Diversity and Inclusion in a Nutshell
Do you only work out with your dominant hand?
The answer is no. For most people, your dominant hand is the strongest hand. You do things every day mostly with that hand. You always have a natural tendency to favor one side rather than another.
This is human nature and it will always be true. Let’s take this to the extreme. Let’s say because there’s no incentive for you to care for your non-dominant hand, you only design everyday things to only work best for your dominant hand. Let’s assume it is the right hand because everything (until recently) was designed for right-handed people.
Here are a few examples of right-handed designed objects and concepts:
- Driver’s cup holder (you’ll have to hold your cup with your right hand)
2. Individual school desks
3. Game controllers
4. Keyboard (number pad is on the right)
You can find more stuff with the link below.
But most people don’t care about how these designs affect everyday left-handed people. 10% of the population is left-handed. That percentage may be small, but if the world’s population is well over 7 billion, that’s over 700 million people not accounted for.
You know what’s worse? Back in the medieval times or even now in some countries and tribes, people are punished severely for being left-handed. They were punished because of something that is not under their control and was viewed as being different. Needless to say, they were at a disadvantage. Sounds familiar?
So what does all of this have to do with diversity and inclusion?
We need both non-dominant and dominant hands to work together in order to live a good life.
We moved from punishing people for being left-handed to now having difficulty designing for everyday inclusion. Let’s draw a bigger parallel.
If we think about the progress we made from slavery in America to the success of the civil rights movement and now to having difficulty designing the infrastructure and system supporting diversity and inclusion as a whole, we can see a clearer picture now.
The progress we’ve made is vast. However, we, in working towards that progress, created and designed everyday systems and infrastructures to only favor a certain type of people and demographics. Just like how objects are designed to work for 90% of the population (for right handed people).
I was telling someone about my story and how difficult it is to get to where I am. His response was “So what? Just work harder.” A thousand years no! You know who works hard? The everyday people who do bone and back-breaking work to barely make a living. If working hard is the key then all of these people would be successful and not work themselves to death.
There are multiple factors affecting the condition of the people who are coming from underserved communities but the people who can help are not seeing it.
It’s important to see that people who are in poverty (especially minorities) cannot simply just work harder to get to a better place. Their potential is being limited by the education and support they receive.
We have a lot more work to do. But if people don’t see the big picture, they will always favor their dominant side.
