Diversity Matters: A personal reflection on speaking and being heard
It is hard to look around right now and not see the impact of power and privilege — and the lack thereof. From the disproportionate impact of Covid-19 on those in poverty, women and BAME groups in this country, to the events in the United States.
Personal characteristics and circumstances over which we have no power, have power over us: dictating how likely we are to experience structural inequalities and whether or not we have the power and agency necessary to overcome them.
And so, the reason why certain groups of people are disproportionately affected by Covid-19 will be the same reason why they will find it hard to have a voice in the work of rebuilding. But we need those voices — all those voices — in order to #buildbackbetter or else we will simply end up #buildingbackthesame.
The persistent inequalities in power and who gets to have a voice touches me on the raw. Like many women, I have experienced sexual harassment and attempted assault. Like many people of “mixed” heritage, I have had abuse and objects hurled at me, told to “f**k off home”, and been referred to as “a foreigner” — by both sides of my family. (Yes they are joking and yes it is hurtful and I wish they didn’t.) Like others who went from state school to Cambridge — and was among the first generation in the family to go to university — for all that I excelled academically, I found the non-academic part of the experience bewildering, destabilising and difficult.
Part of me feels ashamed that it has taken such extreme external circumstances for me to open up about this. Another part of me understands why this is so: I have been taught by the world around me that my voice is not important.
It took 15 years after graduating before I attended a conference where the keynote speaker looked and sounded a little like me. I was 35 when a film was released in the country I was born in and consider home, that had a cast of people that actually looked like me and spoke in English, like me. (Before you point to “The Joy Luck Club” — yes, you’re right, there was one other film. In 1993.) When you don’t see yourself in the world around you, you learn that you don’t matter, and therefore you learn that you can’t be the keynote speaker, the line-manager, the CEO… Then, if by some miracle you do achieve something, you spend most of your time feeling like you don’t deserve to be there.
Perhaps even more significantly, those times when I have spoken, I have learned that I will not be heard. Like the young man who told me it was my fault that someone tried to assault me. (Apparently, if you work after dusk has fallen, you should eat dinner, sleep in your office and not attempt to get home until 10am the next day.) Or the Head of School whose response to my complaint about “unprofessional and inappropriate” behaviour on the part of a male academic was essentially to try to sweep it under the carpet and elicit my sympathy for this “troubled” man.
But here’s the thing, when you don’t speak — for whatever reason — you believe that you are alone. You convince yourself that it is just your experience, that it is just you, and that talking about it would somehow be self-indulgent and self-centred. Ultimately, you convince yourself that it doesn’t matter.
But it does matter. It matters so much it hurts.
Which is why, when you are unable to make yourself heard, or unable to feel that you belong, the least agonising, exhausting and so-angry-you’re-burning-up route is to pretend that it’s fine. Which perhaps means that what matters the most is that the opportunity and courage to use one’s voice is matched with a corresponding courage in others to listen, to hear, and to be open to and willing to work for change.
It isn’t just that we need to change legislation and policies and systems. Because attending to diversity, equity and inclusion is not a tick box exercise that will be “complete” when those things are done.
No. Attending to diversity is an approach to people and the world; an approach characterised by empathic and gentle curiosity, openness and a willingness to challenge ourselves and the world in which we operate. It is an approach that must be ongoing and continuous.
This is no small thing: doing diversity properly asks each of us to fundamentally shift the way we look at things and interact with one another every single day. To dig deep into our values and unearth prejudices we perhaps didn’t even realise that we had. And trust me, as uncomfortable as it may be to acknowledge the fact, we all have these biases and prejudices.
This means that caring about and promoting diversity is not just the job of those “in power” — although it is unquestionably theirs. It is also ours. This means diversity is not just the job of systems and processes; although these things must change. Diversity is also the work of the culture we shape by the values we live and embody — and by which strategies and systems will fly or fail.
As I write, I can’t help but feel guiltily conscious of my own privilege: 15 years on, I may find myself unable to go within 10 miles of Cambridge, but study there I did. For all that I am currently struggling with juggling childcare and work, I have work and I have someone with whom to share the childcare. I am not the single-parent-in-a-foreign-country that my mother was. And that feeds both a sense that I don’t have a right to speak (because I am lucky) and the sense that I must; because if I find this hard, how much harder might it be for others?
This is not to say that I am trying to speak for others or talk over those who are speaking so cogently elsewhere at this present time: I can speak only for myself. But in doing so, I hope to add to the critical mass of diverse voices expressing experiences that hopefully reveal why diversity, equity and inclusion matter and what it is that needs to change.
As for me, I have finally — if somewhat tentatively and uneasily — accepted that I matter. And so, I find myself realising that even if not everyone is ready to listen, I am ready to speak. And even if not everyone will like what I say, I will keep on speaking. And I hold onto the hope that in this molten mass of differences and voices, if enough of us speak and enough of us listen, we can perhaps use the crucible of the current moment to make something brighter and better — for all of us.
