Engaging Critical Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion: Insights From Art, Activism, and Scholarship

Abstract

In recent years, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) (also called DEI) initiatives have gained significant prominence. This surge can be traced back to the overwhelming violence and brutality that culminated in the murder of George Floyd, a Black American man, by a white police officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on May 25, 2020. The incident ignited widespread protests and calls for racial justice, prompting mainstream corporate settings to adopt EDI initiatives aimed at fostering inclusivity and reducing disparities (Kujawa 2022, p. 72; Seijts and Milani 2022, p. 573-4). Despite their stated goals, the effectiveness of these corporate EDI initiatives in addressing institutional racism remains widely debated. Critics argue that many of these efforts are performative—superficial gestures rather than substantive structural change (Ahmed 2012; Bain 2023; Walcott 2018).

The majority of the extant research in the field of EDI work concerns the instrumentalization of EDI strategies by corporations. Common examples include: EDI staff training, EDI audits (by specialized consultants), and explicit shifts within organizational structures in the wake of broadscale EDI, which include, for example, hiring mandates aimed to create more visibly diverse workplaces, which stem from affirmative action policies (Alegria 2020; Andresen 2007; Dewidar et al. 2022; Harrison-Bernard et al. 2020; McCandless et al. 2021; Naidoo et al. 2023; O'Brien and Kerrigan 2023; Puritty et al. 2017; Stevens et al. 2008).

Against this backdrop, our special issue approaches EDI from a different angle–one rooted in grassroots community organizations, as opposed to strictly corporations and institutions. This impetus stems from scholars like O'Brien and Arnold (2022) who note that “rarely is a grass roots or bottom-up approach to EDI considered” (p. 2). We sought to engage with researchers who connected with, or had pre-existing relationships with, organizations that were built upon EDI principles or foundations, rather than those that had imported EDI at a later stage in their development. We were particularly interested in organizations whose practices and policies were founded upon serving their constituents, many of whom could be understood as historically oppressed, through intersectional means (Crenshaw 1989). These were organizations uninterested in solely performative EDI, or what Ahmed (2006) calls EDI “non-performatives.” These are organizations who were doing the real things their constituents needed, responding to demonstrated needs; for instance, they were not hiring an EDI consultant ad hoc solely to appease external donors or trends.

It was through this focus on grassroots and community-led practices that the idea for this special issue emerged. Our SSHRC-funded project brought together an international research team exploring what we call “EDI from within.” This concept recognizes that social-justice organizers and their community initiatives have been enacting EDI for decades, whether they have labelled their work as such. Through our call for papers, we sought to understand how internally developed EDI policies and practices can foster genuine inclusion in grassroots organizations led by historically oppressed groups. We also wanted to explore how these models might be made visible to strengthen the growth and sustainability of other organizations. We were fortunate to receive many excellent submissions, which extended the scope of the outlined call towards institutions and venues beyond those of community organizations, while also providing fresh and novel insights for this field.

Our project has also enabled our team to connect with, learn from, and support local social-justice and community organizations in Canada, the United States, and Morocco. Contributions emerging from these collaborations include articles by Marie Bernard-Brind'Amour & Yasmin Jiwani; Faiza Hirji; Alison Harvey, Tamara Shepherd, Dani Rudnicka-Lavoie & Emily Mohabir; Sandra Jeppesen, iowyth Ulthiin, Emily Faubert, Kira Min Poole & Dale Boyle; Kenza Oumlil, and Zeinab Farokhi & Evangeline Holtz Schramek. In our efforts to mobilize our project over the past few years, we have connected with scholars around the globe: Sarah Jane Aiston; Pascale Caidor; Ardavan Eizadirad & Sabreena Ghaffar-Siddiqui; Danica Facca & Arun Jacob; Lynell S. Hodge & Natasha Jones; and Thulani Nkosi & Nerishka Singh. The outcomes of these rich research, connections, and collaborations are compiled in the pages of this special issue.

We write this 5 years after the murder of George Floyd and during a period of marked backlash against any material gains for EDI that were thought to take hold in the wake of this tragedy. We write this from the territories currently known as Canada, at a time when the King of England has just opened the federal parliament—an act not performed by a British monarch since Queen Elizabeth's visit in 1977. King Charles III noted the exceptionalism of this moment: “the world is a more dangerous and uncertain place than at any point since the Second World War” (2025, p. 7), with values such as “democracy, pluralism, self-determination, and freedom” (2025, p. 6) under threat. We are not monarchists, but the underlying stance of this vision and its grandiose optical gesture speaks to the complexity of this moment. The authentic practices that together are understood as “EDI” are an associated limb of such stated values and thus, too, are under threat. There are many helpful critiques of the implementation of the affirmative action policies that have formed the bedrock of more contemporary EDI movements. However, it is our position that a consistent retooling of the praxis of EDI work should not rupture the foundational import of EDI's broader social-justice impulses. What do we have if we do not have equity, equality, diversity, and inclusion? This is a world we do not want to inhabit; a world where we fear for the many while the few rise inexorably.

