say their age, I'm in my forties. I've already had four different careers in my life.
So let me start in the beginning. I was an exceptional softball player. For those who don't know, I played on the Junior Olympic team. I'm actually in the Hall of Fame in California for softball. So I was really-
Dr. Durell Cooper:
What?
Dr. Rhianna C. Rogers:
Good at it. Yes. Yeah, my origin story starts as an athlete. Both my parents were athletes, so I'll explain that. My parents got married literally six years after the anti-miscegenation laws were repealed. I'm multi-racial woman. I literally am 12 races. My parents, my dad ran track and my mom played tennis, and my mom was ranked in tennis in California. My dad did track, and then he blew out his legs. So he didn't actually go to college. My parents never made it to college, but both of them had scholarships to go.
Imagine growing up with two athletes themselves. I was an athlete very young. I started playing softball at four and basketball at five and running track myself. So I was a more multi-sport athlete growing up. Played soccer as well. But yeah, I got really, really dedicated, and I think my softball career is really what brought me into higher education. Most people don't know that. I was telling this story yesterday.
I always wanted to be a doctor, but I also wanted to play in the Olympics. I actually was on the fourth-ranked softball team in the nation when I was in college. And I was team captain of that team. We were really, really, really good. The way that I actually got connected to academia was we were the best at my school.
So think about this, back in the 90s, women athletics were not a thing really. People weren't really supporting us, but we were the best team on my campus. That was a really big deal. Some of the male athletes didn't really like it, but whatever. But one of the things that was really great was all of the academics followed us. They were really excited about us. And one person specifically, Dr. Sandra Norman, who at the time was the department chair of history, really followed my career. I went to her office, and I talked to her all the time. She took an active interest in me. I remember I was getting ready to come back to California to coach, to teach, to do all this stuff, K to 12. And she walked over to me after one of our last games and said, "I think you would be a really great college professor. I think you should really consider this."
I never had actually really considered it. I always said I wanted to be a doctor, and I wanted to do archeology. But I never really had a pathway, and nobody really gave me that opportunity until Dr. Norman. I sat at home, and I thought about it. I could have gone continuing, because I retired from softball when I graduated from my undergrad degree. I was just telling you, Durell, I graduated at 20, so I was very young. I sat down, and I had to make a life decision, which was am I going to go the athletics route, or am I going to go the academic route? And after talking to lots and lots of people, I decided to go the academic route. That's what led me to where I am today.
Dr. Durell Cooper:
Oh, thank you so much for sharing that. Let's talk a little bit more about the academic route piece, because we were talking before, you have over a 20-year teaching career, and along that road, you have garnered quite a few awards and ultimately culminating in the 2017-2018 SUNY Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Teaching, which that is not the most recent award that you won, but that is definitely one where they don't give out that many of those over the course of those 21 years. First, congratulations for that. But talk to us a little bit about what has helped you excel in that realm of academia and then maybe some of the interesting stories or obstacles that might have come up along the way, navigating in that space, in the body that you occupy.
Dr. Rhianna C. Rogers:
Yeah, I have to say sports gave me a lot of soft skills to be self-determined. I think one of the differences about me coming into academia in a very non-"traditional" way, where it wasn't the goal that I had laid out originally in front of me. I was able to transfer a lot of skills, like self-determination, practice, all these soft skills that you get from sports and team athletics that I played on helped push me forward. I knew what it was to be the best in my sport. I didn't want to go to a new profession and not be the best. That is just part of my nature. I dedicated myself.
I will tell all of you out there, I wasn't the best student when I got into my Master's degree. Even though I got in at 20, I had to sit in the writing center every day, every week to improve my writing skills because I really wanted to be the best. I wanted to spend that extra time, just like I would spend extra hours practicing when in softball. I did the same thing with academics, and I aligned myself. I found mentors. All of these skills and tricks that I learned from playing a sport, where you would go to your coaches if you needed additional help, I found my coaches in academics. I would ask them questions, and I would say, "What do I need to do?"
It was really difficult, so I will tell you this. I am pretty stubborn. I will say that. I chose to play softball. Please know this. In the 90s, there weren't many women of color playing softball at the time I played. I chose a sport that wasn't a sport for women of color, and I excelled in it. I did. I will tell you my biggest award from then was I won the Martin Luther King Award my senior year for breaking down barriers. That's just also part of my personality.
