Belonging is the new DEI Concept
When my kids were in preschool, my oldest was given some homework, flashcards to prepare him to begin school the next year. Upon a closer look, I saw that it was a lesson in how to determine who doesn’t belong. A lesson, I wanted to unteach them. In the 1990s my colleagues and I used to call ourselves “diversity educators,” but the term to capture our work has evolved through the years. Eventually the goal of “diversity” with a concern for representation, felt like too low of a bar. Social spaces that were stratified, segregated, or that valued assimilation or tokenization would all technically be “diverse.” Something was missing. “DEI educator” is the preferred term now that more fully incorporates diversity, equity, and inclusion. A vision of “inclusion” brings to mind people of diverse social identities (race/ethnicity, gender identities, sexual orientations, religions, abilities, and so on) all working and living side by side with equal levels of contribution and value to their shared community. “Equity” is the quantitative perspective of inclusion, with a goal of measurably equivalent outcomes. Imagine what social changes would have to occur for social demographics to not statistically predict any of these outcomes: imprisonment, income, educational attainment, and killed by police. All of those outcomes are currently not equitable. In Ibram Kendi’s How to Be An Antiracist, he reminds us that social inequities along these lines are all results of racist policies, and to believe that they are a result of a group’s inferiority is a racist idea. “Belonging” is the new term on the DEI block. Headlines place its emergence in 2019 to 2020. The concept of belonging in DEI work originally comes from special education scholars, like Eric Carter of Vanderbilt, who know that inclusion cannot be achieved until belonging matters. Carter says “Where we once pursued integration, we now talk about promoting inclusion. But my sense is that both terms fall short of what really matters most. People want to be more than merely integrated or included. They want to experience true belonging. But belonging is a hard concept to define. We quickly feel its absence, but describing it’s presence can be much more challenging.” Belonging is the qualitative perspective on inclusion. So, Carter’s research focused on defining the quality of belonging. He identified 10 themes related to the feeling of belonging. We feel that we belong when we feel: loved, present, invited, welcomed, known, accepted, supported, cared for, befriended, and needed. Brene Brown reminds us that belonging is not the same as fitting in, its rather the opposite. She says “’Fitting in’ is becoming who you think you need to be in order to be accepted. ‘Belonging’ is being your authentic self and knowing that no matter what happens, you belong to you. … Belonging doesn’t require us to change who we are; it requires us to BE who we are.” Think for a moment of a time and place where you felt you belonged. Chances are this is a difficult image for many of us to conjure regardless of our social identities. Daniel Buford and colleagues at the People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond, identified perfectionism as a cultural value that permeates many White-dominant cultures, including the USA. The message of “imperfection does not belong here” is often conveyed in our home, work, and community lives. In these spaces when the imperfections of our humanity are revealed, messages of our belonging disappear. And so we strive. Striving for perfection leaves us all feeling short, left out, and lacking belonging. Creating belonging organizations, communities, and society will benefit us all. Imagine now, who you extend a belonging sentiment toward? List five people in your work and community spaces who you’ve made a special effort to welcome, love, and include? In terms of social demographics, are they more like you than not? For many they are, and this is why it’s so important to include belonging in DEI work. We cannot be representationally diverse, in equitable ways, if we only reinforce who is already here with our belonging gestures. There’s another reason. When I saw my kid’s preschool flash cards, I instantly knew that they were being taught a false lesson that was already deep inside me – one that I was working hard to shake. The flashcards consisted of a deck of 50 cards or so, all with four photographs on them, each with the same question, “What Doesn’t Belong?” I’ve included samples here. “What doesn’t belong?” Of course, preschoolers should learn the skill of distinction and categorization. Of course. But that’s not what these cards were teaching. Look closer. A foundational psychology concept posits that we all form self-images by evaluating ourselves as compared to others. This social comparison is a human process, we all do it. How else would we know anything about ourselves? I am tall (compared to others), I am musical (compared to others), I am talented (compared to others) — are all examples of self-image formation via social comparison. As you can imagine, examples go on to include our socio-cultural identities as well. I am a woman; I am White; I am American. There are two types of social comparisons: same/different and superior/inferior. We subconsciously ask ourselves when meeting new people Am I the same or different from you? and also Am I superior or inferior to you? So, while we are asking ourselves whether we are attractive or ugly, successful or a failure, intelligent or stupid, we also decide if the differences we see are good or bad. We have a tendency to extend this judgment beyond our own worthiness, but onto others’ as well. I am better than you? Our culture teaches us to conflate same with superior and different with inferior. Heck, preschool flashcards teach us they are the synonyms. The flashcards said “What doesn’t belong?” when what they meant was “Which one is different?” As if things that are different, don’t belong? I’m certain I had flashcards and worksheets like this as
