Secrets in Plain Sight - McDaniel

lacked believability and were offensive to my integrity. I asked again him and the graduate studies director at the time for a copy of the documentation from the investigation. Even after filing a legal complaint with the university, i never did receive that document.E! Nino - 6th Grade Year The whole family was excited for Dominique to enter the 6th grade. He wasthe family's first-born son, grandson, and nephew experiencing the milestone ofhaving reached middle school. Dominique has been raised in a community offamily and friends and his arrival of this time in his education marked acelebration for us all. We had raised a young man who loved life and education.His elementary school experience was not perfect, but it was a positive one.There he was able to build himself within community where he was a strong,everyday contributor to the social, political, and spiritual of his learningcommunity. His teacher for fourth and fifth grade wrote on his final report card Dominique has an unbelievable spirit. He is an individual thinker that does so outside the box in many ways. I have enjoyed watching his academic and character growth. ... Dominique has given me great joy in the two years I have taught him. i look forward to hearing unbelievable accomplishments from him in the future (Eastridge Elementary, 2006).In previous report cards, teacher comments included things like: \"His voice, selfchallenge, and love for learning continues to surprise me. ... He offers criticalthinking, creative ideas ... his joy for (earning is contagious (EastridgeElementary, 2003). We were proud to present to this middle school community 142

his high caliber as a person and a student, and we were sure of his futureaccomplishments. On the second day of school Dominique came home feeling embarrassedbecause he was admonished in front of his classmates for not having $20 topurchase a P.E. uniform and lock from the school. I did my best to put his mind atease and told him that I would contact the teacher to take care of everything. Ididn't want to burden him further by telling him that there was no extra money togive the school. I had attended all of the meetings held for parents and plannedto the penny in order to purchase everything on the school supply list. I knew thatmy finances were fragile as a recently divorced, new graduate student with threechildren to provide for on a very small budget. I couldn't understand why theschool was discussing finances with an 11-year-old child, who had no job. Thegym class syllabus listed no teacher name or phone number so I immediatelyresearched the teacher and left a message for her to return my phone call inorder to resolve the matter. My hope was that she could wait until my next checkin order for me to provide the money or tell me where I could purchase theneeded items with a credit card. After several messages, I never received areturn phone call. Each day that passed, Dominique would come home upsetbecause his gym teacher would publicly admonish him for not having the $20.She would shame him through verbal lashings and take away his participationpoints for the day. The entire class was made aware of the teacher's claims ofhis inadequacies. I knew as a mother that I had a responsibility to protect him. So 143

I began to ieave messages for the teacher with the front office. With no successstill, 1 wrote a letter and faxed it to the front office for delivery to her inbox. Iwrote: Ms. D-, We are aware of your request for $20,00 for a p.e. uniform and locker/lock for our son. This four-day window to collect this money is not flexible enough for our family who has a modest income. I am very upset with the inconsiderate way in which you have put pressure on my family and my son. The items were not on the school supply list and we had no forewarning. No doubt the t-shirt, shorts, and lock is supplying your department with extra revenue, and this decision comes at our expense. My son should not have any grade deductions because of your departments lack of planning and our inability to quickly respond to your demands. We will supply $20 on Monday, August 28th and we trust that you will replace all grade points you have taken from our son. We attempted to phone you earlier with no success. Let us hear from you by the end of the day. I did hear from her that day. She was outraged by my letter and told methat in all of her many years as a teacher, no one had every written her a letterlike that. Our different viewpoints was amazing to me, because I had tamed the 144

internal rage I felt from facing my son everyday, helping him through his feelings,of embarrassment, shame and inadequacy in my communication to her. She wasshocked by my direct tone and we spent most of the phone call talking about herfeelings. After she vented, right before she had to hang up I was able to be directonce again to let her know my bottom line. In the end there was no resolution, asshe felt that it was Dominique's responsibility to resolve these kinds of problemsby appealing for financial assistance when necessary. She told me that myadvocacy was inappropriate and wanted instead to only deal with Dominique. This story marked the beginning of our orientation to middle school. It wasa complex culture, where this school as compared to most other district schoolshad an unusually high percentage of Black and Brown students and students ofmiddle and low income class; yet was a subculture of the larger district whereWhiteness was not just valued, but also functioned as the primary asset. In orderto manage the Black, Brown, and low-income populations affect on the pristineprivileged district these groups were the subject of an ongoing project to sociallyand politically discipline their bodies. Dominique (Dom) as a Black body of political, spiritual, and intellectualself-possession threatened this institution's identity. Many of the school'steachers, administrators, security guards, and staff were committed to the cultureof Whiteness with all of their professional and sometimes persona! resources. Isaw a subtle example of this commitment at a parent-teacher conference.Several of my son's teachers in that meeting told me that he was not a \"serious 145

student\". This construction concerned me and reminded me that I was alsolabeled a \"non-serious student\" in my graduate program. I asked them toexplicate, in agreement, they offered this story as a perfect example: One day ina class dialogue Dom raised his hand in order to respond to the teacher'squestion: \"what's one thing your parents do, that you wish they wouldn't?\" Myson animatedly replied \"well my mom is trying to get us to eat healthy. She onlylets us have one glass of juice a day. And while ! appreciate it... can a brotherget a glass of juice?\" Following his contribution the class laughed. I asked theteachers why his use of humor while making a legitimate contribution to thegroup discussion would be an example of him not being a serious student. 1wondered how his actions could be considered inappropriate. They insisted thatusing the body to communicate and using humor in a \"serious class discussion\"was uncalled for and inconsistent with the character of a \"good student\". I offeredthat part of Dom's cultural upbringing was to learn to use humor in everydaymoments. In fact for many in the Black community humor is an important part ofcommunication. Most great Black communicators are masters at inserting humorinto everyday talk. For Dominique's communication style and also way ofknowing to be labeled as unfit for the classroom was one-way to make Whiteright and Black unfit. Dominique's unmonitored and independent use of his body, throughnonverbal signifiers was an uncomfortable and unwanted expression by theseconcerned teachers. So in a move to discipline the \"savage body\" into modes of 146

