Quiz — Chapter 25: Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Grant Writing
Answer from memory, then check. These test equity vs. equality, authentic vs. performative equity, community engagement, the savior narrative, and writing about equity honestly.
1. Which best captures the threshold concept of this chapter? a) Equity is mainly about using the correct current terminology. b) Authentic equity work shares power; performative equity describes it. c) Equity and equality are the same thing. d) Equity requirements are best satisfied with a strong diversity statement.
Answer
(b). The test is whether power, resources, design, and leadership are genuinely shared with affected communities — designed with them, not just for them — or whether equity is merely described while power stays outside.
2. Distinguish equity from equality.
Answer
Equality treats everyone the same (uniform inputs). Equity gives people what they need to reach fair outcomes — often different levels of support, because they start from different places — attending to specific barriers and disadvantages. (The box-over-the-fence illustration.)
3. What is performative equity?
Answer
Describing equity without sharing power — naming diverse populations, using expected language, adding a token advisory seat — while decisions, money, design, leadership, and credit stay entirely outside the affected community. The community is the object of the work, not a partner.
4. Why can a proposal check every DEI requirement box and still fail to advance equity?
Answer
Because requirements measure description (what you say about diversity/inclusion), while equity outcomes depend on practice (whether power, design, and benefit are genuinely shared). A proposal can describe equity fluently while keeping all decisions, money, and credit with outsiders — performance, not equity.
5. What is the savior narrative, and what replaces it?
Answer
Framing the community through deficits and helplessness with the applicant as heroic rescuer. It's replaced by asset-based, agency-centered framing: the community has strengths, assets, knowledge, and agency alongside real (often externally-imposed) barriers, and the applicant is a humble partner removing obstacles — not a savior.
6. What does "nothing about us without us" test for?
Answer
Whether people affected by a project were genuinely involved in shaping it, with real influence — or whether it was designed for them by outsiders and they were brought in late for validation or appearance. It's the authentic-equity test applied to design.
7. Why does centering community voice and lived experience produce better work, not just better optics?
Answer
The affected community holds knowledge outsiders lack — the real barriers, what fits the actual context, what's failed before, what people will use and trust. Power-sharing is epistemically better: it brings essential knowledge into the design, improving feasibility and effectiveness. Authentic equity and good design converge.
8. What are positionality and cultural humility?
Answer
Positionality is honest awareness of your own position (identity, power, perspective) relative to the community and how it shapes the work. Cultural humility is approaching a community as a respectful learner rather than an expert who knows best. Both are antidotes to the savior posture.
9. Why is "naming specific barriers and design responses" better than generic diversity language?
Answer
Generic language ("we value diversity") describes nothing actionable and is the hallmark of performative equity. Specifics — this barrier, this population, this design response — demonstrate real understanding and show equity designed into the work rather than asserted. Specificity is both better practice and better writing.
10. Why does an average outcome sometimes hide an equity failure?
Answer
A strong average can coexist with the most marginalized participants gaining little. Equity requires disaggregating outcomes by the groups facing the largest barriers to see whether they benefited — designing equitable, disaggregated outcome measures rather than reporting only averages.
11. How does compensating community partners relate to authentic equity?
Answer
Paying community partners and people with lived experience for their expertise and time makes power-sharing real rather than extractive (expecting free labor reproduces inequity), demonstrates a genuine commitment that shows up in the budget, and improves the work by letting partners afford to participate. Reviewers increasingly check the budget for it.
12. Why is performative equity so common, and what's the honest alternative when full power-sharing isn't yet possible?
Answer
Because equity is required (so you must address it) while genuine power-sharing is hard (control, time, messiness) — so performing it is the path of least resistance. The honest alternative: share what power you genuinely can, describe it truthfully, and don't inflate it — rather than performing more than you practice.
13. (Synthesis) Two proposals address the same disparity with the same correct terminology; one is authentic, one performative. Name one distinguishing factor.
Answer
Power-sharing (authentic shares genuine design/decision/leadership/resources with the community; performative keeps them outside), or the savior vs. asset-based framing, or specific design-embedded equity vs. generic asserted equity, or honest claims matched to reality vs. inflated involvement. All turn on the threshold: authentic equity shares power; performative equity only describes serving the community.