To Belong (Thoughts on Inclusion)
Hakeem Leonard, PhD, Inclusion, Diversity, & Equity Scholar
I’ve always had some dissatisfaction with definitions of inclusion. The reason being that they seemed to always be defined from someone standing in the center, someone who generally hasn’t had to struggle with being included. It’s a similar dissatisfaction to the way the legacy of Dr. King has tended to be whitewashed in reference to integration and belonging. There tends to be a premature coming together of equality and justice when equality is defined by those at the center. With inclusion, specifically, it’s kind of like, hey, this is the club, you can come in- and now, it’s all better. “You can belong regardless of difference.”
So then, the place where you are to be included has been defined by ‘sameness’ and how you can belong within that sameness. ‘Regardless of who you are, you can be a part of us’. “You don’t know a thing about our story, tell it wrong all the time.” Jamila Woods lyrics in the song ‘Baldwin’ allude to how you don’t know how to value or be in relationship with my difference or my personhood. You’re going to get that wrong. Because you haven’t decentered your dominant identity as the reference point for belonging.
Perhaps we should define inclusion and belonging based on those who have had to learn how to be their full selves because they were not included. Perhaps those who have stood at the margins understand best what it means to hold themselves and therefore, what it means for us to collectively hold difference within community. ‘You can belong, not in spite of your differences, but because of them’. Then, let us define inclusion, not regardless of, but by how we embrace, engage with, and are shaped by difference.
In order to do so, it follows that we (as institutions) would have to define ourselves differently. Instead of fitting you into our sameness, we will be changed by you. No, that doesn’t mean that commonalities don’t count. Togetherness matters, but the context of togetherness matters more. Even from our President, there is a growing mainstream consciousness that unity occurs alongside justice. A community of belonging emphasizes both commonalities and differences. We can see this through the concept of mirrors and windows from Culturally Relevant Pedagogy. We all need mirrors to see things that reflect who we are. We also all need windows to see in ways that open us up to different experiences. Additionally, going deeper, we need to see ourselves in each other (an invitation into belonging/participation across difference) and hold space for parts of each other’s experience that are not for others to partake in but may sometimes be for them to bear witness to (an invitation into humility rather than participation). These last two examples might be termed ‘sliding glass doors’, ‘doors’, or ‘doorways’.
In our society, certain people tend to have more mirrors than others. More representation and more validation of their experiences, cultural norms, worldview, appearance, etc. In American culture, those with identity markers such as white, male, straight, cisgender, and ‘able-bodied’ have lots of mirrors and few windows. We call those dominant, privileged, or agent experiences. Alternatively, people who have been historically marginalized or underrepresented have had lots of windows and fewer mirrors. We call those marginalized or target experiences.
Who might have the best posture to shape ideas of inclusion? It is those that have lived in the light of the dominant gaze, have had to grapple with a double consciousness, have had to learn to include multiple parts of themselves into one embodied whole, and have had to hold space for themselves in creative and resilient ways. They are the historically resilient.
Historically resilience has two implications here that we hold together. One is that those at the center (with dominant experiences) must recognize that the level of resilience that people have had to employ to navigate around privileged ‘sameness’ is unacceptable and must be unsettled. Second is that those with historically resilient experiences have survived and thrived through ways of knowing, seeing, feeling, experiencing, and doing that are needed to shape institutions. Institutions need to be shaped by difference- by the lived experiences of blackness and other people of color, women, queerness, dis/ability, indigeneity, and the working class.
In other words, we must move away from merely having the golden rule, toward the platinum rule, as stated by intercultural scholar Milton Bennett. Love, value, or relate with your neighbor as they love/value/relate to themselves, not only as you value yourself. You haven’t had many windows. Your relationship with yourself has been shaped by a lot of sameness. Their relationship to themselves has been shaped by windows, as well as the very creative ways in which they have had to employ and erect mirrors- that is a different experience of being in the world. Just to drop a needless hip-hop nugget, when East Coast and West Coast rap had all the mirrors, Andre 3000 (along with Big Boi) stated, as Outkast and others came to prominence, “the south got something to say.”
Black people have something to say, Indigenous people have something to say, Asian American and Pacific Islanders; Latinx; Disabled; Trans and other LGBTQ+ have something to say.
Name yourself and take up your space. I’ve recently heard this statement reverberating. From folx like Adrienne Marie Brown. From the show LoveCraft Country, particularly the episode “I Am Hippolyta”. But I’d be remiss if I did not mention the Combahee River Collective- a group of Black women lesbian feminist activists very active in the 1970s. In the Combahee River Collective Statement, they taught us the greatest lesson about inclusion through the act of naming themselves and taking up their space.
While they supported Black men and liberation movements, they had an experience of alienation from those movements. While they found empowerment from the feminist movement, it was clear that “second-wave” feminism did not include the lived experience of women of color. These weren’t the only points where they had to employ ‘resilience’ in their lives. “We are actively committed to struggling against racial, sexual, heterosexual, and class oppression, and see as our particular task the development of integrated analysis and practice based upon the fact that the major systems of oppression are interlocking.”
Therefore, in the ‘Statement’, they set the terms for their personhood and for their belonging. Please go and read the Combahee River Collective Statement in full. While you may not agree with everything, that isn’t entirely the point. To be anti-racist or anti-oppressive begins with humility and solidarity, not privileged knowledge and consensus.
The definition of inclusion should be influenced from the posture of those who have had to stand at the margins- those who have had to name themselves and take up their space. W.E.B. Dubois famously marked the beginning of the 20th century by framing the struggle of double consciousness. Many different groups have used this concept to explain their experiences of belonging or lack thereof. This is fundamental for understanding how inclusion can be understood for those who are historically resilient. The Combahee River Collective Statement can be seen in relation to that of Dubois, with a response. ‘This is who we are. This is how you will understand me. These are the terms of belonging.’ Take up your space in every place where you have been made to shrink. In every place that you have had to be resilient just to survive or just to belong. Let us learn freedom and let us learn to shape inclusion from this posture.