Identity, Diversity and Inclusion

Identity and Bias

An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

Our identity is defined by our characteristics, factors, attributes, feelings, or beliefs that distinguish us from others. Identity simply put is who or what somebody is: a person’s sense of self. An individual comes into the world carrying only their genetic information and is given identities after birth, and as they grow more identities are thrust upon them by the society. Notably, soon after birth even before we can have a say in any matter concerning us, we already belong to several groups due to the societal governing principles. Each of these groups has certain assumed-behavioral norms, obligations, and rights. While at the same time due to freedom and choice, as we grow, we get to choose other identities based on personal circumstances, preferences, affinities and aspirations. And with each successive generation, choices and freedoms continue to expand hence creating arrays of more identities to adopt or adapt to.

Identities are markers that frequently determine how easy or how difficult our life is or will be in the future. Each identity comes with rights, privileges, advantages or disadvantages, acceptance or rejection, access or barriers and ultimately with a price tag that determine how well we do in life and this is what makes identity in diversity and inclusion an emotive issue. Therefore, the identities we ascribe to allow us to understand and recognize ourselves, our station in life relative to other people, things, places, or situations.

As a D&I practitioner I look at identity from two perspective.

1.     Perspective of individual versus group.

2.     Perspective of relative importance of identity to a person.

1.     In perspective of individual versus group identity can be categorized into three:

·        Individual (personal),

·        Collective (group and community) and

·        Extended identities (extensions to individual and group identity and extended as in universality of the human race).

Individual identity for that reason means who a person is when considered separately from others. It further refers to how this person is designed differently from those in the same environment. The difference here is looked at from every aspect of this person’s life such as character, beliefs, and conduct.

Collective identity

Collective identity

Collective identity address our inherent desires as human beings to belong. We are born into a group and as we grow we desire to belong, qualify, be accepted and included into certain groups or communities. In fact, human beings are often referred to as social being, the age old maxims, such as ‘no man is an island, no one ever achieved anything alone, there is safety in numbers, sticks in a bundle are unbreakable, a double strand is not easily broken’, are taught to us from childhood, to inculcate sense of community, and introduce and lead us to seek affinity groups.

Group identity

Group identity refers to the identity of individuals tied together by a diversity factor(s) or attribute(s) or are connected in one way or another. These people can be connected because of their gender, profession, color, religion, marital status, age etc. Group identity is important since; humans tend to identify themselves as being part of a certain group with distinct qualities that shape who they are personally. According to Celia (2012), the process of group identification can take two directions. One might decide consciously or unconsciously that they belong to a certain group, and thus identify with it. 

Extended Identity

The final type of identity that we shall be discussing is the extended identity that refers to the identity a person bears in relation to something else, part of that person’s life, or which that person is involved in. Most of us keep on adding new identities (Celia, 2012), such as our school or town. With time, we have increasingly had more say in our choice to join our next set of memberships such as; a university, a sports club, workplace, a hobby among others. Celia, (2012) further explains that today, with the possibilities offered by the internet, we can find a community anywhere in the world that happens to share our passion for collecting butterflies or any other strange thing we may be interested in or has affinity towards. More relatively a married couple has a husband and a wife; these two parties have their own personal identities among other identities. In addition to their identities, they recognize themselves as a husband and a wife which is extended from their marital relationship. We all hopefully aspire create and be collaborators towards a more just, equal and fair world.

Look out for my next article on Identity, diversity and inclusion discussing the topic from the Perspective of relative importance of identity to a person- Primary, secondary and tertiary identities.

Mary Waceke Muia is an expert on Diversity, Inclusion and a facilitator for unconscious bias, cultural intelligence and future fluency. She is also an Organizational change and transformation consultant and Executive coach. Visit her website, www.wacekethecoach.com; email address [email protected],[email protected], follow her on Twitter:@coachwaceke. You tube &Instagram- wacekethecoach; FB page: become more to do more.