Whiteness as civility they marked it as deviant, a \"non-serious\" student. Whenmarked bodies interrupt Whiteness, its agents wili regulate the environment by\"any means necessary\". Even if the means includes the denigration of Black andBrown children. There was for Dom constant bullying by teachers who insisted that theway he spoke, walked, approached teachers, and engaged dialogue in theclassroom was unmanageable, disrespectful, and disruptive to the learningenvironment they were trying to create. His every facial expression, bodymovement and verbal expressions were monitored through a racist lens,exaggerated, and interpreted, and disciplined. It was a system of regulation ofBlack bodies as savage. This was also the case for most of Dom's Black malefriends. I would hear from my son the stories of kids who were constantlyharassed by school staff and were unable to endure the pressure. Those kidswent on to alternative schools, began the process of dropping out bydisengaging, or were behaviorally oppositional. I felt bad, because their parentsweren't always aware of what was happening. The school had a discourse thatrhetorically cast these students as deviant within the culture and positioned themas dangerous to others or in danger of becoming social deviants. Many Blackstudents were not allowed to walk down the hallway at the same time withoutbeing profiled by the security guards. They would report these student'swhereabouts on their walkie talkies. These student's were regularly talked aboutas \"problem students\" who needed constant surveillance. There was an 147

unfounded fear amongst school authorities that if not carefully monitored, at anygiven time these problems students would erupt in violence. I was determined tonot allow my son's person to be hijacked and replaced with a new deviantidentity. But this determination was a daily struggle. Teachers would call to talk tome about his distracting personality and his resistance to being a seriousstudent. They were looking for me to be a willing participant in their project. Theyfound no cooperation in me. ! resisted their actions of holding him out of class,publicly humiliating him, referral and detention slips and the like. It was aconstant engagement with the school principal, and other school officials where 1would insist on their explicit accounts of my son's objectionable behavior. Theywere never able to offer any. ! often had to ask them to reverse their decisions toofficially punish him through the dean's office. My son, prior to arriving at thisschool never had to be disciplined, was in his first year diagnosed as a deviant,and school officials wanted to create a paper trail documenting that this was thecase. As they became aware of my disagreement through my constantcommunications, many of which I had to escalate up to the district leveladministration after my calls and attempts to would regularly be ignored theybehavior became more covert and more aggressive. The disciplining was inventive, dark, and culturally pervasive. And I had tobeg, argue, and strategize for the most basic of things like allowing him to go tothe bathroom or stay in class uninterrupted by the dean or teachers who wanted 148

to discipline him for things they never were able to articulate. About the secondquarter i began to see the effects of the daily toll on Dominique. He began to getangry and became more and more disinterested in school. I would constantly tryto engage him in dialogue about what was going on but it was often difficult forhim to articulate what was happening. School became a maze of landmines where Dominique's presence, beingand engagement risked tipping an explosion. In addition to this, Dominique hadto manage the pressure our family was putting on him to academically perform inschool, it was some time before I realized the scale of problematic in the positionhe was in. It was an impossible situation where on one hand he was being askedto perform the role of a good student, pursued all opportunities to learn, andcompeting academically. On the other hand constantly having to navigate a racistenvironment where he - in language coded in civility (Owens Patton, 2004) hewas told that he was a savage nigger incapable of learning and not welcome inthat environment. This impossible chaos became visible in this math narrative: Out of thecore subjects of math, science, English, and history - Dominique found math tobe the most challenging. This was not always the case ... In his 6th grade year hehad three different math teachers, and in the four quarters of the school year hada different instructor every quarter. His quarter 1 teacher spent a considerableamount of classroom time having the kids memorize the classroom rules of 149

behavior, talking to them about behavior, and punishing them for their \"mis-behavior\". Math was a low priority in her classroom. In one of her sessions on behavior she would not release the studentsfrom class until they provided group consent to ail of her rules. One of the ruleswas that they were not allowed to use the bathroom during class. This meant thatbetween the rules of the other staff and teachers in their domains, there would behours at a time where her would not be able to access a bathroom. Basically hehad to wait until after school (because he had to make the school bus on time totake him home), walk a couple a blocks from his bus stop to our house, and thenhe could use the bathroom. Dominique had as a practice abided by this rule. But after getting introuble at home (after it was brought to our attention) for being late to class forusing the bathroom in between classes, we insisted he be on time for classesand use the bathroom after class had started. We found out during ourorientation through our own practice run that it was logistically impossible for himto make it from one class to another and have a bathroom break in betweenwithout being late. They were also not allowed to carry backpacks in the hallwaysor have them in class. This made traveling to their lockers necessary, taxing the3.5 minutes he had to wade through a sea of hundreds of students moving indifferent directions. And as ridiculous as it sounds for me to be writing about theright to use the bathroom, that is the daily reality Dominique faced. Everymoment was regulated using institutional tools such as technologies of 150

domination, in this case time. I wouid be forced to spend time with his teacher onthe phone negotiating with her these kinds of rights. I asked if my student had ahabit of abusing a bathroom privilege during class, to which she admitted no, butinsisted on the necessity of such rules for the maintenance of order. And for thesake order and the regulation of bodies these kinds of actions continued. As this math teacher continued her obsession with domesticating thesavages, I watched him get farther and farther behind in math. During the fiveminutes parent conferences with four teachers, she had no feedback to offer onhis academic progress. I was stunned considering how frequently she called totalk about the bathroom, his inappropriate smiling, or his asking questions whenshe clearly told the class not to talk. After a quarter of never really getting downto the business of education, I asked for a transfer to another math teacher. The year continued with these kind of struggles. I spent a lot of timeasking teachers and administrators to help settle the barrage of barriers that theywere putting in the way of him learning. When I discovered that one math teacherwas inflating his grade to give the appearance that Dominique and other studentsknew the material, ! had to insist the he provide accurate grades. This sameteacher, after multiple conferences was unable to produce a book for the classthat I could take to a tutor for Dom, or a list of the learning objectives andconcepts Dom was expected to know by the end of the year. According to him,there was no such thing available. !n short I had to watch him get farther and 151

farther behind and struggled to provide him with any at home interventions thatcould help because the school refused to give me information. During this school year my primary strategy was to shield my son from theeveryday pressures he was facing as best I could. A considerable amount of mynegotiations were with teachers, believing that I was recognized as a valuedmember of this learning community and that we all were committed tocontributing to helping Dominique pursue an education. Treating all of theincidents as separate events, I also didn't recognize the pattern of discriminationin the first year. Our values then and now insisted on teaching our son how to berespectful of others and in having a healthy amount of deference to educators -so we did not include him on all of the happenings. We only listened to him, lovedhim and told him that we would handle the conflicts. We insisted on him stickingto the business of getting an education and not dividing his resources addressingthese adult concerns. I told the educators and administrators as much andbegged that they work with me for resolution and support my efforts to protect myson and allow him the safe space to continue his work and also support hisbuilding of positive relationships with his teachers. By the end of his first year inmiddle school, I realized my efforts had failed.La ftfiadre - 2nd Year Graduate Student As I began to piece together the whole of my experiences at theuniversity, I began to see a pattern of systemic race based discrimination in theuniversity. After having been indirectly told by the chair that 1 was administratively 152

