When failing to think inclusively costs lives
Photo by GEORGE DESIPRIS from Pexels
A candid conversation with an Equity Sequence™️ learner
by Suhlle Ahn
There’s no downside to being inclusive, right?
Is it a given that increased equality benefits everyone in society and society as a whole?
If you work in the diversity and inclusion space, of course the answer is yes. But in the world at large, resistance to equality, or the attempt to expand it, can rear its head in so many ways, on so many levels.
In my conversation with Christina Deveau, an Equity Sequence™️ learner who recently completed the training and was generous enough to zoom with me and share her learnings, we didn’t shy away from discussing some of these uncomfortable, real-world truths.
In fact, it was a remark Christina made in the course of conversation that got me thinking about my opening question.
“There’s no negative to being inclusive,” she said.
You would think, right?
Yet, clearly, for a sizeable segment of the population, this isn’t the case.
Christina Deveau and Suhlle Ahn
As it happens, Christina is Canadian, while I myself am American. Christina is female, cisgender, White, and in her late 20s, while I am female, cisgender, of East Asian descent, and very much past my 20s.
We spoke less than a week after the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol – an event that brought home just how high the stakes can be when the prospect of greater inclusion is perceived as a threat. The presence of Confederate flags; of Neo-Nazi graphic tees with 6MWE printed oh-so-innocuously alongside Italian fascist eagle insignia and sold on Amazon (at least for a time); of medieval Christian Crusader symbolism, sprinkled among the QAnon signs and MAGA hats – all left little doubt about the nature of the conflict at hand.
And so, even though we were meeting to talk about the micro – i.e., how learners are applying the Equity Sequence™️ in concrete, real-life situations – it was hard not to be cognizant of the macro, hanging somewhat ominously over the day.
For Christina, the micro was a project for a disaster management training course she had taken; one that involved various stages of planning for her hometown, in the event of a natural disaster, such as a severe storm. As part of the assignment, students were tasked to come up with a list of residents and ways of disseminating an emergency message to reach all of them. It provided the perfect opportunity for her to use the Sequence™️ as a way of checking herself; of thinking beyond the familiar and obvious.
While the scenario was hypothetical, it clearly had real-life application – one in which the consequences of failing to think inclusively could be life-threatening.
Photo by GEORGE DESIPRIS from Pexels
“The thing I love about the Equity Sequence™️,” Christina told me, “is that it seems so simple and so obvious. But it gives you a checklist - it’s an easy reminder - a way of asking yourself if you’ve done your due diligence.”
Christina lives in a small city of about 400,000 in Nova Scotia. It’s made up of both centrally-located residents and a more rural population. Having the Equity Sequence™️ as a tool allowed her to think about a range of possible exclusions.
“It was a great exercise to get out of my own head.”
Because she fits the profile of the majority population, she knew she needed to think beyond herself. And one place she sees inequities is for people who live in the less concentrated, rural areas of her municipality, where high-speed internet access and digital connectivity are not a given. As the most common means of communication, clearly this could become a point of failure in an emergency situation.
Other groups she thought about were the elderly and disabled, who might be less likely to leave their homes on a regular basis, and who might need help in the event of an evacuation.
Also in her city, she noted, there is a significant Lebanese community. This made her think about other cultures in the population, for whom English might not be a first language; who either might not pay attention to standard notifications via TV or radio, or who might be listening to alternate language channels. It made her think about the need to reach out to community leaders, beyond the route of traditional media.
Lastly, she spoke about a growing homeless population in her city; a group that has trouble finding affordable housing and can’t secure a place to live. How would they be affected by a storm?
Because Christina had mentioned fitting the profile of the majority population, I was curious to know what drew her to Tidal Equality in the first place.
It’s the kind of thing I always wonder about; a point of personal interest; because my own experience of racial awareness, from having grown up as a minority in a majority White country, has left an imprint – a kind of perennial psychological awareness of apartness, or dissimilarity. As unsought after a condition as it’s been, it has probably provided me a springboard for wider understanding. Having skin (or dare I say, skin color) in the game naturally makes you attuned to issues of exclusion.
And because I believe cultivating a sense of empathy toward those not reflexively like yourself is necessary to break the cycle of unconscious bias, I wonder how you spark this in someone who hasn’t come to it by way of personal experience. If you’ve ever seen The Miracle Worker, it’s almost as if a Helen Keller-like breakthrough has to occur.
By "The Miracle Worker" - eBayfrontback, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=31236161
“So how did you become interested in Tidal Equality and issues of equity?,” I asked.
