I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how much there is that goes unspoken. It comes up a lot in our DEI work with client organizations. When things go unspoken, we rely on socialization for a common understanding. We also rely on a homogenous or dominant culture where everyone is socialized into the same norms. If you don’t understand or follow the unspoken norms, you’re excluded. A lot of the work of assimilation, that is, of fitting into a dominant culture, is figuring out the unspoken norms.
And when norms are unspoken, it is much easier for them to become invisible, unchallenged, and unchanging.
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