dropped from his class on the same day he received a copy of an email where Istood against injustice that I observed in the year prior's department hiring and insolidarity of the people who were aggrieved; and after I had been constructiveiyforced out of my ciass from the public scandal created from a tenured professor'sfaise allegations; the behavior of those in power in this institutional culture, wasunpredictable and i feared that their next act of violence would permanently forceme out of the university. ! also continued to experience race-based hostility in my work-studyposition, i tried to secure another position on campus or in the community basedon my prior year's experience. But the department chair manipulated my fundingby not allowing me to have placement outside of the department without riskingretribution. So ! was forced to continue working in the office. Out of all thegraduate students employed with the department across different graduateclasses, I was the only one without keys to the office. They would ask me tocome early to open the office, but because the department chair felt that givingkeys to me compromised office safety, i had to beg other departments to let mein, an example of one of their many humiliating tactics. ! also had to negotiate the imposed identity of \"angry, black, savagewoman\" they had created for me, in my interpersonal office encounters. It madecertain that any encounters I did have would likely be difficult, because thesubtext of all encounters was that I was a threat and a danger. For example, asmall verbal exchange I had with an office assistant across the room became a 153

heated exchange. As I approached her desk to look at her, and resolve theconflict, she flinched and yelled at me to back away from her desk. It remindedme that as a nigger I was supposed to hang my head, not make eye contact, nothave opinions of my own and definitely not be self-possessed. I had violatedthose expectations and she showed a genuine display of fear. It was animpossible situation to manage this imposed identity on a daily basis and keepmy own identity. Somewhere, along the way, I lost myself in the struggle. After the encounter with the office assistant, I was called into thedepartment chair's office and told that I was never to talk to anyone in the officeagain, unless it was my advisor. Previously I had met with the director ofgraduate studies in our department at the time and shared with her my desiresfor transparency in the department so that I could become more of a part of theculture. Apparently she shared our conversation with the department chair andhe did not respond well. He told me that I know longer had permission to speakto any of the faculty or staff unless I had a class with them. If I wanted to usecommonly shared office supplies i was to go through my advisor. And when i didwork for her in the new position he had reassigned me to, I was to work only inher one-person office, with the door closed.! didn't think it was possible to sinkfurther into invisibility or to become less of a human being than I felt, but it was. Itried to negotiate these outrageous requests, but he told me that if I found hisnew terms unacceptable, then \"maybe this job was too hard for me\". Afterextensive research and careful consideration of the necessary political

maneuvering ! needed to do in order to protect myself; I went on record andsought support from the University's Diversity and Equal Employment office(DEO). After several hours of consultation with DEO, I filed two formal complaintsagainst the department chair and the quantitative professor on October 25th,2007 (Appendix B, C) and asked for a formal investigation. 1 would soon learnthat what I thought was a resource to protect students and employees frominstitutional discrimination, was actually an office established to \"protect theuniversity from potential lawsuits\" (personal communication, 2007). Naively, I thought the Director of DEO with whom I was dealing with wouldbe an ally, interested in correcting injustice and effecting change in a raciallyhostile environment. Her strategy was to collect intelligence for the universitythrough interviews, emails, statements and any other documentation available.She then took that information and shared it with my aggressors, and gave meno information so that she could \"isolate and separate each detail so that I couldnot claim a systemic pattern\" (persona! communication, 2007). When 1 began to understand the strategy behind her stall tactics, trying towait out the window of time ! had to file a grievance with the Department ofEducation by giving me the appearance that she \"was conducting an officialinvestigation\". There were no written procedures for the imaginary investigationshe was conducting. Each time I asked her for the procedures in writing shewould evade and mislead me until ultimately she admitted that there were no 155

written procedures for the investigation. She refused to provide a time frame forwhen the investigation would be completed. So I waited. My follow-up phone calls to her went unretumed, and emails resulted inmore stalling. Eventually, at her request I secured another meeting with she andanother investigator in her office. The day of the interview she didn't show up andthe other investigator had no knowledge of the case and told me that he couidn'thelp. After that time, I called the director to let her know that I had come tounderstand her strategy as a protector of the discriminatory culture present in theUniversity. She took offense to my claims and denied any truth to my theory. Itwas \"her solemn duty to investigate and resolve all issues of discrimination\". It'snow been two and half years since I filed the complaint and asked for aninvestigation. I haven't heard from her since that phone call, no determinationshave been made, no resolutions reached. The everyday violence never slowed down. In classes 1 had becomeaccustomed to being treated as alien, as other. When I spoke, my classmatesand most professors would consistently look at me strange as if I spoke anotherlanguage. It happened so much, I started to wonder why nothing 1 said madesense to them. I wondered if it was me? The ideas that i tried to share and thetheories I tried to engage in class were received with confusion andbewilderment. It happened so much, that another White male in my cohort andothers at times, regularly felt the need to translate for me. About the second yearof this, I felt myself actually losing language and at times unable to express 156

myself.! would get nervous and become physically ill after most classes. Andterrified at the thought of having to relive moments of self-hatred whenever theprofessor wouid look at me like a strange aiien in front of the class, or frompeople becoming quiet after i spoke - making me feel embarrassed aboutmyself, 1 began to become mute. The pressure was relentless but 1 tried topretend and give the appearance that I was pulled together and unaffected bythe violence. But I was dying a slow death on the inside. At the beginning of my second year I took an intercultural communicationclass. Ironically, it was an everyday moment in that class that sparked anintercultural experience that would climactically weave together Dominique andmy own bodies experiencing institutional covert discrimination. On the first day of class; each student took turns introducing themselves.The attention in the room fell to one gentleman. With a sober demeanor thecorners of his mouth turn downward, invoking an unspoken authority he quietedthe friendly chatter in the classroom. As he looked down, he drew in enoughbreath to expand his chest to its capacity. I listened curiously as he began hispersonal introduction. \"I know first hand ugly reality. I teach in an inner-city highschool where there is drugs and crime. I try to help them...\" I was struck by thedramatic way he painted a picture of himself and the students in his school, kindof like Michelle Pfifer in the movie Dangerous Minds. In the next moment I found myself subordinating my norm of invisibility. Idecided to enter myself into the public realm by engaging him. \"Where do you 157