The Other Tower
The “Tower of Faces” is an exhibit in the U.S. Holocaust Museum. Perhaps you have seen this powerful installation? The tower is intimate, a small room with four walls that extend up three-stories. The walls are lined with 1,500 framed photographs of residents from the town of Eishyshok, Lithuania. The pictures are of families, friends, and neighbors, posing at dinner parties, swimming holes, weddings, holidays, reunions, and just generally enjoying what appears to be regular and comfortable lives. All of the photos were taken in the few months and years preceding the September date in 1941 when Nazi mobile killing units arrived to murder the 3,500 residents. Only 29 survived, including Yaffa Eliach who later created this exhibit with the photos she and other survivors collected. Read more here. Eliach was motivated to create this exhibit to show that her community was made up of humans who celebrated holidays, went skiing, and picked flowers. She wanted to remember their lives, not their deaths. They were just regular people. The exhibit invites viewers to imagine themselves as residents of this town. And imagine that they, too, could become exterminated under just the right socio-historical conditions. The first time I saw this exhibit I had taken my leadership communication class to the Holocaust Museum. I wanted them to face what “leadership” without inclusive values looks like. Before this trip, too often my students would wonder aloud, “Was Hitler a great leader?” I arranged this trip to preemptively address that kind of thinking. The museum provides the lesson of why contemporary leadership theorists include “value-based” as part of the definition of leadership. So, no, Hitler was NOT a great leader, nor was he leader at all. To some extent I expected the Tower of Faces, if not explicitly then in spirit. Visually the tower makes the point that I try to make about leadership in my class. Hitler did not strive to lead these people; he denied their humanity. Here in the tower is the evidence that his victims were human. What I did not expect, as we continued the tour, was a cobbling in my mind of another tower. My students and I entered the museum under the impression that Hitler threatened Nazi leaders, SS, killing squads, and death camp workers into their work – that they could not refuse orders to kill lest they be killed. But this wasn’t true. Historian Doris Bergen wrote “Germans were not forced to be killers. Those who refused to participate were given other assignments or transferred. To this day no one has found an example of a German who was executed for refusing to take part in the killing of Jews or other civilians. Defense attorneys of people accused of war crimes have looked hard for such a case because it would support the claim that their clients had no choice. The Nazi system, however, did not work that way. There were enough willing perpetrators so that coercive force could be reserved for those deemed enemies.” “Enough willing perpetrators…” Indeed. Spread throughout the museum were photos of such perpetrators – fresh-faced young SS officers patrolling streets, professional portraits of doctors who participated in euthanasia programs of the disabled, posed groupings of killing squad members, and drunken death camp workers. Some may have felt professional pressure, but none feared for their own lives. The perpetrators already held prejudices – against Jews, disabled people, LGBT folks, Catholics, Jehovah’s Witnesses, feminists, and so on – that the Nazis exploited with the Holocaust. When some humans are already viewed as less valuable as neighbors, employees, romantic partners, and students – when even touching them is considered taboo — why would torturing and killing them be immoral? What’s to think about? Rudolf Höss, a former Auschwitz commander said this at his Nuremberg trial: “Don’t you see, we SS men were not supposed to think about these things; it never even occurred to us. … We were all so trained to obey orders without even thinking that the thought of disobeying an order would simply never have occurred to anybody, and somebody else would have done just as well if I hadn’t. … I really never gave much thought to whether it was wrong. It just seemed a necessity.” It’s easy to imagine Rudolf, the SS, and the other perpetrators as evil caricatures – figures with no humanity as they denied others theirs. But here’s the uncomfortable truth that settled into me on that day. There’s another tower. The perpetrators were humans, too. Regular people, who before the Holocaust, also had “regular” lives. Somewhere there are pictures of them in family portraits, posing with relatives at a studio, grayscale pictures from the 1930s and 1940s. I have pictures like these in boxes in my attic – pictures with family members with features similar to mine, versions of me from an earlier time. Indeed, a quarter of my ancestors are German, though they arrived to the US four generations ago, in the mid-1800s. The people in the museum’s photographs look like me. Perhaps it’s easier to imagine ourselves as potential victims, but it’s just as real to imagine ourselves as potential perpetrators. What makes me any better of a person than they were? How can I be so sure? As horrifying as this thought is, the more I allow it in, the more empowered I feel. The fight to ensure that similar atrocities happen “never again” is a fight inside me. It’s inside each of us. And we are well positioned to do something about that.
