Affirming Identity + Cultivating Humility for Co-Creative, Inclusive Learning
// Cassie Bingham, Advisor + Instructor in the Center for Social Impact at Utah Valley University + Participant of the Equity by Design Immersive in Seattle (November 1–3, 2019)
Like many people in this world, the systems I’ve inhabited were not made for me. Black, queer, woman. These self-descriptors have often been the reason I’ve lacked access or opportunity, or why I have faced particular challenges that were ignored or less understood by those in power and authority over me. Unfortunately, my home upbringing, formal education, and community learning opportunities rarely provided me with structured, intentional knowledge meant to empower me to disrupt systems that marginalize. Rather, my understanding came in bits and pieces — with lived experiences, from movies and television, through the quips of “woke” social media users. I’m grateful that my cumulative exposure eventually led me to increased self love, and a passion for social justice and equity work. However, had such principles been integrated into formal educational experiences, my commitment to systems change could have started much earlier.
Realizing this, as an educator and advisor in the fields of social impact and community engagement, I’ve made an internal commitment to administer early intervention when it comes to understanding systems and how to redesign them. I want those who learn from me to walk away with actionable knowledge and strategy for creating a more equitable world. As many advocates for social justice and equity will readily admit, this is much easier said than done.
For me, working and teaching in a fairly homogeneous environment means watching my students bristle at discussions that require acknowledging privilege or imbalanced power dynamics. It means seeing students avoid grappling with uncomfortable realities in order to justify systems that work in their favor. It means hearing stories about students who feel “attacked” as men or as white people, when instructors try to engage in critical conversations about discriminatory systems and how to solve for equity. These problems are exacerbated when instructors use language from an academically informed standpoint that students, in turn, interpret with meaning they have gleaned from cursory internet debates that often hurl words like “privilege” and “discrimination” as personal insults. The conundrum of empowering students to act and advocate for justice, while clarifying terms and knowledge that have become politicized and muddied in the waters of divisiveness, has often discouraged me in my pursuit of effective social justice education.
That’s why I was so grateful for my opportunity to learn from the minds of Antionette Carroll, Hilary Sedovic, Sojourner White, and Nora Garcia from Creative Reaction Lab (CRXLAB), during their Equity by Design Immersive in Seattle last fall. CRXLAB has pioneered a creative problem-solving framework called Equity Centered Community Design (ECCD), which was taught and workshopped over the course of my three days in Seattle, and provides accessible definitions and tools for individuals, teams, and educators alike. This framework is equal parts language setting, design thinking, and identity affirmation, and makes it possible to more intuitively and consciously mainstream educational instruction on how to redesign systems.
LANGUAGE SETTING
When the CRXLAB team set necessary language at the Immersive by going through key words and guiding the room to a consensus of the definitions of those words, it was as if something finally clicked inside of me.
For years I have been frustrated by an experience common to minority individuals: you start explaining to someone why a specific scenario is unjust and problematic; however, you quickly realize the person you are talking to is so ignorant to the historic, legal, and systemic context surrounding the incident that it will be near impossible to get them to fully understand. You’re too exhausted to teach them entire courses of history and sociology, yet they’re too privileged to feel an urgency to learn themselves. As I sat in Seattle watching the CRXLAB team take the time to clarify vocabulary, and use well-defined terminology as the building blocks of understanding, I realized language setting could act as a shortcut to shared understanding, in preparation for teaching lessons that require critical thinking and nuance.
Terms like equality, equity, diversity, inclusion, power, and design were defined in ways that made sure all participants were in agreement to their meaning and usage, rendering them tools to be used by the group collectively as we worked in tandem to comprehend discriminatory systems and how to redesign them. The most powerful definition for me was that given for equity: when the outcomes of an individual cannot be predicted based on their identity. I’ve used that definition numerous times since that morning in Seattle, to help my students, friends, and family members grasp how policy and systems have to change in order to provide for equity — a goal that inherently demands being familiar with history and precedent.