So then, just to tell you this, I decided I wanted to become an archeologist. Any of you listening out there, archeology... When the AAA did a study, and so did the Society of American Archeology, the profession is changing today, but when I got into it, back in the 90s, early 2000s, it was about 97% White males. I chose a profession, once again, that was, "Let me see if I can do this. Let me see if I can break into a space that hasn't been developed for me", because I really wanted to do it.
I will also tell you this too, which was really important. I always knew I wanted to be a scientist. As anybody knows, there's a lot of research out there about women of color being discouraged from being scientists. Because I come from a very diverse background... My mom, if you would see her, she's a White lady, and she always was like, "Rhianna, you can grow up to be whatever you want to be." And she truly believed that, and she instilled that in me.
I was like, "Look, I don't really care about the dynamics that are around me. I will be the one that will stop me." You have to get into my heart for me to decide that I have to stop. It doesn't matter what you say externally. If that's what I desire to do, I'm going to do it. That was really what drove me to continue with archeology. I will be honest, and Durell, you've asked, there was a lot of very difficult times. I actually wrote this in a couple book chapters about how difficult of times I had, including things like #MeToo stuff, because remember, I'm in a male-dominated field.
There's a lot of very serious things about science, but I knew that if I could do it, just like in softball, I could open the door for other people. I've always taken on that role, even in my position now, where I came to Rand, and at the time, you could count on less than three fingers, the number of women leadership at Rand, a 75-year old organization. I was literally one of the first. There is only one other woman that was a woman, African American female of color ever in senior administration prior to me.
That's also something too. I knew that. I knew that stepping in, and I use that as a challenge. Again, I think it goes back to athletics, because I really want to break down barriers and create more opportunity so individuals coming behind me can have more opportunity than even I've had.
Dr. Durell Cooper:
Wow. Thank you so much for sharing that. You said so many interesting things that I want to come back to. But what I'm hearing as a through-line, it's one, it is just how much of a pioneer you've been in so many different areas of your life. The work that you're doing now at Rand, and even before Rand, but in your research, diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility has always been core and central to what it is that you've been doing. And now, I guess, at your current position at Rand, it is the Center to Advance Racial Equity Policy. How would you define racial equity? And what are some of the strategies that you see as key in order for us to be able to advance that?
Dr. Rhianna C. Rogers:
Yeah, I think that's a great question. And I think it's really a complicated question, so I'll start by giving you the definition and then maybe walk back a few steps of even how I got to Rand, because I think that also matters too in this journey we're discussing.
But to me, when you're thinking about racial equity, it's really about applying a lens to all the work that you do. The goal of racial equity, which is different than equality, so I want to clarify that. People sometimes confuse these terms. Equality means that you're creating a universal standard for all. Someone that may be excelling very high or someone that's might not excelling at all, you push that group at the top down, and you push that group on the bottom up, and you create this middle standard. We know from experiences that doesn't always work, especially if you don't have scaffolding in place, and especially if you're making assumptions about large populations that have very disparate experiences. So that's equality.
Equity is meeting people where they are. Instead of making those assumptions that everybody can meet a universal standard, you're really trying to determine where people sit in this spectrum of needs, so that you're really working with individuals to close the gaps. It's just another way of saying that you're trying to equalize that playing field by taking away the assumptions that we typically, we think about.
I'll give you an example of a project that I was talking about recently that involved indigenous peoples, and it was working with the national organization in the United States. I'll be very vague about these things. But they were asking... Because they wanted to drill down to indigenous people. We haven't talked about this yet, but I have a good 20 years of working in tribal politics. It's one of my four careers I mentioned in the beginning. I have a lot of connections in tribal communities in and out of the United States. From my work, working alongside tribes, I know that not all tribes are the same. But that's not the way that we've cast that image inside of public opinion, especially in the United States, especially through movies and film. We show them looking the same, whether it be every indigenous person is in a tepee, or they're riding horses, all of these stereotypical things.
Well, unless we break those stereotypes down, people think that that's true. One of the problems is we don't have education that actually equitably looks at indigenous peoples throughout all of our curriculum. We don't have that right now across the United States. When I'm talking with national organizations, who're saying we really want the voice of indigenous people, they're thinking that there is one universal voice. And what's problematic about that in equity studies is that there's not. So in the United States right now, we have over 550 federally-recognized tribes, with their own governments, with their own constitutions, with their own languages, and with their own governmental structures. Each one of them is different. That's just counting federally recognized. There's still 1500 state-recognized, and there's about 2000 people going through the process right now.Just think about that's United States. That's not counting Canada, that's not counting Mexico, that's not counting anyone else.
