I want to start this Better Human reflection on inclusion by acknowledging human nature. I believe that there are only a handful of people in the world who deliberately set out to hurt and harm others. And if we are paying attention, those psychopaths and sociopaths among us reveal their antisocial tendencies, allowing us to wisely steer clear of them. Unlike these rare individuals, the rest of us have varying levels of empathy that prevent us from intentionally hurting others.
But we do hurt others. And most of the harm we inflict on our fellow human beings stems from either our attempts at self-preservation or human error. For example, when I was in my thirties, I was working in a department where I was the only person of color. A few colleagues in the department were throwing a baby shower for a pregnant colleague with whom I was very friendly. However, I was not invited to the baby shower. I was hurt by the obvious exclusion and asked our department head about it. The official explanation was an oversight, but the same thing happened a total of three more times and each time was meant with profuse apologies. I understand that these were not psychopaths hellbent on hurting my feelings. These were human beings conditioned by our American history to not include me. Exclusion makes minorities either hyper-visible or hyper-invisible. True inclusion requires a change in mindset.
Today, many Americans have fallen victim to psychopathic leaders who effectively fuel their need for self-preservation. This time, that empathy silencer, self-preservation, is rooted in fear rather than the greed that haunts our history. School board meetings are filled with white Americans struggling with the reality of U.S. history because they feel empathy for their children’s feelings. They understand the uncomfortable feeling of white guilt and they desperately want to shield themselves and their children from that trauma. They are terrified that learning about the historical hurt and harm inflicted upon women, people of color, LGBTQ people, and persons with disabilities by individual and state-sponsored exclusion will damage their children’s view of themselves and their nation. Misguided parental groups like Moms for Liberty are behind a push to make it illegal to teach the true history in our schools. They are literally using words like diversity and inclusion and white privilege to signal lessons they don’t want their children to hear.
Perhaps without realizing it, they are giving cover to white nationalists like Trump and others. Denying a history of exclusion paves the way to blame minorities for their problems and low status. It is possible that these protesting parents fail to realize that the Trump campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again” only resonates for those who were included in the American dream. As the nation is living with the legacy of exclusionary practices, these parents wrongly want to hide the truth that can contextualize our current situation and therefore pave the way for satisfactory solutions. They instead want to protect their fragile emotions. I say no.
It is time to acknowledge that self-preservation in the form of greed was at the root of Indian genocide, black slavery, and the oppression of women. At the founding of this nation, white males subverted any healthy empathetic impulses by readily accepting the notion (from psychopaths) that Indians were savages, that blacks were sub-human, and that women were childlike. Convince people that LGBTQ people are immoral and people with disabilities are incompetent, and society will allow for all manner of discrimination, exploitation, and mistreatment.
The history they wish to hide is that white males and their families gained wealth and power by excluding women and minorities from decision-making, ownership, citizenship, voting, education, and jobs. It made sense that if you eliminate the competition using a legal system of violence to exploit labor, steal land, rape black women, deny opportunity, and kill with impunity that these things will make you the winner in the game of life. Any reasonable person would call this “ill-gotten” gain. Trump and his supporters know that if they can hide this truth, then they can move on, retaining all they have accumulated guilt-free while covertly maintaining systems of exclusion.
I think it is accurate to surmise that these parents wrongly believe that their children cannot handle the truth that people who came before them did some pretty terrible things and that those actions had lasting negative effects on groups of people living today. They sell themselves short and their children short if they refuse to realize that their empathy will be satisfied if they face the truth and work to do better. That is what practicing inclusion is about.
Inclusion is about recognizing that doors of opportunity were closed for a very long time and that many people were so accustomed to those closed doors that they 1) never prepared for them to open; 2) don’t know how to walk through them and 3) are terrified by the mystery of what’s on the other side of the door. Therefore, inclusion requires a proactive approach, not a passive one. It means taking people by the hand and helping them to walk through open doors. It also means reminding people who have always been able to walk through open doors that the same doors remain open to them. Inclusion doesn’t mean removing people from the table, it means building a bigger table. Parents and white nationalists need to learn this lesson.
Better humans have to “practice” inclusion by continuously noticing the previously excluded. Who is missing from the invitation list? Whose voice is not being heard in this discussion? Whose story is not being told? Who is not applying for this job and who is not getting an interview? The answer to solving our exclusion problem is never more exclusion, but intentional inclusion. And that takes practice.