A "chilling" tale about growth
The other day, a walk around the block turned into a trip to check out a new ice cream store in my neighborhood, The Social. Excited to check it out, I quickly though, hmmm, this seems an awful lot like a knock-off of Ample Hills Creamery, a local-turned-national ice cream sensation my family has been enjoying for years.
A sign on the wall shared the story of the company - the owners of The Social actually WERE the original founders of Ample Hills, but had to declare bankruptcy right before the pandemic.
I sat down to enjoy my ice-cream (Chocolate Fudge and Ooeyer and Gooeyer for those who might be curious) and to google on my phone... what the hell happened????!
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Unresolved harms
A couple of weeks ago I found myself walking down the street in tears about something that happened to my family almost two years ago.
The anger, the rage, the hurt - it was so present, it surprised me.
Why was it coming up now?
It was because another family was experiencing something similar within the same community, even though for completely different reasons, and even though the community was now under different leadership.
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The bell curve is a lie
I’m finding it increasingly obvious yet horrifying nonetheless how how quickly one’s needs stop being prioritized as soon as you no longer fall into the middle of the bell curve.
Your safety isn’t prioritized, not necessarily because people don’t care, but because systems aren’t designed that way.
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Pandemic and back-to-school exhaustion
Pretty much everyone I know is exhausted. There is still a pandemic, yet we're pushing forward with school and many office re-openings as though everything is normal.
Even for those of us in best case scenarios where we are seeing our kids come back to life again with regards to learning, the transition has been hard and a HUGE cognitive load.
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The power of inclusion
I feel like I'm seeing the power of inclusion - where you feel a sense of belonging and acceptance for who you are and not because you are working hard to fit in - play out in front of my eyes in real time with my own kids.
I see how much difference just a little bit of psychological safety can make. We see it in our client organizations too.
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Recovering is not the same as vacation
Between the ongoing global pandemic and the Delta variant, the situation in Afghanistan, Hurricane Ida hitting Louisiana, as well as all of the usual horrors of the world, vacation feels like the last thing to be thinking about.
The fact is, in the midst of our team's August "retreat month" where our team puts a pause on external facilitation, meetings or calls, I just returned from a 2.5 week "vacation."
Yeah, those scare quotes are no joke.
What even is "relaxing" in a global pandemic? I feel like I've completely forgotten how.
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Uncertainty is certain
If there is any lesson that the pandemic hammered home, it's something that has always been true but seems more so than ever: uncertainty is certain.
If uncertainty is certain - how can we design for uncertainty? How can we prepare ourselves and others for uncertainty? How can we create predictability and consistency with the context of uncertainty?
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Deep, slow, intentional work
Just when some of us were starting to exhale, albeit tentatively and uneasily, with regards to the pandemic, the information coming out about the Delta variant over the past few weeks has been concerning and disheartening to many.
Speaking for myself, my anxiety is way up. I'm back to where a trip to the grocery store feels like a direct channel into all of humanity's hopes and fears, and I'm spending more time than I'd care to admit, or is healthy or helpful, "doom scrolling" on social media.
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Why are we crushing our young?
One of the things we're seeing through our work is that today’s recent graduates are entering the workforce with entirely different (and in my view completely appropriate) expectations... and they are getting CRUSHED. It might be a long slow boil or it might be quick and decisive but either way, it is pretty horrifying.
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Inclusion isn't just about being nice to people
I've come to see that paternalism is my own personal kryptonite. I can't stand people thinking they know better than me what is best for me - and not just thinking it, but assuming and acting on it.
The truth is that I've experienced paternalism my entire life. It's everywhere - it's in the air we breath, and we're all, to varying degrees, socialized into it.
It's also pretty much a founding principle for most of our non-profit and mission driven corporate clients.
The thing that we find that organizations and their leaders don't understand though is that paternalism hurts them too.
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When trauma and power intersect
It has long been my experience that white women, traumatized by patriarchy, become tools of white supremacy. White women talk about recognizing their privilege but what we also need them to do is recognize their trauma. Hurt people hurt people, and while that isn't an excuse and doesn't let anyone off the hook, it is a dynamic that I believe needs to be unpacked and reckoned with.
White women need to heal their trauma so they can stop causing harm to people of color.
It's not just white women either.
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Designing for spaciousness
This past week was "retreat week" for Co-Creating Inclusion. Starting this year, we have blocked off the last week of every other month as well as the entire month of August from workshop facilitation or any external calls or meetings.
This time is essential for us to take a pause from holding space for our clients and to regroup, process, focus on our own needs, reflect, strategize, build our capacity and more. Some of us also use it for vacation time.
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On Juneteenth and the racism of white confusion and denial
With Juneteenth now a federal holiday, a decision made on Thursday, the day before the Friday that would mark the holiday (I mean come on now!) many Black folks and others have been expressing mixed feelings about this development.
