“You are One of Them”: Performing Inclusion and Practicing Marginalization in Academia

This article critically examines how diversity initiatives in higher education can paradoxically reinforce exclusionary practices, particularly within academic systems that frame inclusion as both an ethical commitment and institutional achievement. Through an autoethnographic approach grounded in everyday academic encounters, I analyze how power is reinforced through routine interactions and how individual actors actively sustain racialized hierarchies under the banner of inclusion. Scholars of color are frequently perceived through reductive racialized or migrant identities, regardless of credentials or scholarly contributions, revealing how institutional whiteness is reproduced not only structurally but through interpersonal practices. Rather than presenting these dynamics as abstract or unintentional, the article interrogates how specific actions—such as symbolic inclusion, exceptionalization, and performative allyship— uphold the “neutral” norms of white, middle‐class academic culture. Drawing on García Peña’s (2022) critique of “The One,” I argue that diversity discourse often masks deeper power asymmetries by isolating and instrumentalizing minoritized scholars, positioning them as representatives rather than colleagues. By shifting attention from representational inclusion to the micro‐politics of complicity, this article calls for greater accountability in how inclusion is practiced and performed within academic communities. By naming these practices, it aims to open space for more critical institutional analysis and the possibility of transformative change.