When you think about these things, and someone asks, "We want to drill down," as an equity scholar and as a consultant working on this, I usually will push back to people and say, "How many people are indigenous in your data set?" I will tell you in this particular case, there was six. I'm like, "You can't really talk about the entirety of all of those number of people with six people." So I asked them to drill a little bit deeper, and I said, "Where are those six people from?" And they were all from the northeast.
Dr. Durell Cooper:
Wow.
Dr. Rhianna C. Rogers:
I said, "You really can't, you really can't speak about indigeneity overall, if you only have six northeastern groups represented in your study sample."
So that's the difference of equality and equity, which I think is important. When you put racial equity on top of that, it's now even bigger, where you're intentionally disaggregating all of the various racialized groups and their subgroups. It's not just living at the top of that group and saying that they themselves are "the same."
I'll give you an example in African American experience. There's also a tendency that media has highlighted, hip hop culture as being the culture of African American culture, when it's a subculture. One of the things, as a racial equity scholar, I have to remind people of that. Is that just because you might see an individual in the hip hop community? That doesn't mean everybody behaves that way. Those who belong to that community behave or might behave that way. It depends. But you can't assume everyone does. These are really critical points about racial equity development in research design that you have to really be deliberate at the beginning of the project so that you don't build in assumptions and biases.
Dr. Durell Cooper:
Wow. That explanation of it is probably the most succinct way I've been able to grapple with these terms and these ideas. What current projects or research projects or policies are you currently working on that is motivating you to get up in the morning and wrestle with these ideas and these concepts?
Dr. Rhianna C. Rogers:
I would say that my work is my passion. I don't feel like I have a job. I feel like this is what I'm meant to do. I always cheesily say this to people, but I believe I'm here to make the world a better place. I jokingly call myself a happy hippie because I do want to create a sense of community. Yeah, I do. It's part of who I am as a person, is just I really want us to move together and to work together as a community to make society and life better for everyone. I think it's really important.
But that actually connects back to the setup of the center. I mentioned a little bit earlier that some of this work actually originates in my life in academia. I'm going to tell you a little bit about a thing called the Buffalo Project.
The Buffalo Project is a methodological framework that I came up with over the 15 of my 20 years of being a professor. It started when I was in an administrative role in a college in Florida, and I started thinking about it. So I'll tell you about it. It actually started with a class. This class was called US History through Ethnology. Basically, it grew out of a course that I taught in Florida, where everyone in this class - it was a US history course - there was only one student from the United States. All of the rest of the students were, literally, international.
Imagine if you come into a traditional course. You make these assumptions about the traditional way of teaching history, and you're like, "I'm going to teach about George Washington and founding fathers," and all this kind of stuff. No one knew who they were, except for one student. The very first day of the class...
Just as a background about me and my degrees, I have a separate history degree and my Master's degree and my doctoral program. I'm an anthropological archeologist, linguist, and historian. I have different degrees.
In this history course I was teaching, I pulled in anthropology. It was the first time I was trying to think like an inter-disciplinarian. I went into this class, and I said, "Hey, how many of you know these "key" figures in US history?" I created a survey the very first day of class, and I found out that less than 10% of them knew any of the names. I said, "I can't teach a class this way. I'm going to lose all my students." So instead, I modified the class from the very beginning, and I said, "This semester I want you to be bringing in to me who are the major players in your cultures and societies, and let's share."
This opened the door for empowerment of those individuals, because rather than saying that US culture was more important than their cultures, I made it mutually reciprostic. They were going to learn as much about the United States as the rest of the class was going to learn about their countries. As you can imagine, this class went incredibly well. People were super excited about it.
I brought it with me when I left Florida, and I went to New York. It became the same course that was called US History through Ethnology. But I modified it a little bit because Buffalo, at the time that I came there, has always been ranked in the top 10 of most segregated cities.
I want you to know why this is important. You mentioned that I won that SUNY Chancellor's Award for Teaching Excellence. I had just won in Florida the same award for teaching in Florida, for being the top professor at the college that I was at. However, this is a difference. South Florida was really diverse. People were living together. You saw interracial relationships. I'm in an interracial relationship. But when I moved to Buffalo, you didn't see that. I lived in Buffalo for 11 years, and I think the first ever interracial couple I saw was the last two years I was living there, nine years after living there.
