?? Shine. Life Post-DEI.

Chilllleee,

How are you doing out there?

There's alot?going on, in a very short amount of time, as we touched on last week. It can be alot to manage varying levels of uncertainty or surprise all at the same time, I know. What's worked for me is awareness, kindness and capacity. One of the conversations up right now though, is the topic of the reversal or "ending" of DEI?and DEIA - diversity, equity, inclusion (and accessibility). As someone who checks nearly every marginalized identity box, I'd like to speak on this.?As many of you know, I have been a facilitator and trainer of DEIB in some capacity for the last 8-10 years so, I have a very particular purview about all this uproar and fallout around what the cancellation of DEIB, especially on a corporate level, means for our future, as Americans. You see, before things started getting rolled back, I had been having my own internal discourse about racial equity. I pivoted many times around how I was doing that work. Constantly wanting to find ways to stay responsive to community needs while simultaneously walking out a plan to?create?a culture of justice and fairness?for all.

I've taught at universities and to high school students on the history of protest, social justice and equity rhetoric. I was the community facilitator on the historic Vance Monument community process that started in Asheville and then spread to the Supreme Court, making national news. I've trained students as community facilitators and helped create racial equity ambassador programs so that they can advocate for their human rights to access opportunity and education, without bias or discrimination. And more and more examples come to mind. You get the picture - I was very active in?DEI as praxis and a theory of change with groups and communities. As a facilitator, I chose to only work in small groups, only one group at a time, and work together for weeks or?months at a time so that I could go deep with that one group. This way, I could leave having helped them feel more connected than divided. Can you imagine though, for some of these corporations that got reactive in 2020 and just started writing outlandish goals and budgets for DEI because they felt pressure? Or suddenly had to figure out how to quantify and track mindset change and culture shifts? It's not a policy, it has to be a lifestyle.

My unpopular opinion is that because of how DEI was adopted in most workplaces + society, that it harbored alot of guilt, shame and "us vs. them" for alot of folks and it does make me sad to see the shared language and solidarity go away. Yet, giving opportunities based on race or something "owed" was?never what DEI was meant to be about. And from a historical perspective, it doesn't make logical sense to give one group more opportunities or advantages simply based on race, no matter who they are. If the argument around reparations is that white people owe?marginalized folks something to make up for disparities in society, why would we turn around and say the solution is more opportunities for certain groups based on race/identity? As a Black woman, it's cringe-worthy for me to imagine anyone giving me any opportunity, promotion, raise or contract just because of what I look like. I've worked too hard to have my merit, integrity and hard work just mean nothing, after all. So, yes I do think that the miss with DEI was on the implementation side and the narrative that accompanied it, but I'm still fond of my small, but mighty work with groups wanting to move beyond the race conversation and actually achieve MLK's dream that "one day my four little children will...live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character" [Martin Luther King, Jr., "I Have a Dream Speech", March on Washington, August 28, 1963]

Is it perhaps time for us to get back to living?that dream?

Cheers to a culture of excellence,

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