Language setting is now a practice I use in every class I teach and training I facilitate. I have seen it create broader understanding quicker among my students, and, in turn, make them more likely to become ambassadors for overall systems change.
SHIFTING DESIGN THINKING TO CENTER EQUITY
Similarly, during the Immersive, redefining and evolving concepts of design thinking to center equity became an invaluable tool for generating rapid comprehension of complex ideas and strategies. CRXLAB developed and teaches Equity Centered Community Design (ECCD), an alternative to traditional design thinking that adds some vital missing components.
While traditional design thinking realizes the importance of “empathizing” with the demographic of focus through a qualitative research phase, it fails to understand that true empathy requires a much deeper dive into humility, and, when done correctly, should lead to a transference of power and leadership. Thus, ECCD includes not only interviews and surveys to collect information from the “user”, but requires educating oneself on history and power constructs, facilitating healing for those who have been affected, and through the acknowledgement of these contexts and needs, building true humility in the process. The apex of this approach comes with learning from and being led by what CRXLAB deemed “Living Experts.” Living Experts are those who have experienced the problem, and thus have the most valuable insight related to its interventions to address it. Antionette, Hilary, and Sojourner made sure to stress that living experts have the most credibility when it comes to developing solutions, regardless of often lacking the accolades and power of those traditionally considered “experts” in society.
Again, as an educator, I was struck by the profundity of the tool I was being given. Student learning can be hotwired when real humility is engendered. When it comes to understanding the urgency of overturning discriminatory systems, nothing evokes humility like the powerful expressions of those with lived experience within those systems.
IDENTITY AFFIRMATION
Several times throughout the Immersive, CRXLAB employed their own strategies in evidence of its commitment to them. Language was clarified without condescension to facilitate learning. Living Experts were compensated to share their experiences with participants. Similarly, their team practiced what it preached when it came to facilitating healing as part of the design process.
For the first time in my life, I engaged in carefully and intentionally facilitated racial caucusing thanks to Sojourner. At first I felt hesitant, unsure if the activity would eat into the limited time we had to learn about Equity-Centered Community Design. However, I quickly realized that the therapeutic and healing interaction I shared within my caucus made engaging in the serious work of brainstorming and prototyping community intervention much more effective. I felt affirmed and empowered in my identity as a black woman. I saw my white counterparts act and speak more intentionally in the collaborative exercises that followed. I realized that educating about systems and future equity practice would require neither the ignoring of identity differences, nor the cursory nod towards them. Instead it demands good faith efforts towards healing and reconciliation, in order to set students up for success as they become active community members who work together regardless of differences in background and power.
Since my participation in the Equity by Design Immersive in Seattle, I have felt energized as an educator, and seen my teaching improve as I’ve employed the tools I learned from CRXLAB. My classes and trainings have benefited from clear language setting, which has fast-tracked my students to a more holistic understanding of social problems, where they come from, and how we combat them. Through my influence, my work space has placed a much higher priority on gaining input and direction from living experts, and on compensating them for their time. We’ve also started to develop better inclusion practices to make our space safer and more affirming for people from a wider range of identities.
As more and more individuals realize the importance of creating inclusive and equitable systems, our societies need accessible tools to facilitate collective understanding and action. Creative Reaction Lab has the vision to see the needs of learners and educators when it comes to providing such tools, in order to equip as many people as possible with what they need to redesign for better solutions in our communities.
Cassie Bingham is an advisor and instructor in the Center for Social Impact at Utah Valley University. She has a bachelor’s degree in Sociocultural Anthropology with an emphasis in International Development. Cassie has taught principles of community development while working as a volunteer coordinator for a nonprofit organization providing academic programs to immigrants in Salt Lake City, as a coordinator for aid teams in both East Africa and Moria Refugee Camp in Greece, and as a panelist and presenter representing Kinfara Travel, an ethical travel company she co-founded.