Dr. Durell Cooper:
Wow.
Dr. Rhianna C. Rogers:
I was saying these are all the factors I need to think about. I was also the youngest professor that they had seen. At the time, I was 29. I had already been teaching for nine years in college. The average age of a professor in Buffalo at that time was 37. So they had never saw somebody young, like myself, a multiracial woman, who had so many accomplishments already under my belt. I knew that this would be weird for many people. I also knew I'm coming from California, where I'm originally from. I lived in Florida, desirable places to live, and I'm moving to Buffalo. People were going to have these perceptions. I wanted to break all of them down.
The very first day of this class, I come in, and everybody in there is Buffalonians. They're all from these places. I'm this oddity out. The first thing I do to break the ice is, "How do you know I'm Dr. Rhianna Rogers? Your first assignment is to go home, look me up, and tell me why I'm qualified to teach this course and come back." That was the first time where I said... And then also, the next assignment in that course was, "Look up the authors of your textbooks. Why are they qualified to write them?"
Rather than, and this is how I combine this, rather than dehumanizing writing and dehumanizing me being as a professor, I re-humanized both and let people know writing is made by people. You're getting their perspectives. It was challenging them to critically think, because the course that I had developed was how do we break down barriers, which was a hundred percent a DEI course. This became incredibly popular. I will tell you this, that the course became one of the most popular courses on campus. Literally, what we ended up finding out is that from developing the Buffalo Project, I started using surveys to survey students to find out what their gap areas were: soft skills, technological skills. And because I was making partnerships in the community, I started bringing in partners that could help with those things, whether it be presentations, whether it be a partnership. I actually created a loan system for textbooks in my office so you wouldn't have to buy books.
Dr. Durell Cooper:
Wow. Wow.
Dr. Rhianna C. Rogers:
I had a loan system for computers. You could come to my office. You could rent out a computer because you might not have it at home. One of the reasons I became so sufficient in educational technologies is that the campus that I was located on had racialized issues, where people of color didn't want to go in that community. I started developing courses online so that our students of color wouldn't feel they had to drive on campus and potentially be harassed, so they could just work from home. I kept thinking of creative ways to address the needs of students. We saw that in a matter of two and a half years, retention of incredibly diverse populace at that campus went up by 25%, which is unheard of.
This got the attention of SUNY, and SUNY was like, "We need you to be doing this at the central level." SUNY, State University of New York, is the largest school system in the country, 64 schools. And I was asked into a role that was a hybrid of DEI and educational technology. I worked across all 64 schools with the Buffalo Project to help people to recreate what I was creating.
I'll go back to being a happy hippie. I like to show our best practices, because that's how we make things better. It's not about keeping it to myself. It's let's figure out how to make this all better for everyone. Well, what was really cool about that is anybody who was adopting these practices, they also saw an increase in retention, about 1% on average.
This got the attention of more people. People are like, "What is she doing that's that's actually creating this?" And I was asked at that time by the US State Department... There's a thing called the Stevens Initiative. For those who remember Benghazi, the Benghazi crisis, Ambassador Stevens was the ambassador who was assassinated in Libya. I was asked to come in on the SUNY side, and I was offered by my colleagues in the Middle East to be a visiting professor in the Middle East. But I was also in a role in SUNY- and I got to create my first microcredential, which I can talk about that.
But my microcredential was around developing intercultural competencies. I will share with Durell a link to that. I've always made it an open educational resource. It's been out there since 2015. All you have to do is look up my name, and you can find it as well.
But I wanted to create something that would build bridges, and it did. If you get a chance to look at the website, you'll see people from all over the world talking about building intercultural competencies together.
Well, as that continued, I was then asked to join the Rockefeller Institute of Government, which is New York State's think tank, to help roll this out across New York State when I was there. This was in 2019, right at the shutdown. What was really great about the model that I had already developed is it used a lot of educational technology, before everybody was learning about educational technology in 2020. I became a consultant for Department of Education, K to 12, all of this stuff, because I had a model that was already engaging with people from a variety of spaces.
That led me to be invited by the United Nations Geneva Forum to become a fellow. I have to tell you jokingly, I thought that their email looked like it was from 1992. I didn't think it was...