Unrelated to Juneteenth, our team has been having a lot of conversations lately with white leaders and their BIPOC staff about tokenism, performance, lip service, hypocrisy and cognitive dissonance. There is a HUGE toll to pay when actions and impact are out of alignment with professed values. It is EXHAUSTING.
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Infusing trauma and equity awareness into decision making and planning
As you may know if you've read recent posts on grief and trauma and focusing on needs, trauma has been very much on my mind and in my heart lately. As this tremendously difficult school year starts to come to a close (or has already closed in some parts of the country), as vaccination roll-out starts to include our tweens and teens, and as pandemic restrictions start to lift and companies and organizations are in various stages of considering their reopening plans, you would think that this would be a time of joy and celebration... and it is for some, to varying degrees, but it is also a time where many of us are still processing and coming to terms with what we just went through, and the trauma of it all.
Not to mention that, as I have said before, the fact that DEI work is the work of dismantling the systems that cause oppression and trauma, as well as facilitating healing at an internal, interpersonal, organizational and systemic level has never been more clear to me.
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Grief and trauma
I'm still in a space where I am thinking a lot about grief and trauma, and not just thinking about it but feeling it myself at a variety of different levels
Maybe the grief of the pandemic is making all the other grief feel closer to the surface and easier to access, but I'm seeing so many layers to my own grief and to the grief of others. In many ways, the work of diversity, equity, and inclusion is the work of holding space for the hurt and harm of white supremacy and other systems of oppression while also figuring out how to create space for healing, recovery, and growth.
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Now is a good time to focus on needs
As DEI consultants, we hold space for a lot of grief and trauma. In 2021 alone so far, our team has conducted almost 50 one-on-one interviews with staff, not to mention countless hours of small group meetings and sessions, workshop facilitation and DEI coaching.
Staff of all backgrounds, identities and levels of power and privilege are carrying a lot of hurt. We create space for them to say the things they cannot say elsewhere in the workplace. By creating anonymity (we do not disclose to our clients who we have interviewed) staff can be more candid, knowing they are protected while also knowing that we will take our findings back to the organization. It's not just venting.
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Do you need to transcend your role in order to do your job?
We've seen it this year more than ever before - how demoralizing it can be to be hired to do a job and then punished for doing it, and to be "consistently thwarted in your ability to enact the values that brought you into your profession."
This has always been the case, but for some, the circumstances of the pandemic have exacerbated the challenges and obstacles of systems and roles that were never in alignment with the mission and values they were purportedly in support of.
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What is the justice you are fighting for?
By Malaika Aaron-Bishop
The thing about rage is that it leaves in its wake a kind of emptiness. For me, this emptiness is in some ways more debilitating than all the swirling, vengeful chaos that came before. Sometimes, all I can manage is to crawl into the darkness and hold on.
Outside, there is a hush, but even in the quiet there is evidence of broken trust, generations of social contracts violated. Shards of glass in shades of green and red and brown; bits of rubber, burnt and frayed; a mangled barricade hapless, and cast aside; bits of cloth lost among fallen leaves and branches; we all mingle among dust and debris. Where once there were people risking their lives and livelihoods to demand justice for themselves and their communities, there are only warped canisters, used and discarded, laying forlorn among the gutters. Some still dribble faint pools, stinging with shame, while the children and elders accosted and demonized for performing their civic duties go home to wash their eyes.
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Individual accountability is not the same as systemic justice
Almost a year after the murder of George Floyd, and less than a week ago, although it already feels a lot longer than that, Derek Chauvin was found guilty on three counts: second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter. I happened to be picking my son up from near the Barclay Center at 4.15pm while so many held their breath to hear the verdict. As we walked home we could hear helicopters hovering overhead in preparation for the verdict, and although we didn't talk to anyone, it seemed like people were on edge.
I was on edge, knowing that no matter how guilty he was found, it would be a mere drop in the bucket of centuries of systemic violence against Black and Indigenous folks, as well as other people of color.
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Who would you cry out for?
By Malaika Aaron-Bishop
Today I woke up with fury lighting my fingertips and a pain in my core so deep that relief seems a comic, desperate apparition. It’s a pain that erases my past and kidnaps my future. Every hug, or walk, or daydream session with my mother, every Malta or metemgee served with a side of life-advice from my aunties, every chuckle with my sisters, every note learned from my father, every laughing gift from my brothers. Gone. Every smile that ever was, and every adventure I ever embraced. Undone. An Easter-time kite flown on the Sea Wall? Lost. A library book, and sweet colourful popcorn on Grand Anse beach? Vanished. Hunting for jamun in dense Plymouth greenery? Gone. Oddly shaped clouds set against clear Mullet Bay skies? Snuffed. Crisp, fragrant winds atop Table Mountain? Incinerated. All remnants of a life I thought mine, all the best parts of me that ever was and that ever will be, stolen, held hostage, beaten. Lynched. Today, I am strange fruit.
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