Post (?) Pandemic Reflections from a DEI and Self-Awareness Perspective

Delivering DEI workshops for organizations, there are some hard questions that come up at times. One that has been on my mind, even if it is less asked now, is : what is the discrimination that the unvaccinated are experiencing at work? And is it discrimination at all??

That's a really hard one. And if we jump to any conclusions quickly, then we may be looking at only one side.?

As many rules and policies have been put in place, many have lost opportunities for work, some have lost their jobs. And I'm talking about folks who have lost remote jobs as well.?With that in mind, it feels as though the world has made up its mind that it is not discriminatory to ask folks to get vaccinated, therefore, I'm going to try and look at the other side of the coin with an example.

''I know someone'' who has been laid off because they're not vaccinated. OK, many have, you might say... However, in this situation, it happened although they had a remote contract with no expectations whatsoever to be in any specific location. Therefore, no requirements of any kind to be physically present at any meetings, gathering, celebrations or anything of the sort. Now that's intense, I mean they were never going to be physically in the same room with any client nor colleague. They were already experiencing the loneliness of the pandemic, but now they were experiencing full on rejection. Moreover, the company they were working for is a reputable DEI+ consulting company. The irony!

So was this discriminatory??

I would say yes. The person in question had no reason not to continue doing their work, there was no risk for the company to be in any way harmed, nor their clients to be harmed had that person continued working there, unvaccinated. Au contraire, that company would have been the perfect place for something like this NOT to happen.

Those who hold the torch of equity and diversity seem to have forgotten that diversity in world views, diversity in personal choices are all grounds for potential discriminations. The decision seems to have been based on fear to say the least. But the hard part is that we are blinded by a lens of fear that authority has imposed on us, that created division instead of solidarity. And I must say that although this is possibly the first time in history that it is due to a pandemic, it certainly feels like familiar territory in our patriarchal supremacist culture, I am sad to say.

It's not that every individual was/is afraid, it's that our government, has not taken into consideration the impact of fear on the population. There was so much fear of staying in pandemic that we forgot we were human beings who need one another.

We forgot that some of us have a different relationship with our health and bodies and that it is absolutely a right to chose what makes us feel safest. After all, if anything where to turn badly because of any government decision, be it vaccination or isolation (depression from), the government was/is not taking responsibility for the aftermath. So people have a responsibility to themselves to listen to their bodies' needs before any outside threats. Putting everyone in the same basket is dangerous.?

We can also see signs of panic from our leaders just from the words they used. Social distancing instead of physical distancing. That's a big one. Think about it. What are we if not social beings?

So what am I getting at..?

I guess now that things are calming down, and hopefully continuing to, some reflections are bubbling up for me.?

Was it all worth it? All the fear that lead to some folks being pushed aside from society, feeling alone, rejected and even coerced into decisions and actions that felt unaligned with their values??

Would we do it all the same way again? What have we learned? And where do we go from here???

Learning from the past

Every few generations, it seems, we get astounded to how discriminatory we were in the past. Have we not learned anything? Will we keep waiting for 'proof' to happen before believing the human being that is telling us right here and now that things are not OK for them??

When will we start considering human wellbeing for real, as a right with no justification needed?! Before it becomes a mass reported need? Or will we always wait for after way too many have suffered before considering that maybe we need to listen, and that maybe we were wrong.?

Lets also keep in mind that every generation seems to think that it would never redo the mistakes of its predecessors. Yet it seems that discrimination issues, like climate issues, are constantly repeated, wearing different clothes. Like a bad drama series where the actors change but the core issues are always the same.

Final thoughts and the crux

The most important step in any kind of Justice Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging that we try to build, is the inner state of OURSELVES.

If we don't know if we're doing something right or wrong, we need to sit alone and consider truly meeting ourselves and the people around us. THIS IS A MUST! If we have not deeply met the people around us, nothing we say or do, even if from the most humble and well intended place, can guarantee a beneficial outcome for either party.

To be very clear, I repeat, if you have not met yourself, then you cannot meet the person in front of you, and if you don't meet them, you cannot ever assume you know what is in their interest. Same goes for them, regarding you.

It seems the pandemic has shed a lot of light on how we do the business of being a society. How we choose to organize ourselves within it. How much we delegate and trust those to whom we've given the right to sail us into the future. But have we met at all?

So to you... have we gone too far? Were you, a colleague, or a friend affected by this other side of the coin?

Do you feel like your leaders truly have met you and the folks around you? Through their actions, would you say that you feel seen, safe and regarded as whole and valid as a human being? Do you truly feel that society, as it is today, tries to meet you? Are the systems in place that make everything run like clock-work concerned with your wellbeing?