Dr. Durell Cooper:
So formal, probably, right?
Dr. Rhianna C. Rogers:
Yeah. So I was like, "I don't think this is really the UN." But they contacted me. They said, "No, we really want you to speak about the Buffalo Project, because it's been around now for 10 years," at that point." And they said, It's done so much for New York State. You now have it in five countries with the work that you're doing. Come and share it with us."
Then, I actually reached out to Rand. And I said, "Rand, I think I can help you. I heard that you're creating a center to advance racial equity policy." I actually started working consulting lightly with VP Anita Chandra, I met, who is now retired, former president Michael Rich. And we started talking, I don't know, about maybe six months before I made the decision to take the job. But I started consulting them about what kind of things can actually build a program from scratch.
If you take a look at the actual three pillars of the center, they very much look like the Buffalo Project. And they look like the Buffalo Project for a reason. It's because I brought that model with me, and it's because I've been able to use it for 10 years, and it's been so successful. Now what I've done is I took a project that was focused on a state, and I'm now bringing across the United States.
Dr. Durell Cooper:
Oh, wow. Wow. I'm thinking a little bit about the concept of narrative change, which this framework of conversations that I'm having and thinking of this project in general is about. I think, looking at your work and your methodology, one of your primary areas of expertise is in participatory action research. When I start to think about ways to be able to start to change the narrative, I can't really think of a better way than to have... One thing that I always say is that the people are the experts in their own experience. Participatory action research really is a way of being able to center that. But how do you envision using it as a tool in your work? Is that narrative change a key reason why you use it? Or are there other uses just for that that you found effective?
Dr. Rhianna C. Rogers:
Yeah, I think I'll give you an example of utilizing the Buffalo Project framework from an actual program that I've built inside of the center. There's a program called the Affiliates and Ambassadors Program. It's an internally-facing program, and I'll explain why it has two titles in a second. But based on the Buffalo Project model, which is a very equity-centered research design, which utilizes participatory action research as well as democratic dialogue, which I call deliberative conversations. It combines these two frameworks together underneath this umbrella of the Buffalo Project model.
Let me give you an example of what someone in the Affiliates Program would go through. They go through three phases. Phase one of the work that I do is I look to see where you are in your process? Where do you sit on the spectrum of being equity-minded, which means that you're aware of equity principles, but you might not have a lot of resources, to being equity-centered, which means you have actually developed the theoretical frameworks, models, and you understand them. You've actually gone through training.
I let people into this program, and I let them self-identify. Where were they on this spectrum? That's how I actually tailored the program to each of these individuals. They had microcredentials they went through. Actually, my Rand colleagues went through the Developing Intercultural Competencies microcredential.
Dr. Durell Cooper:
Love that.
Dr. Rhianna C. Rogers:
They went through it. They also went through a anti-racism, microcredential, and those two had to go first. That was phase one of their work. Prove to me where you are. You've told me where you are, but now apply, and show me where you are. When you were entering into the program, you had to come up with a mini-project, so you had to turn in a proposal. But at the end of that first phase, after you moved from being equity-minded to equity-centered, you had to revisit it.
Now, there were two things that you had to do when you revisited it. You had to apply the new equity framework that you were given, whether it be participatory action research that you've now learned in some of these microcredentials, whether it was anti-racism, whether it was intercultural competencies. It didn't matter to me, because each researcher had their different entry point.
The other piece that I like to add on, which really comes from equity studies in phase two, is a concept that's emerging called Grey literature. For those of you who are unaware, I actually share this quite often. But diversity in publication is actually quite poor. If you've never seen this, there's a really great study that is titled, "Where is Diversity in Publishing?" There's a 2015 and a 2019 survey that was created by Sarah Park Dahlen at St. Catherine's University, and Nicole Caitlin. I reference this study all the time because one of the things that they did that was well is they tracked diverse publications, all publications, not just focusing on academic publications. And what was a little bit disheartening, when I came across this work back in 2015 and 2019, is that 70% of all written materials, I'm not just talking about academic, are written primarily by White women, and only 30% are created by everyone else. So just think about that.
What I was concerned about in this space is that we need to be looking at what that other literature, which we call Grey literature, is saying about a topic, because if you only look at academic literature, it's going to potentially have a skewed view since that group is so homogeneous. It's not as diverse as you would like it to be.
