We have spent an enormous amount of energy, resources and time to produce the data and evidences that prove that diversity is good for organisations, politics, education, you name it. Governments and businesses have implemented gender, racial and age quotas to support diversity. And yet we haven’t moved the needle far enough to ensure equality and fairness. A recent Gallup poll shows that roughly a third of Americans doesn’t think there’s a problem with race relations. Perspectives, worldview(s) are tinted by our understanding and lack of it.
Why so many efforts to show the benefits of diversity have not produced major progress in inclusion? Why at times feels like going backwards and even denying fundamental rights to everyone? Why? A list of endless whys I ask myself relentlessly every time I watch the news or read a DEI report.
I have had a body reaction (not a positive one) every time I had to listen to the metrics of diversity. I have never believed that quota do actually help us become more inclusive.
I feel our focus is on understanding - which of course is “central” to being homo sapiens - but let me be provocative, what if we do not need to understand the “why diversity” to become inclusive?
Do we need to understand the why of anything to grant it a reason for existing? Do we need to understand why someone is who they are and how they want to be for us to let them be?
Are we using understanding as an excuse for not understanding that we do not have the right to abuse any living being?
We do not need to understand someone’s pain for their pain to be real.
It is not about performance.
It is not about innovation.
It is not about empowerment.
It is not about metrics.
It is not about competitiveness.
It is about compassion.
Compassion moves us to act in help. We ask for what one needs. We listen. We help. Take the time to ask those you encounter how they feel (and really listen). Please, remember that we’re most likely to underestimate other's distress when they are different from us.
Every compassionate act makes large the world. – Mary Anne Radmacher
Compassion means we “dethrone ourselves from the center” and use our privileges, power, position to restore unity, equality, safety, harmony. If we want to live in a more inclusive world, the path is not the one to create more rules for everybody to be equal rather, the one to rebelling to the stereotypes and norms that create fragmentation, categories, separation. Compassion is rooted in the appreciation of other beings for who they are (including animals, plants, etc.) and noticing they also suffer. This appreciation for their existence, for life, is what moves us to create the conditions to reduce that suffering and dignify everyone’s living conditions.
In case you are wondering, you do not need to understand how compassion works, its physiology and why is good for you to be compassionate.
I have written about inclusion extensively on the blog. Click here for a sample of those writings.
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