administrator asks us to mentally identify students racially

[mahagonny]

A deanlet who identifies as female/BIPOC attended our department meeting recently with the request that we take inventory of the race and gender of the classroom for the purpose of monitoring their emotional well being and offering support where needed. Also, she suggests that we invite her to accompany us if we find a student appears to be in distress and we want to reach out to them in the case of that student being a BIPOC female person, if we are not one.
Questions/observations: (1) how do I know who identifies as which/what race? Should I ask them? If my roommate from the 90's, Jerome, were in the class, I would identify him as black without asking; whereas, I would identify his biological brother Jeff, as white, since his skin is much lighter. Etc. I would not feel comfortable asking them what their identified race is, if any.
(2) I do seem to recall seeing a study showing that college students of color are suffering depression at greater rates than white students currently; however, that's not to say depression among whites is not common, and there are a lot of white students. She didn't mention a single piece of data.
(3) The deanlet states something like 'you can assess your level of success and proper care given to the class by this metric: if the largest minority in the class (BIPOC women, according to deanlet) are doing OK, then you are exercising responsible care.' I disagree. Complicating the question is, to what extent should I be eager to pry into students' well-being, other than exchanging courtesies such as 'hi! how's it going today?'
(4) If she believes a BIPOC woman should accompany a white male professor in the act of reaching out to a BIPOC female student, then why wouldn't it also be true that a BIPOC female professor needs a white male to accompany her when reaching out to a white male student in emotional distress?
and (5) why would it be assumed that black people know more about what white people are experiencing in their inner emotional life than the reverse?
(6) how would you contend that a BIPOC woman is able to empathize with and support a white male student if you believe a white man is not equipped to empathize with and support a BIPOC female student?

[Ruralguy]

You can't ask people what their race is, so that's out. However, you can keep on eye out for difficulties that seem to be more common for certain groups. You don't have to ask every student about their lives out of class, but if someone is having a problem, you can ask them what the difficulties are and see what they say.  But if an administrator is really asking you to keep documentation on this, then I think there are serious issues with doing that, and you've mentioned them.

[Anon1787]

Since people are allowed to be gender fluid (but race fluid not so much a la Rachel Dolezal), you'd have to constantly ask which gender they identify as.

This also dovetails with a previous discussion about whether universities should be offering mental health services and in this case dragooning untrained faculty to help provide it.

Not gonna do it.

[Hegemony]

Why don't you ask these questions of the dean who proposed this?

[mahagonny]

You can't ask people what their race is, so that's out. However, you can keep on eye out for difficulties that seem to be more common for certain groups. You don't have to ask every student about their lives out of class, but if someone is having a problem, you can ask them what the difficulties are and see what they say.  But if an administrator is really asking you to keep documentation on this, then I think there are serious issues with doing that, and you've mentioned them.

She didn't ask us to maintain or share documentation, thankfully. I even doubt she expects us to take her up on the offer. I suspect our department was chosen for this visit because it is considered whiter than other departments.
I wonder if the offer isn't just a gesture aimed at the idea of 'decentering whiteness.' The DEI staff, as you can probably surmise from my complaining here on the forum, is on steroids, and constantly trying to increase their reach.
Or maybe she's under pressure to do something about the attrition rate. I don't think approaching students, either one or two faculty/admin as a team, to interrogate them about their emotional well-being is going to keep more students from dropping out. Seems heavy handed to me.
Often, I suspect, administrators do things, or say things, so they can then report back to the people they work with, and they can feel good that something is being done, as everyone looks busy. In that case, maybe just I can just ignore the bullshit and carry on.
What annoyed me was the ignoring of things that white students might be feeling that have to do with race. For example, the black suspect, Frank R. James, who is believed to have shot a bunch of people on the New York Subway. And he has a clear history of rage against and hatred of white people. No mention of that. We have students from New York City with family there. One of my friends on the faculty, from NYC, says he no longer feels safe in Manhattan.
Back when the racial hate crime against the Dancing Grannies, et al, in Waukesha happened, there was no mention from any administrators. Not one email message. There's no doubt that we have students and faculty from Wisconsin.
Yet they are endlessly proud of the student counseling services and 'sense of community' among faculty.