After I had folks finish phase one and look back at their proposals, I told them they had to go look at the Grey literature. They had to go out there, and they had to find people who were writing about this, beyond academia, and look into places like newspapers, blogs, all those spaces where people are rapidly, social media. What are people actually saying about this? Then I also required them to interview three to five people, not just academics, because expertise and knowledge, that's all equitably looked at inside of an equity-centered research design. You don't prioritize academia and leave out all the other voices. We know that that's a very small group of our society.
What was really fascinating in phase two is it's really challenging individuals' notions of knowledge. Who hones knowledge? Who owns knowledge? Who gets to speak about expertise? And then they had to revise this.
When they got to phase three - this was the final phase of this - you were required to pay it forward. You were required to bring on at least one to two junior people in your project and share with them the skills that I had taught to you, because that's also a piece of this Buffalo Project model. You recognize that you have the privilege of working in a space that others don't. Part of that privilege is you have to recognize that you have to pay it forward. It's what I call an ethical responsibility as being an equity-centered researcher.
During that final phase, that's why they're called ambassadors. Phase one to two, they're affiliates, and this is when they're becoming ambassadors. This is when they now have gained the expertise, they've gone through a mini-project, and now they're executing on their project and applying all the skills they learned in phase one and phase two, as well as mentoring the next generation of people and producing a final project.
Dr. Durell Cooper:
Whoa. Okay. Please, please share that link with me to the credential. I want to take it, and I definitely want to share that with all the listeners as well.
You're really making me think of two concepts right now. One would be the concept of decolonizing research, which your work has been doing before it became a trendy thing for the field of social science research to talk about. The other thing it's making me think of is one thing that one of my mentors, Dr. Christopher Emdin, who's also a part of this series too, but one thing that he offers us is who gets to decide what questions are worthy of answers? And that's really what your work has been doing as well.
This is why your approach to research I admire so much, because it's not about... You even said at the beginning of this here, the anti-doctor doctor, but you really do not have a desire to center your voice and your expertise in what it is that you're doing. It really is about how you are using your positionality to open up doors and to open up spaces, to open up windows, or to create, actually, new pathways for others to be able to share their stories and their voice. For that, I want to say thank you. You are definitely providing a way for the next generation of researchers to come through and be able to do similar things.
What's next? What's next for you? First of all, what barrier have you not already broken down in the different fields from athletics, academia, to private and, actually, government, public too, but what's next for you?
Dr. Rhianna C. Rogers:
Yeah. My statement I always say is I want to make the world a better place. I haven't done that yet. I haven't done that yet. So I still feel like there's more to do.
I'll tell you the next immediate thing that I'm doing is I'm starting a national association for DEI. Really think about this. We have a lot of smaller associations that deal with DEI, but we don't have one that gives a united voice to everyone. We don't have that. Think about what that means.
Take a look, and I'll tell you this, of the critical race theory debate. If we would've had a national association in place, the media would not have been able to drive what that theory means and how people use it. An association could have driven that. They could have explained, as a united body, about what fields it emerged from, who uses it.
I will tell you, just for everybody out there, when I was in school, it wasn't part of my field of study to study critical race theory and anthropology or history. That is a theoretical framework that grew out of law. It's not something that was actually part of any of my training. It's become popular now and has gone across many fields, and people are applying it.
But imagine if you had a group of people that could provide that history and provide that context that actually are educated. So I'm looking for ways to, I would say, protect the industry, but at the same time of protecting the industry of also creating an idea of standards. What are the standards? Who gets to say who is a DEI expert? Is it an outside entity? Is it us? Is it who?
And I think we need some of those things, because my biggest concern moving forward, and I think you mentioned this, well, Durell, I'm always thinking about the next generation. I'm always thinking about them, and I'm always thinking about how can we make it easier for them to succeed?
I think any type of scaffolding that we can provide, whether it be training, best practices, a safe space to vent about the issues you're encountering so that you don't feel isolated in this space, which I can say, after being in it for 20 years, it can be isolating. But this gives up that opportunity to create that sense of community.
That's I think where I'm at right now. I want to find a way - I give myself lofty goals - but I want to find a way to bring folks in DEI together, to break down the silos that exist, to help people realize that if we work together, across different industry lines, we can accomplish so much more together.