teach?\" I asked. \"Overland high school\", he responded. I could have stoppedthere and if I had learned anything through my experiences with the discipliningof white priviiege on black bodies, I should have. I felt compeifed to complicatethe racially charged claim he had just made by bringing attention to some of itsassumptions. With all of his white male priviiege he had just rendered himselfsuperior over the students he taught by pathoiogizing all of them as institutionaland social deviants. I was surprised by his use of the term inner-city, \"isn'tOverland high school a suburban school in Cherry Creek School District?\" Iasked. He immediately caught on to the logic behind my question. His pale faceturned bright red. With apparent embarrassment he answered defensively. \"Well,the majority of the kids that go to my school are Black or Hispanic and most areon free and reduced lunch status.\" After he spoke it seemed he wasuncomfortable with the implications of his statement. Before I could respond hesaid with awkward speed, Tm not the only one who thinks this - all of theteachers at my school feel the same way.\" When he used the term 'inner city' I could feel the tension in my body rise.The high school he was describing could not be characterized as one residing inan older, more populated central section of a city.xxlv Its neighborhood was notparticularly aged or run down. Working - middle class families occupied thehouses in the area. I agreed with him that educators in that school districtcommonly used the term inner-city'. I had experiences working in a number ofdifferent capacities with teachers, staff, and administrators from the district in 158

various school settings. It did seem that this term was commoniy used andwidely accepted in its representation of the schools in the district that held alarger percentage of students of color and where the residential communitysurrounding the school averaged a lower household income within the districtrange. In these contexts the term 'inner city' functioned as a metaphor for thedevalued property of whiteness. In spite of documented academic achievements and economic andpolitical privilege, educators and administrators throughout the Cherry CreekSchool District (CCSD) normalize through representation its schools with thehighest percentage of non-white students, lowest family income, and the lowestneighborhood residential home values as naturally deficient, handicapping anotherwise ideal competitive population. In a culture where whiteness and white privilege is highly valued and whenthat value is attributed to and translated into material outcomes a substantialpresence of blackness is seen as a harmful foreign invasion. In other words,through the eyes of whiteness; lower/mid-income and black and brown studentsdevalue a school's environment. Here, the larger the demographic of non-affluent, non-white students the greater the compromise to the schools value inwhiteness. In the White imagination I was a Black savage monster and they weredetermined to try to get that image documented and circulated. 159

El Nino - 7th Grade Year Dominique was trying to stay engaged in school despite the constantinterruptions by school officials who were determined to disrupt his learning. Inthe classroom he was the victim of harassment by teachers, and fought againsttheir gossiping to each other about him. They re-imagined his identity as defiant,angry, and dumb. In class, everyday he was forced to negotiate this imaginedidentity as deviant. For example, one of his math teacher's insisted that my sonwas a rude, disrespectful and undisciplined child who didn't like math because hewas incapable of doing it. She told me that her conversations with his previous6th grade math teacher confirmed her notions. I asked her if she had ever takenthe time to have a conversation with him? She said that she hadn't. I then askedhow she was able to conclude all of these things without ever talking to him. Heropinion of who he was and what he was capable of, was developed andmaintained from her imagination. And even though it didn't belong to him, all ofher interactions with him were informed by her investments into this inventedidentity. The same was true for his language arts teacher. She verbally attackedand antagonized Dominique. She refused my requests to place Dominique in alanguage arts honors class, a just placement. She insisted that he had no specialability, but was just average. In the mean time, she also projected a deviantidentity onto him, which he struggled with. 160

I stayed in constant communication with teachers, principals, assistantprincipals, district administrators, the superintendent and the school board. Noone was interested in making the classroom and school a psychological andspiritually safe place for Black students. Dominique was regularly harassed bythe school security and dean's office. Essentially all roads led to a politics ofdenial. Most of this school year I spent documenting the hostility through lettersand meetings. 1 also spend this year supporting Dominique. He was sufferingfrom the constant harassment. I became transparent with him and taught himwhat I knew about racism, strategy, and tactics. We prayed together, talked, andsang together wherever we could. This was one of the ways we kept our spiritsalive. I couldn't stop the violence he was subjected to and it broke my heart that Icouldn't protect my son.La Madre - 3rd Year Graduate Student By the time I got to my third year of graduate school I had lost all sense ofmy self. Through my daily intercultural negotiations with my education institution Ilost the strength and beauty of my Mestiza identity. I had internalized the imagesof myself from White imagination, which was returned to me as a deviant,useless nigger. While trying to pursue an education I simultaneously fought against thepsychological and spiritual violence of the multiple and varied tactics of warfarefrom ICD strategy. I also tried to mitigate the devastating effects if this violence 161

on my spirit. Near the end of the third year 1 had lost most of my possession ofmy identity as a human. There was for me so much at stake that I felt compelledto hold onto a stubborn resolve to not quit the program. Beyond the dismalness from my spiritual captivity from the hold thatoppression had on me, the hidden costs of ICD was the loss of education. Oftenwe think about access to education merely reflecting the presence of a body.Looking at me, people might assume that I successfully accessed highereducation by my enrollment in the doctoral program. But my education wasinterrupted by the daily onslaught of institutional violence. The truth was I wasn'tthe student I was capable of being. And i couldn't fully compete or participateacademically with other students in the program. Resisting ICD and managing itseffects on my body and spirit consumed all of my resources. For much of time !had been in the program I was just fighting to not be derailed by the constantthreat of being removed from the program. The access to education I had lookedvery different from the other White students in my class. There are educational tools and opportunities that I will never have accessbecause of the strategic efforts of the institution to exclude me from theirprivileged space. But there is one unexpected thing; much of my education at theUniversity of Denver included the praxis of learning how to navigate my markedand targeted body through this institution of privilege. I now have an embodiedknowledge that is on conversation with theorists and activists who also areinterested in dismantling oppression. Because of the racist infrastructure of the 162

university system my Black body disadvantaged me and prevented me from fullyparticipating in the ciassroom. I lived in constant fear in the classroom and oncampus. Every ciassroom dialogue, assignment, or sharing of my workexacerbated this fear. As a matter of survival, I often resisted making myselfvulnerable by sharing myself. And there was the matter of trying to hide the factthat on some level I really believed the things that the racists had told me and Iwas ashamed of that. It was a dissonance between what I intellectually knew andbelieved and what my spirit knew and believed. Being vulnerable risked exposingthat dirty little secret and also further fueling racism. Reaching beyond the counting of bodies to represent racial equality andequal opportunity in education, i ask; what are the experiences of raced bodies inthese Institutions? How do they interculturally negotiate space and access? Howdoes an institutional identity effect student's own cultural identity? Answering andtracking these answers can better teN the story of racial equality in education. In order for Dominique to make it through middle school and myself tomake it through graduate school everyday we had to wrestle with the question ofhow can we successfully navigate our racially marked body's pursuit of access toeveryday education within the boundaries of the institution's racially hostileenvironment? During the break, I thanked him for answering my questions. Hereciprocated the gesture and thanked me for my interest. He told me that heloved \"his kids\" and \"loved talking about them. I shared with him that I had a 163