She thought about it and clarified. “It’s not so much that it became an interest for me,” Christina said. “Consciousness about equity has always been in the periphery of my life, even if I didn’t fully understand it.”
But while she didn’t think of herself as someone who has faced a lot of discrimination or exclusion, she did recall experiences that had contributed to her consciousness.
A student exchange she did in Japan as a teenager, for example, gave her some sense of what it must be like to stand out rather than blend in with the majority. People would say things – not always nice, and right in her presence – assuming she didn’t speak the language or understand what they were saying, when in fact she did.
She could recall, as well, instances in the past of having been talked down to as a woman, or of having a colleague ignore something she said while in conversation, and speaking past her, to a male colleague.
Even in the industry she has education in, Public Relations – which she noted is a very female-dominated profession – she’s been aware of the disproportionate number of male leaders compared to female.
And perhaps most memorably, an experience she had working with students with disabilities in college, while planning an orientation event that necessitated thinking about physical access to the event space, made her consider issues she hadn’t had to before.
“For me,” she said, “there’s no question that there are people discriminated against, everywhere you look. Long before the Black Lives Matter movement, you could tell people were not treated with equity and inclusion.”
In the end, she said, “Being a citizen in the current climate – especially living in Toronto, which is such a multicultural city (she lived there prior to her recent move back to Nova Scotia), made it something I just couldn’t ignore any more, but I struggled with how I could change it myself.”
The current climate...
Trevor Hughes-USA TODAY/Sipa USA/PA Images
Once again, it was hard not to feel the immediate connection to current events.
In the U.S., the social and political tension feels particularly acute, as we move rapidly toward becoming a majority minority nation. But all over the industrialized West, too, as more open immigration policies since the 60s and 70s; and gradual demographic shifts, together with civil rights gains for marginalized groups, have given rise to anxieties about who belongs and who does not; and as extremes of economic inequality, exacerbated by the pandemic, make it impossible to imagine simply going back to business as usual, the viral spread of far-right extremism and escalating nativist rhetoric make it hard to shake off a sense of foreboding.
Reflecting on the events of January 6th, Christina and I talked about the worrying nature of it all; how the threat felt by some – from being asked to share a piece of the pie; from believing the pie is theirs, and that it’s already been taken from them (“We’re taking back our country!!,” was the rallying cry) – was enough of a tinderbox to allow a would-be authoritarian to touch off a firestorm. The danger of it still loomed large, even though the insurrection hadn’t succeeded.
In Canada, too, she said, there is a lot of divisive rhetoric bubbling up. An us/them mentality. The founder of the Proud Boys, she reminded me, is a Canadian.
And so it felt right to address head-on, rather than dance around, the parallels between White nationalist groups on the one hand, intent on maintaining the current power structure or even returning it to an outdated past, and the kind of uneasiness and resistance you still find in the professional world; the academic; the world of arts and entertainment; and countless others, toward the idea of expanding equity and disrupting or challenging an existing power dynamic in the process.
Photo by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels
It took the video evidence of George Floyd’s murder – an event that to me felt a bit like that Helen Keller cognitive breakthrough – to galvanize what finally seems like a real step forward in causing people who couldn’t quite understand the reality of racial injustice to suddenly get it.
Yet with each step toward progress, to be sure, backlash will arrive, moving in lockstep. And the more concrete the gains, the greater the perceived threat.
“We need to make people not afraid of differences,” Christina concluded.
And I agreed, wholeheartedly.
But how?
Christina made some wise and insightful suggestions – once again bringing it back to the level of the micro. It seemed a good idea to apply the Equity Sequence™️ early in someone’s career, for instance, beyond teaching it only at the changemaker level, so that you’re not having to undo an entrenched pattern by the time you get to the top.
And do it regularly, should be another mantra, so that it becomes second nature. So that you fight your own biases and catch yourself before you make an error.
Because, ultimately, the problems inherent in fighting for social justice and equity at the macro level, and the problems you encounter at the micro, are one and the same, in kind, if not degree.
At the same time, the global scale of inequality can make people feel overwhelmed. For some, it can induce a degree of paralysis and make it difficult to know what to do.
And this, precisely, was what Christina found appealing about the Equity Sequence™️.
“You don’t always have to worry about changing the world,” she said. “You can work on that small corner around you.”
“Think globally; act locally,” I offered, to quote the old adage.
“It seems so simple,” she said, “but it ingrains it in an easy, manageable way.” For anyone who might feel overwhelmed about the challenge of trying to build diversity and inclusion, “It makes it digestible.”
“And if there’s an easy way to try to be more inclusive,” she offered, “why wouldn’t you want to do it?”