Dr. Durell Cooper:
Wow. Thank you so much for sharing that. We definitely see eye to eye on a lot of things. But there's one thing that I'm going to have to disagree with you on, and that's that you haven't made the world a better place. I think you have made the world a better place, one, by being in it, and two, by allowing your light to shine through your work and being an example of what it means to be a just individual using their skills and abilities to improve our planet. You are making the world a better place, and we are all very thankful that you are in it doing this work. As an archeologist by trade, also leaving behind these artifacts for us to find, years down the road, when we'll really see just how ahead of your time you actually are. Thank you so much for everything. Thank you for shining. And thank you for being here and sharing your story and your work with the audience. I really appreciate it.
Dr. Rhianna C. Rogers:
Well, thank you for having me, and thank you for the kind words. I have to say to all of your listeners, it's been amazing meeting you. I think our paths crossing in the art space and working in a space to create... I was just talking with somebody yesterday about the idea that creative spaces, like the arts, are ways that people have the ability to express themselves more than other spaces. Durell just brought up that I'm an archeologist. My specialization is ceramics. I myself am a ceramicist. I study archeological ceramics. I can identify different pastes and types from history. I focused on that because I know, throughout the historical record, art is a way of expression in ways even people that might not read, that might not write, can actually express themselves. It matters, and I think it's something really important for us to remember that the arts really are a section of culture where everyone can participate.
Dr. Durell Cooper:
Oh, thank you. Thank you for everything. And please, please, please let people know how they can follow some of the work that you're doing at RAND or elsewhere.
Dr. Rhianna C. Rogers:
Sure. I'm really, really active on LinkedIn. You can see a lot of the stuff that I share there regularly. I also have the Center to Advance Racial Equity Policy website, which is connected to RAND. Please just take a look at that. We also have the Forward Newsletter, which is posted externally on my website. There's a link. I can share all of these things with Durell as well, so you can see them. But yeah, please reach out. I have to tell you, people are always shocked by this, but I respond to all emails. I do. I want you to know why, and I think this is important. If you truly are being equity-centered, everyone matters. Everyone matters. I take pride in the fact that it's really important for me to speak to anyone who reaches out, so please don't be afraid to contact me.
Dr. Durell Cooper:
Oh, thank you. Thank you so much for that. That's a wonderful way to end it on. Thank you, Rhianna, for being here.
Dr. Rhianna C. Rogers:
It's my pleasure.
About the Contributors
Rhianna C. Rogers is the inaugural director of the Center to Advance Racial Equity Policy (CAREP) and a policy researcher at the RAND Corporation. Rogers is an expert on cultural and ethnic studies, intercultural competencies and diversity education, cultural mediation, and virtual exchange programmatic development and implementation. Her approach centers on participatory action research and community engagement processes. Before RAND, Rogers has held administrative appointments and taught in Higher Education spaces (2002–present). She was most recently an associate professor of interdisciplinary studies (history and anthropology) and the coordinator of the Global Indigenous Knowledge program at State University of New York (SUNY), Empire State College. At SUNY, Rogers held two systems appointments, one as the Ernest Boyer Presidential Fellow at the Rockefeller Institute of Government (2019–2020) and the other as a SUNY Center for Online Teaching Excellence Fellow (2014–2021). Rogers was also a Stevens Initiative Visiting Professor of Anthropology at the American University of Technology in Kaslik, Lebanon (2017–2018) and served two terms as the SUNY Empire State College Coordinator of Interdisciplinary and Multidisciplinary Studies (2017–2019 and 2014–2017). Rogers developed and codeveloped several successful DEI initiatives in her career, including SPEC/Buffalo Project, a grant-funded and award-winning action-based diversity program focused on the development of culturally inclusive programming and upskilling populations to inform solution-making efforts in college and community environments (2010–present). Rogers holds a Ph.D. in comparative area studies from Florida Atlantic University.
Dr. Durell Cooper is one of the nation’s most prominent cultural strategists specializing in systems change and collaborative thought leadership. Prior to founding cultural innovation group, llc, he was a program officer at the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs (DCLA). He also worked at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, inc. In the marketing department conducting outreach to veteran service organizations and for Lincoln Center education recruiting and training teaching artists as well as several community engagement initiatives aimed at increasing equity and inclusion in NYC public schools. Prior to that he was a public-school teacher. Durell is also a proud veteran of the U.S. Navy. He is also the creator and host of the web series, Flow, and the podcast, Fluency with Dr. Durell Cooper.