strong interest in learning from him because of the district's equity initiatives Iwas involved in. He invited me to talk with him more in the future. After that eiass, he dropped the course and I never saw him again. I didn'tcatch his name so that I could follow-up with him as we had discussed. The oniything I remembered about him was the name of the school he taught at.Suspecting that he had an interesting story that I could iearn from and that wouldbe helpful in my district equity work, I put the task of trying to find him for aconversation on my to-do-list. The academic year progressed and when 1 hadtime some months later I went up to the high school he mentioned on an in-service teacher day. I had previously contacted his high school and inquired witha secretary that I had taken a class at the University of Denver with one of theirteachers, but he dropped the course before \ could exchange contact informationwith him. She gave me the voicemail of an English teacher, the \"only one sheknew of who was also a student at the University of Denver\", i was unsure that ihad reached the correct person, but I left a message introducing myself,reminding him of our connection, and my desire to take him up on his offer andget together. I never heard back from him. I assumed that I had reached thewrong person. Later that year, on an in service teacher day, I went up to the school to tryto find him. My plan was to look at their teacher board and try to find his name.When I drove up to the high school, I noticed that there was a pre-schooiplayground at the school. I approached a cafeteria door where there was a swell 164

of people gathered informally. Someone opened the door for me and I told themwhy I was there. They let me In and went down the hall to check in with thesecretary. I introduced myself and told her why I was there, I asked why therewas a children's playground at the school. I thought perhaps that there mighthave been a teenage motherhood program. She explained that the playgroundwas a part of an onsite daycare for staff. I was directed to the teaching photoboard right outside the main office. The board seemed to have in excess of 80pictures, i had only met this gentleman one time months prior, and 1 was unableto pick him out of the crown. While I was looking a woman approached me andasked if I needed help. I politely declined her assistance, realizing my plan hadfailed and I went home. I had almost given up on finding the gentleman. I heard that one of thestudents in my program had worked with him, doing research in his classroom. Ididn't know this student well, but felt comfortable asking her if she could help. Iapproached her after a panel presentation and asked if she had the gentleman'scontact information. She declined my request to provide his information but toldme that she would pass my information on to him. I was appreciative of her help.I never heard back from her, nor did I hear from him. I sent a follow-up email, towhich she replied that she had given him my information and had done all shecould to help me. I gave up on what I had hoped would be a great research lead. Not long after, I got a call from the campus police. It took a while for me tobelieve that they had gotten the right person. The officer told me that a report had 165

been filed with his office accusing me of stalking another student. He wasextremely hostile and seemed to believe that it was true. He screamed at me andtold me to stop harassing this student, it was ten minutes into the conversationbefore I could even figure out who he was referring to. Up until this phone call, Ihad only met the gentleman one time. I had no idea what his full name (that theofficer used) and had just learned his nickname. 1 asked the officer for a copy ofthe report that had been filed. He told me that I was not entitled to the report anddemanded that I five him my statement for his investigation. Despite my better judgment, I gave him my statement. He kept harassingme and treating me as if I really was a stalker. I finally asked him, \"what do youwant from me?\" He yelled back, \"1 want you to stop stalking him\". I told him that Iwas scared and intimidated, not knowing exactly how to protect myself I told himthat I wanted to file a report against the gentleman for making false accusations.The officer told me that if I filed a report he would consider it retaliation andrefused me. I was beside myself and asked to speak to his supervisor. Again, herefused me. He told me that he would be forwarding his report onto the Universitydepartment of Citizenship and Community Standards (CCS), where this matterwould be escalated. The director of CCS contacted me and explained that after evaluating theinformation he received there was enough evidence to call a hearing on thecharges of harassment where a determination would be made on my guilt orinnocence. I was told that if found guilty, my punishment could range from a 166

written reprimand to expelling me from the university. 1 was terrified. Myeducation at this university was once again in jeopardy. Additionally, I feared thatthis scandal would get back to my department and would further cause problemsfor me there. In order to prepare for my defense I was provided with thegentleman's statement (Appendix D). It was up to me to prepare my defense and so I researched the entireprocess. Many of the procedures for the hearing were not being followed. Forexample, according to University procedures ! was entitled to be heard in front ofa panel, according to the director, no panel would be provided. The hearing wasonly going to be one on one. The hearing would be one on one, the director andmyself. At that point I trusted no one, and wanted to protect my interests. I wasnot allowed to record the session, bring a witness, or document the hearing.When I challenged his deviation from the formal procedures, he told me that if 1pressed the issue I would be bringing trouble on myself. i went through the report line by line. The entire report was a constructionof me as an angry Black woman stalking an innocent White male {and hisdaughter). The report was nearly all fabrication and the few truthful statementswere presented maliciously to support the racist construction of me. I lay out herean accounting of the lies within the statement; 1 )There was never any argumentbetween the gentleman and I. 2) My first attempt to contact him was more thanfour months after he dropped the class. 3) I \"never wandered halls\", was askedabout the business I was conducting, nor asked to leave. 4) i never said I was 167

there to see a \"white teacher\" nor did I describe the gentleman, as I couldn'tremember what he looked Sike. 5) No campus report had ever been filed by thegentleman previously. 6) No report has ever been filed with the SRO (city policeofficer). In fact, according to the commander of the program from the city ofAurora, that officer was not even assigned to that school. 7) I have no \"rappsheet\" and further the city of Aurora police department reports that my name hasnever even been accessed electronically through their computerized system,except for a prior traffic stop. 8) I was never contacted by a resource officer andtold to not contact the gentleman 9) 1 never received any email from thegentleman. Eventually, I was cleared of the charges against me and exonerated. Thegentleman was never disciplined for unethically using institutional resources tobring harm to me. My statement never was a part of the official record and theofficer was never disciplined for his part unjustly intimidating me. As it turns outthe people that were invented for the report were affiliated with the middle schoolwhere I had an unfavorable reputation for my strong advocacy of my son and myescalation through district administration of report of racism. One of the mostaggressive teachers in my complaints to the district was also an English teacheraffiliated with the gentleman. Agents of the public school district's culture wereretaliating against me for my social justice work, which worked against their racistagenda. 168