Two Conditions for Healing
I have a friend, we’ll call her Jessica, who doesn’t speak to her mother, says the relationship is damaged beyond repair. When Jessica was a child her mom allowed abuse, defended the abuser, and turned the parenting of Jessica over to her grandmother in order to continue living with the abuser. Jessica says, “I’ve tried to have a relationship with her over the years. We’d keep hitting an impasse. I’ve told her how she’s hurt me; but she has excuses. ‘I was poor, trying to survive myself. I was a victim, too.’ I can’t heal from her excuses. It’s been a long time to realize this, but for my own mental health I’ve had to let that relationship go.” The trust between them is gone. I have another friend, Trina, who is a recovering alcoholic and rocking it. Says she went down that road in the first place because her parents were alcoholics. They thought it’d be fun to make getting wasted a family activity with Trina beginning when she was in 10th grade. They know better now; they’re even decades into recovery themselves. But Trina didn’t start to recover for another 10 years after them, after a lengthy visit in a treatment facility. Part of Trina’s recovery was to name her folks’ role in her addiction. They agree, but don’t see the purpose in lingering there. “We were young. We didn’t know alcohol was that harmful to kids. We just wanted to be your friend.” And later, “We thought that if we could recover, so could you. That would be your responsibility, not ours.” Trina does have a relationship with her folks, but they rarely if ever talk about this history. It’s too raw; it’s unhealed. Relationships with trauma in the past are hard to heal. A few years ago I went through an intensive Community Trustbuilding Fellowship. The fellowship consisted of five monthly residential weekends at a spiritual retreat center. The cohort of twenty-five fellows from around the country (and some from abroad) engaged in a deeply instructive and reflective process that prepared us for meaningful community work. The Community Trustbuilding Fellowship is offered by Hope in the Cities/Initiatives of Change USA, and their mission is to “transform inequality and conflict through systems of honesty, accountability, justice, equity and peace” (from their website). To work with communities and not at them we would have to build trust that, in many cases, had been destroyed. The challenge of building trust is complicated. My own story is a case-in-point. In many ways, I am a social do-gooder. I volunteer, teach social responsibility, and want to “make a difference.” I live outside of Richmond, Virginia where the population is half Black. It’s not hard to see racial inequalities here (and elsewhere), and I’m educated enough to know the inequities were created by centuries of national and local policy. Of course, Richmond’s history as a top importer and lead exporter of enslaved Africans and as the former capital of the Confederacy shows up in how we all live here today. So do the relics of Jim Crow segregation, redlining, Massive Resistance, and mass incarceration (just to name the most obvious forces). I am motivated to impact racial change in my community. Initiatives of Change’s mission to transform inequality is my jam. But me as a trustbuilder in Richmond? This is complicated. Most of the Black residents of Richmond are descendants of enslaved Africans. And me? I’m not only White, and therefore a visual representation of Whiteness, but also a descendant of a notorious owner of enslaved Africans and a descendant of a few Confederate soldiers who fought to defend slavery. I mean, my NAME “Carter” tells that story before I even speak a word. As a beginning community trustbuilder, these were the questions I held: Would my Whiteness proceed me? Would my skin be enough to inspire distrust? What would I do when I met a Black person with the last name “Carter”? Would I become overwhelmed with guilt? Would I be more likely to establish trust if I kept my ancestors a secret — don’t mention my family name, my hometown? Is there a place for me to process my familial history in this trustbuilding context? Or will I destroy trust by mentioning it? What if I literally wore my values, like a “Black Lives Matter” message tshirt? Would that make a difference? Are others even sizing me up? Or am I projecting my own insecurities onto other people? I have some answers now. I recently read an advice column that helped me to frame my approach to trustbuilding. A parent wrote in to ask advice about salvaging a relationship with her adult daughter who does not speak to her. The two of them blame each other for the failed relationship. The advice columnist, Lori Gottlieb, is a psychotherapist and author of Maybe You Should Talk to Someone. She had some helpful advice for healing relationships. “Being blamed for a child’s unhappiness can make a parent feel defensive and frustrated, but layered underneath that frustration might be feelings of shame or self-blame. (My grown daughter’s life is her responsibility, not mine—but what if there’s some truth in what she’s saying?) One way to rid yourself of those feelings is to dismiss her complaints entirely—which probably just makes her protest louder. Replacing self-blame with self-compassion, on the other hand, will allow you to look more closely at yourself, in a kind way, so that you can consider with an open mind why your daughter might be so angry with you even if you did your absolute best as a parent under the circumstances.” There are two conditions for healing that may seem at odds. First, we must honestly face our role in past events, fully own the things that we have done. Healing can begin for my friends if their parents could say, “I am deeply sorry I didn’t support you as a child; I see that my choices hurt you, and
The Arc of Violent Extremism