Why don't you ask these questions of the dean who proposed this?

I could I guess. I don't want to walk in there angry. It occurs to me, I shouldn't even really have to ask these questions. I'd rather talk to our chair, who appears to be a much more intelligent, down-to-earth person.
I almost resent having an administrator sort us into categories by physical appearance and then draw conclusions about our abilities to service students (in ways that were not even part of the job description) based on our presumed racial and gender identity. Seems like discrimination in hiring, after the fact.
As part-timers, some of us get discontinued as faculty for courses from time to time without being told why. This new supercharged social justice environment is just more stress.

[the_geneticist]

Sounds like a situation where you can safely ignore the particulars of this weirdly intrusive sort of request.  Ask what resources they would like you to share with your students.  Ask for permission to share the deanlet's contact information with students.
Then, share the resources with all of your students (tutoring center, counseling center, food pantry, pre-med/law/whatever interest groups, crisis hotlines, etc).  That way you don't single anyone out. 

[Caracal]

Sounds like a situation where you can safely ignore the particulars of this weirdly intrusive sort of request.  Ask what resources they would like you to share with your students.  Ask for permission to share the deanlet's contact information with students.
Then, share the resources with all of your students (tutoring center, counseling center, food pantry, pre-med/law/whatever interest groups, crisis hotlines, etc).  That way you don't single anyone out.

Are you sure this wasn't just an attempt to educate faculty about different ways in which signs of distress might manifest differently because of student' background? If so, that isn't asking you to make racial inventories of your students, or pay less attention to signs of distress in white students-just help you recognize alarm signs you might otherwise miss.

That doesn't mean any of this is well conceived or particularly useful. Often the evidence base for this kind of stuff is thin and the advice is poorly adapted to what instructors actually encounter, but that's just standard administrative bureaucracy...

[mahagonny]

Sounds like a situation where you can safely ignore the particulars of this weirdly intrusive sort of request.  Ask what resources they would like you to share with your students.  Ask for permission to share the deanlet's contact information with students.
Then, share the resources with all of your students (tutoring center, counseling center, food pantry, pre-med/law/whatever interest groups, crisis hotlines, etc).  That way you don't single anyone out.

Are you sure this wasn't just an attempt to educate faculty about different ways in which signs of distress might manifest differently because of student' background? If so, that isn't asking you to make racial inventories of your students, or pay less attention to signs of distress in white students-just help you recognize alarm signs you might otherwise miss.

...or which get concealed from persons who look white, as they shouldn't be trusted?

[marshwiggle]

Sounds like a situation where you can safely ignore the particulars of this weirdly intrusive sort of request.  Ask what resources they would like you to share with your students.  Ask for permission to share the deanlet's contact information with students.
Then, share the resources with all of your students (tutoring center, counseling center, food pantry, pre-med/law/whatever interest groups, crisis hotlines, etc).  That way you don't single anyone out.

Are you sure this wasn't just an attempt to educate faculty about different ways in which signs of distress might manifest differently because of student' background? If so, that isn't asking you to make racial inventories of your students, or pay less attention to signs of distress in white students-just help you recognize alarm signs you might otherwise miss.

That doesn't mean any of this is well conceived or particularly useful. Often the evidence base for this kind of stuff is thin and the advice is poorly adapted to what instructors actually encounter, but that's just standard administrative bureaucracy...

If that's really the intent, then it's either stupid or dangerous. Professional counsellors with years of training are tuned to subtleties about how stress might manifest in different people. To pretend  that some single seminar or instruction sheet can remotely prepare non-professionals to pick up on those outside a clinical setting is ludicrous.

If it's really important to deal with this kind of subtlety, then they need to have specialists in place to do it. (Which is of course vastly beyond the budget of any institution.)

[aginghipster]

Lots of bad faith in this thread.

[marshwiggle]

Lots of bad faith in this thread.

Please elaborate.