EI Nino - 8tfl Grade Year At the beginning of Dominique's 8th grade year, I attended his pre-aigebraparent orientation. The mounting effects from his disrupted education wereoverwhelming. His mathematic ability remained at a 5th grade level, his abilitybefore he encountered racial violence in the classroom. Despite myinterventions, the material, psychological, and spiritual damages mounted, in theisolation we both felt from institutional discrimination I forgot that there were othersuffering bodies. The math orientation night reminded me of how wide spreadthis issue is. In the ten-minute presentation, the teacher communicated: \"This class isin preparation for 9th grade algebra. However, I'll be honest with you all. Most ofthe students won't make it to 9th grade algebra.\" I was surprised of his blanketdefeat at the beginning of the school year and the unashamed expression of hisbelief that all of these grade level students wouldn't advance all year to becomeready for high school math. How was it acceptable for a tenured 8th gradeteacher to imagine entire classes of students as inevitable failure and then returnthat image to their parents? Outside of critical analysis, it ail so seemed sonormal, an admission of a teacher's hopelessness for student's achievement oftheir learning goals couched in polite civil tone that marked the words as 'matterof fact'. I wondered how many of these students had also experienced institutionalcovert discrimination? I also wondered why it was difficult for school 169

administrators to correlate the achievement gap, the widening statisticaldifference between the test performance of White/Asian students and theirBlack/Brown counterparts. What hope did my college bound son and his peershave knowing at the beginning of their 8th grade year that they wouid be a yearbehind in math at the beginning of their high school. This one issue creates ahost of other problems, which act as barriers to high school success and collegeaccess. When I asked him to clarify his point, he was unable to do so. I think herealized that any unpacking of this statement was politically dangerous. Otherparents weren't as curious as I was and seemed eager to move on, so I reservedmy questions until after his presentation. After his presentation I asked; \"how do you know at the beginning of theterm that most students in this grade level class won't make it to grade level mathafter a whole academic year?\" He was unable to answer the question so 1 thenasked, \"how can my student be one of the one's that do make it?\" That questionled to my discovery that the school itself believed that Biack/Brown students wereless capable than White students of academic achievement. It seems that no onewas willing to critique the school culture that systemically continued to reproduceracism. The school system's failure to acknowledge embedded racism within itsinstitutional identity and culture drove the collapse of equality and access ineducation. The achievement gap was not the problem needed a solution but ableeding effect of a larger systemic hemorrhaging stemming from its institutionalidentity. 170

Through my efforts of journaling and documenting some of the violenceDominique and I were experiencing, we witnessed an emerging of the structuralelements of institutional covert discrimination, in conversations with my son and Iwe began to track the logic of this discrimination, share stories where we felt ourexperiences converge and develop tactics for survival. Our counter-narratives challenge post-racialism in education, and equalaccess and opportunity in education. These narratives also challenge the politicsof denial where institutions regularly deny their orchestration, and maintenance ofan infrastructure of discrimination. Our stories phenomenologically tease out theinsidious nature of institutional covert discrimination and destabilize its strategicposition through translation, which in effect makes covert activity transparent,undermining the power in this strategy. ICD as sanctioned discrimination at the institutional level against identitiesof difference within the institutional structure is a hegemonic power maintenancestrategy that targets cultural identities which threaten its normativity. Allmarginalized identities are threat to these kinds of institutions because theirpower was secured using identities of difference and maintained by theirexclusion. I argue that anyone tracking ICD needs to do a careful historicizing ofthe institution's identity in order to understand the politics behind its institutionalidentity. The University of Denver and the Cherry Creek public school district(CCSD) economically benefit from targeting and excluding Black identities andother racially marked identities. Additionally CCSD stands to gain economically 171

from federal and private grant monies set aside to target the performance ofBlack/Brown populations. Keeping these students chained to an identity of need,secures their place as the White institutional body that assume the responsibilityof monitoring and regulating non-dominant bodies. Using the social and politicalcapital inherent in its social position, institutions here call its own resources{human and material), institutionally networked authority, and political will toexercise acts of violence against its target for the purpose of erasing theiridentities through a psychological and spiritual undoing - For institutions, thestrategy of institutional covert discrimination is to systematically dismantlesubjectivities. Its occurrence is in the everyday, embedded within culture,language, behavior, institutional practice, policies, laws, ideologies, and livedorganizational values making it extremely difficult to locate and make visible. It isthe institutional identity that reproduces agents who will labor on behalf of theinstitution; as ideology, language, social practice or organizations as the chiefenforcers of this strategy, making ICD sustainable through time and space. Inother words, it is seen across generations where time and people have changedbecause it is a phenomenon that is invisibly staked within the everyday anddraws strength through its unchallenged presence and diversions, which pinaccountability on individuals and elude institutions. Institutional identity is theembodiment that transgresses threatening subjectivities. 172

Section Three: The Emergence of HopeEach time a person stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, orstrikes out against injustice, he/she sends forth a tiny ripple of hope...andcrossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, thoseripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression andresistance. Robert F. KennedyChapter Five: Community as a Human Condition The following writings come from knowledge that was discovered from mylong journey of pursuing an education for myself, and in standing in solidarity withmy hijo as he pursued his education. This knowledge possesses textures of pain,loss, desire, love and joy. The contributions of this chapter are its offerings that 1.extend theories of love into everyday knowledge, 2. provide a path for spiritualreclamation to those whose bodies and spirits have been dispossessed by theviolence of institutional covert discrimination (ICD) and 3. give social justiceadvocates new considerations for their work. The effects of the psychological and spiritual violence I suffered left mewith a crippling loss of self and knowing. I no longer had a sense of who I was,where I had come from, or that I had any place in community. My world wascollapsed by the destruction of the educational institutions I engaged and I foundtheir power totalizing. My epistemologies, ontologies, and place in the world feltdistant and unreachable. I was dying a slow spiritual death. How would I return 173