“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” – Martin Luther King, Jr. When unjust events happen, this quote is often evoked as a narrative changer, a hope giver. It was one of Barack Obama’s favorites. I’ve heard a similar sentiment from the older folks in my life, too. “As bad as things seem, they used to be so much worse.” Things are getting better. I thought I’d never see the day when same-sex couples could be married under USA law. Then it happened. I once told a political science professor colleague that I thought the first non-white-male USA president would be a Republican since that’s what it would take to get a sizable crossover vote. He disagreed, “Our primary system wouldn’t allow it; we’ll never see a non-white-male US president, not in our lifetimes.” Then it happened, though Obama was a Democrat. US laws used to prohibit couples of different races from getting married. Now they can. In my lifetime it used to be legal for husbands to rape their wives. Not anymore. Civil Rights leaders and the politicians who supported them used to get assassinated in public places. Nothing like that has happened in my lifetime. Wikipedia says the last lynching in the US was in 1981. Work places look more diverse than they were just decades earlier. Things are getting better. And things are getting worse. Much worse. In the USA, mass school and public shootings are a regular occurrence; many of those attacks are motivated by hate. Unarmed black citizens are being killed by local authorities who aren’t held accountable. Hate crimes are on the rise. Hate groups hold rallies and recruit in broad daylight (the KKK was in my community this month). The wealth gap is increasing; poverty is increasing. Our national discourse is increasingly divisive. Even families are severing on ideological grounds. I could go on. Things are getting better AND they are getting worse. Both are true. A paradox. I recently spent a week in Caux, Switzerland for an international conference called Toward an Inclusive Peace, also known as TIP. The theme this year was “preventing violent extremism.” On the topic of violent extremism, I knew I would learn plenty and wondered if I would have much to add to the conversation. I’m a professional communicator. I teach communication studies (interpersonal, intercultural, facilitation, small group, and leadership) at the college level and I’ve had some success being a facilitator for hire. I help community groups engage in difficult conversations. I knew I could offer nuanced communication skills as my strength but knew I had much to learn about global dynamics. The meeting took place in Caux Palace on the top of a mountain overlooking Lake Geneva, nestled between the Swiss and French Alps — a near literal palace in the sky. The palace was built in 1902 with the purpose of being a hotel for the world’s royalty, so it’s quite fancy. Magical, really. These days the palace is owned and operated by Initiatives of Change, an international organization dedicated to building trust across the world’s divides. Due in part to its central-to-many location, TIP was the most international meeting I’ve attended in both representation and process. Every continent was represented, some more than others. The meeting was mostly conducted in English and French. Interpreters were available via headphones and “whisper interpretation.” A graphic recorder was on hand to take notes of the preceding on large visual displays. Silent time and small group reflection were built into the schedule. Each day had a scheduled coffee and tea time. Meals were unstructured. Breaks between sessions were at least 30 minutes. I met people from countries immersed in conflict: Palestine, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, Ukraine, Uganda…I could go on. I heard first-hand experiences of violent extremism — bombs, shootings, acid splashes. I could feel heat coming from the eyes of some participants as they told me of their frustration with USA foreign policy and how its directly and negatively impacting their lives, or maybe that heat was coming from me. I felt shame, embarrassment, and even a bubbling feeling of defensiveness, similar to what many white US Americans¹ feel when they are called a racist, “I didn’t do it!” I challenged myself to stay engaged with the stories of folks from less stable governments, to stay connected enough to identify with their position. In doing so I saw that the USA is on a similar road toward more violent extremism. A person from Uganda told me that their leader has been in power for 33 years. That years ago when he came up against term limits, he extended them. When he came up against an age restriction, he removed it. “Sure it’s a democracy, but it’s theater.” I responded, “I fear that’s where we are headed.” “Oh no,” she responded as she shook her head, “the US democracy is too stable for that. This will pass. Trump cannot undo the democracy.” “I hope you are right.” A person from Ukraine explained her country’s current climate, “When we fight, Putin smiles” and that certainly sounded like something a US American would say. I kept feeling hit over the head with the idea that US Americans deal with violent extremism more often that we realize. Less socially powerful communities feel it imminently, but likely don’t call it “violent extremism.” To the extent that US Americans do not feel immersed in violent extremism is the extent to which we are better positioned to prevent further violent extremism. I learned at this meeting that I am a peacebuilder. “Peacebuilder” is an international identity that I’m only now realizing. In the USA I would have said “I’m a trustbuilder” or a “change maker.” Peace does not mean the absence of war. Peace means that everyone’s basic needs get met, not just our physical survival needs, but also our needs to become safe, loved, and self-actualized. When people are not free to become, there is