This concern is echoed by Eizadirad and Ghaffar-Siddiqui (2025), who express it so eloquently in their commentary for this issue. They explain that, as EDI gains are eroded, we must “return to [EDI's] radical roots, which [are] about the community at large and grassroots organizing: identifying and through innovative policies, programs, and/or services meeting the needs of people from different walks of life, in the process creating the conditions for everyone and the larger community to thrive. This is a collective effort and must occur through empathetic listening, dialogue, and relationship-building with one another, including those with drastically different opinions and lived experiences.”

It is within this fraught but vital context that the contributions gathered in this special issue take on their full significance. This revelatory, radical work is exhibited in each of the twelve articles. These pieces traverse continents, methodologies, fields, findings, and forms. What unites this issue, however, are these researchers' clear-eyed dedications to cataloguing the work of EDI practitioners as their efforts become ever thwarted, with paradigm shifts affecting funding resources and institutional practices that will impact the lives of everyday people, everywhere.

As we have seen with the devastating global ripple effects of recent USAID cuts, these challenges are not abstract—they are already reshaping realities. Yet, the researchers featured in this issue also write of the work still to be done. They intone that, while nomenclature might, by means of the cyclical nature of politics and the shifting status-quo, be put on the defensive, what remains are commitments, burning embers awaiting reignition, no matter what names you call them. This issue becomes, then, a textual archeology of a moment under chaotic transformation, a tracing of a series of heterogeneous practices that may, soon, no longer possess a terminology to bind them. We collect them here, for you, for now, with the hope that both their lessons and their commitments will serve to fuel their future iterations.

As co-editors of this special issue, we believe it is important to begin with a reflection on who we are and where we come from–not just geographically, but in terms of lived experience, identity, and institutional location. The themes explored in this issue are deeply entangled with histories of violence and erasure, as well as with the ongoing work of resistance and community care. Our own positionalities inevitably shape how we approach equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI)–what questions we ask, what stories we are attuned to, and how we understand power.

I, Zeinab, identify as an immigrant woman from Iran, born during a time of war and raised in its aftermath. My early years were marked by displacement, poverty, and state violence—experiences that continue to shape how I understand justice, belonging, and structural inequality. I have lived, studied, and worked across Iran, India, and now Canada. These transnational experiences have given me a layered understanding of how power, privilege, and resistance operate differently—yet often in interconnected ways—across borders. My academic background spans history, sociology, women and gender studies, media, and communication. This interdisciplinary foundation shapes how I engage with equity work—not only as a scholar, but as someone committed to understanding how power operates across time, place, and representation. Living and working in Canada today, I carry privileges I did not grow up with. My education here has opened doors to institutions, networks, and forms of legitimacy that have fundamentally shaped my career. My Canadian passport provides mobility and access that many others—especially those still navigating war, displacement, state violence, or legal precarity—may never experience. I try to remain aware of how these privileges shape my perspective, and how they may at times create distance from the very communities I seek to advocate for.

I, Evangeline, identify as a white settler scholar of the territories currently known as Canada. While I am often socially coded as female, I identify more with they/them pronouns. I have lived experiences in poverty and with addiction and mental health. As a trained policy analyst, intersectional researcher, social justice advocate, global non-profit sector worker, writer, and educator, I possess extensive experience in the fields of feminist, racial, and disability justice. Yet, my white privilege and enculturation within the so-called Canadian state often skews my perceptions towards white supremacy and its colonial and masculine logics. I come to this study awake to this and intent on engaging reflexively with my own biases as they impact both its production and dissemination.

As we have navigated our co-editing of this issue and considered the enlightening approaches brought to us by our contributors, we have sought to reflect on our own biases/privileges to provide nurturing, and not gatekeeping, to the knowledge collected here. Our goal has been to create space for the grounded, radical, and often-overlooked equity work that is already being done—in grassroots organizations, in community spaces, and in the margins where resistance thrives.

The twelve articles featured in this special issue span local, national, and transnational contexts—from South Africa to Morocco, from Canada to the United Kingdom and the United States. Across academic, activist, legal, creative, and community settings, the contributors examine how equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) is being practiced, contested, and redefined in real-world settings. The articles engage diverse domains, including higher education, media, workplace policy, grassroots organizing, and community-based research. Yet, they are connected by four interwoven themes: (1) the tensions between performative EDI and institutional resistance; (2) the negotiations of equity in workplace and policy contexts; (3) the transformative practices of grassroots and community-based justice; and (4) the reimagining of research ethics through co-creation, consent, and relational accountability. These contributions together challenge dominant narratives, resist co-optation, and chart pathways toward more just and inclusive futures.

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.