home to my former self, and the world I knew before ! was gripped by thisoppressive force? I was one of many who have known through their bodies and spirits thissame kind of death. My memory recalls spirit warriors like; Jesus Christ, my Lordand savior; the men, women and children who fought for justice prior to, duringand after the Sand Creek Massacre; Mabel Grace Andrews, the first knownAfrican American student to graduate from the University of Denver; my firstteachers in graduate school and dear friends, Dr. Lily Mendoza and Dr. JamesPerkins. I honor here, all bodies and spirits who have been savagely raped byinstitutions and still stood for justice, including the community of oppressed Icalled together for this study's methodology, This recall reminded me that I wasnot alone. But this reminder was not enough to reclaim my self. Ultimately, it wasthe powerful and unanticipated encounters with love and community thatreturned me to my self, my knowing and my village. When the force of ICDbrought me to my knees, there came along people who chose to love me, to lovemy son, to see me as fully human and to care for me. As an act of iove, theyseiflessiy labored to breathe life into me. One of the effects of institutional covertdiscrimination was that my former loving, accomplished, and beautiful self imagethat I offered in my intercultural attempts to build relationships within theseschools; was fractured and replaced with images of an imbecile, lazy, andworthless nigger not fully human, a creation of the racist White imagination. Theirimages were returned to me in our communications and I unknowingly consumed 174

them and they became my new ways of knowing and of self. But in a moderntime where many believe that lovelessness had become the order of the day(Hooks, 2000) I witnessed a \"return to love\" (Hooks, 2000) that resisted suchioveiessness and I was the receiver of its power.A Sixth Sense: Love if there was one theory, one body of ideas that honor and serve those whocommit their spirit and bodies to fight the dominating global project of oppression,it would be the theory of love. Its unmatched and mystical power is realized in it'spraxis. I am inspired by those who dare to theorize about love; Freire (1997),Hooks (2000), Darder (2002), Thich Nhat Hanh (1997) are but a few of thosewho boldly and unapologetically center this epistemology and honor love as away of knowing and being in the world. These writers and activists couple anethic of love directly to social justice and offer different meditations of how lovecan and should function in the everyday. They teach of love's transformativeeffects. Hooks, drawing from Eric Fromm, defines love as \"the will to extendone's self for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's spiritual growth ...love is an act of will - namely, both an intention and action. Will also implieschoice. We do not have to love. We choose to love\" (Hooks, 2000, pp.4-5).Hooks contributes that the act of love requires care, affection, recognition,respect, commitment, trust, and honest and open communication (p.5). I have not yet experienced, read, heard of, or learned of the limitations ofthe creative expressions of love. I don't believe we have come close to reaching 175

its capacity. There is much to be explored with regard to discovering new andinventive forms of loving. They don't aiways come in concrete forms, for examplecarrying someone who is suffering, in your spirit through thought and prayer arenot concrete forms of loving, but are fiercely effective. Equally as valuable, areconcrete forms such as a kind gesture, a verbal communication, or an act ofsacrifice. We have become culturally conditioned to diminish the powerful forcethat love is, to relegate love to the private realm, which has left many of usimpotent in our actions, and without the language to call out for help and expressour desires to love and to be loved. Hooks points out her separation from those who believe that to love isinstinctual, instead offering that it is a choice. Building on her observation, I offerthat the act of loving and the communicative expression of love is a choice, butthat the capacity to love is natural as an inherent part of what it means to be aspirit being, in any form (human, animal, earth, energy etc.). Indeed it is moreunnatural to not love than it is to love. It can be difficult to consider such anargument when the spirit is in bondage from the chokehotd of oppression, orwhen the spirit is isolated from community and without hope. Spirituai violence,and oppositional cultural constructions that stand to gain from love's absence,can derail us from believing that it is natural to love, but I believe it to be true.Love is, I argue, a 6th sense of the spirit, possessing the capabilities of materialmanifestations. It is a sense that is underrecognized, undervalued, andunderused in the modern state. 176

Who doubts that humans generally possess five senses; see, hear, taste,touch, smell? These senses are al! limited to the corporeal. There is much todiscover in considering love as a sixth sense; how does it work? is it like theother senses that we are familiar with? Take hearing for example; mothers arecapable of blocking out all other noises except her own child. With sight, we havethe ability to close our eyes. Love is the same way, it is there should we chooseto use it. It is our selectivity of love, powered from our various constructions onwhen we should, how, and who we should love that positions us as limited. Forinstance, some people love animals and choose not to love people. I maintainthat love comes from God; it is a gift of the spirit that we possess, just as wepossess gifts of the body, like eyes, nose, and ears. My contribution here is thatby framing love within everyday language and the concept of a 6th sense we cannormalize acts of loving and its expressions. In my everyday way of being and knowing in the world, I love others andmyself, and use my growing knowledge of love to navigate my way in the world. Icontinue to sharpen my 6th sense through its everyday use. I use it so much thatwhen I underutilize this sense, perhaps because I feel wounded, there isrestlessness about me and I feel abnormal. It is not long before I take correctiveaction. In the same way I would never spend a day with my eyes closed, or nottouching, I do not spend a day not loving many times over. Just as taste, sight and smell can open up new worlds, so can love.Powerful things happen when using this sense. More than wounded, I feel that I 177

have been spiritually raped by the violence of institutional racism. It was love thatreceived me and brought me back to community. It was an act of radical love (Freire, 1997) by Dr. Bernadette Caiafel! asthe only department faculty member of color in a higher education institution thatregularly valued Whiteness and devalued people of color; to teach a graduateclass titled \"Voices of Women of Color\". In this space I heard from ChandraMonhanty, Bell Hooks, Gloria Anzaldua, Linda Alcoff and other women wholooked like, felt like, and experienced the same kinds of oppression ! had. Iconnected to a power that helped me reclaim my voice. When Dr. Kate Willink told me that she would be honored to work with meas an advisee and carried me in her spirit for three years, mentoring as an act oflove (Calafell, 2007), she returned to me images of my former self as importantand valued. She chose to do so as a new faculty member, turning down therewards she likely would have gained from further social and politicaldisenfranchising and marginalizing my Black body as an act of White bonding. Inthe three years I have known her, there were very few stretches of time wherethere was an absence of contributions to building relationship with me. Throughemails where she took interest in my life, my academic progress, my family, andmy healing I came to know her intimately, and she me. She practiced deeplistening, and with her I felt loved, heard, and visible. It took sustained lovingbefore I could even believe this as a grounded reality for me. And there came amoment when I believed that she did see me as a brilliant and beautiful person 178

and I began to remember that I was, and re-imagined a new way of being outsideof colonial domination. Kate for me is a gift from God, who through her friendship, grace, honesty,integrity, and love led me to my discovery of a commitment higher than identitypolitics. Identify politics, though important and critical to understanding andresisting, is not the highest order of being. Building on the work of identitypolitics, iove, persists to open spaces with a force strong enough to combust theengine of oppression.Community as a Human Condition Community, I argue, is a core element of the human condition. It is thecritical condition necessary for successfully negotiating intercuitural spaces,particularly between instltutiona! and marginalized identities. Where lovefacilitates a knowing of each other, and ourselves, it is also the critical path tocommunity, a spiritual space in which we gather in order to learn from,encourage, protect, serve, enjoy, and appreciate each other. More than agrouping of identities, it is a space that serves the spirit and has no dependencyon politics of the body. I know it to be an intercuitural Mecca where pluralisticidentities can converge, as there is no possessor of this domain. To be dear, thepath to this place is lined with political choices, iike the choice to love in theeveryday. And living in this space is a political choice. In a world that obsesseswith only the physical and material and is comfortable with ioveiessness, theconcept of community becomes easily lost. But it is here that we gain the critical 179

mass necessary for social justice, and where tools are developed to dismantlefear and other fogies and mechanisms of oppression. It was Dr. Frank Tuitt, the only Black male educator I ever had known inmy entire school career who walked me back to my place in community afterforcefully being isolated. In his deep knowing and respect for community, heloved me and assisted me in connecting back to this place. In his classrooms,vulnerability was valued. In his praxis underlining this value, he would share hiswritings on subjects that confronted the politics, sufferings, and other embodiedknowledge that had come from his living in a Black body. There was room in hisclassroom for different marked bodies that were scripted with a variety of politicsand experiences, to engage each other with authenticity and mutual respect. !nhis classroom, a Black body is never under an imposing White gaze, throughtext, conversation, epistemoiogy, pedagogy or embodiment. My work continues to teach me that community is always waiting for us. Itis a gift from God - a place that we did not design, or build anymore than wedesigned, created or built this earth. Community is in a sense our spiritual earth.If you look, with your sixth sense, love, you can locate this space. Here we canbe healed, we can be whole and free to fully express our spirit and unleash itspower. It is a realm where oppression has no authority or place. My hope is thatwe continue to discover new knowledges critical for our daily living. Love andcommunity returned me to my self, with new life in order to continue my work.With vigilance, ! continue to love others and to persist in my invitations to walk 180

with them or lead them to community. As I travel my life path, 1 never know who Iwill find or who will find me. But I find hope in knowing that my identity has ahome where it cannot be contested and is fully human, whole, and free fromoppression. Where covert institutional discrimination isolates contested bodies andspirits, with a goal of domination; a condition that enslaves free spirits until theyhave no life left - community is an antidote. With the full conviction of mydeveloped intellect, the knowing of my body, and with every thread of myindividual and collective spirit as witness, I am testifying that love as a 6th sense,an everyday way of knowing and community, the spiritual space where we gatherare the domains where freedom can be realized. It is because marked bodies are forced to negotiate Interculturally withininstitutional spaces where logics of oppression terrorize and dehumanize, that wemust be active and inventive in our resistance, I have accounted for one suchlogic, institutional covert discrimination, calling it out through its visibility. ThoughI contextualized this logic within Black/White bineric, racist experiences, I stressits broader connection to non-dominant spirits and bodies who themselves havecultural identities with its own ways of knowing to contribute to this dialogue.Exposing institutional covert discrimination as a phenomenon in the everydayredirects the power that institutions have undeservedly gained through secretlyrelying on this logic to quietly dominate and destroy contested identities.Identifying this power structure gives social justice advocates a map by which to 181

develop counter strategies. I provide one such counter strategy of love andcommunity as intelligence for those who have suffered and are looking for de-colonizing tools to resist and reclaim themselves. Cultural communication intelligence interrogates the function of powerwithin culture. With this Sens i read institutional narratives that highlight diversitypledges, inclusion statements, equal opportunity compliance, and offer statisticalsupport that detail counts of how many marked bodies are present and I amunsatisfied. I become restless as a urging within me demands that thesenumbers and unknown marked bodies that have been used to fatten politicalrhetoric that serves corporate branding be second to the identification of peoplethose numbers represent. We should ask who these intercultural communicatorsare and what are their stories? We should wonder what their lived experiencesare within these institutions and what the effect of intercultural negotiations havehad on their spirit. Those answers, that knowledge should be the material for thenarratives that should be taken seriously. When we act with this kind of integrity,transparency, and honor and respect we are in effect making decisions to loveand to position each other to be in community. In these acts of advocacy forsocial justice we are refusing to render people invisible for the scripting ofinstitution's imaginations onto marginalized bodies. This dissertation extends communication research and communicationand culture through its naming of ICD logic and in its insider view of negotiatingidentities of difference. Typically identity is regarded on the level of the individual. 182

I lay out here an argument for an understanding of identity that also extends toinstitutions. Where intercuiturai negotiations stalled and failed before betweenindividuals and institutions; whose identities were invisible making it possible forthem to be anonymous, elusive, and pervasive; this move of transparency opensup spaces for developing strategies to negotiate difference. In these spacesmarginalized identities are empowered to negotiate in ways that were notpreviously open or accessible and with these tools they can be less susceptibleto the bullying effects of institutional anonymity. I see opportunities for otherresearchers to build on this work. What 1 provide here can assist future researchthat aims to formulate specific communication strategies and tactics that allownon-dominant subjectivities to access closed institutional spaces. To institutions; this work offers examination and insight Into how structuraldiscrimination operates on a communicative level unconsciously and consciouslywithin organizations. Beyond a responsibility to social justice, the economic andmaterial burden of discrimination is a strong motivator for the need to understandthe dynamics of intercuiturai communication within organizations from a critical,cultural and embodied communication perspective and the operation ofdiscriminatory logics. Where policies, laws, and best practices fail -communication can intervene with solutions. For communicators; this work offers a response to the structural violencethat disrupts successful intercuiturai communication between varying structuraland operational powers. The naming of iCD marks a place at which we can begin 183

to iabor for more ways to make it visible, thus disrupting its power which workslargely on its ability to be invisible and evade responsibility. To others who have experienced institutional oppression; I offer you a wayto name what has happened to you so that you can speak and act out to stop theviolence, recover your losses, and heal. I hope that this work contributes toimagining ways in which to coalesce what you know with what I have offered oflove and community in order to secure justice. Negotiating identity difference between institutions and marked bodieswithin the everyday is an act of cultural communication which affects justice. Themapping of institutional covert discrimination by naming (which is a strategy ofdismantling and an act of reclamation) and making visible this phenomenon is atool that can serve those who are confronted by Its challenges and those who arein a position to dismantle its constructions. Future research can push this workforward as it seeks to continue make ICD visible, public, and normative. 184

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