The Truth About Inclusion

The past year has gifted our nation with a new potential to finally make good on the bad check Dr. King laid at the feet of the United States of America on August 28, 1963. It is as though the scales have fallen off the eyes of a critical mass of White people who, in viewing George Floyd's murder in real time and viscerally experiencing the horror of it, became more able to accept the truth of what People of Color have been saying all along. And so it is that, nearly 58 years after the dream was inaugurated, a renewed opportunity to deeply investigate what is truly meant when inclusion’s potential is invoked has dawned.

This is a theme that takes me back to when I was an earnest college student in my second year, brimming with passion for social justice in general and feminism in particular. I came to college from a socially conservative and decidedly insular background. I was raised in a deeply religious community by a devout mother and a father who was ordained in the church. Bible study was a daily feature in our home, and I attended a parochial school affiliated with our denomination from kindergarten through 12th grade. I was fully immersed and completely comfortable in my religious community.

Despite all the religiosity, our community also deeply valued and strongly nurtured intellectual curiosity and exploration. My parents raised us to be devout without also becoming religious bigots. While I was firmly grounded in my faith, I felt encouraged to investigate my world for myself.

I arrived on campus eager to befriend people from different cultures who embraced different belief systems. I was clear on my own boundaries at college. There were plenty of things that my friends did that I would never do and that simply never appealed to me. I might be one of five people who never drank beer in college. I can actually count on three fingers the number of parties I attended (I didn’t stay long - it wasn’t my vibe), and I found my intellectual community (what I treasured most) at the affiliated theological seminary.

I also found my passion community in the women’s studies department. I joined an all-women’s a cappella singing group. I was an outspoken ally in our campus LGBTQ organization. I don’t remember all of the various groups and activities I was involved in, but I do remember that one evening I joined a number of other young women for a conversation with a professor or program administrator, a woman from the women’s studies department. The topic that evening was sex. It must have been because, while I don’t remember why I was there or what exactly we were talking about, I do clearly remember the following exchange:

Professor/Admin to me: “And what is your position on sex?”

I respond: “I’m waiting until I am married to have sex.”

Professor/Admin to me: “Oh, don’t worry. You’ll get over that.”

Her casual disrespect might seem like nothing to a lot of people, but the fact that I so clearly remember it over 25 years later speaks to how deeply upset I felt. I am not sure what she believed she accomplished by her statement, but for me I found what she said to be offensive and isolating. I had been excluded. And silenced.

I was often the only one of my kind when I was growing up. I am an immigrant from South Africa, and I grew up in a community where I was often the only Black child in my grade. I was used to being the group’s unicorn. What I was not prepared to accept, though, was disrespect. And the professor was wrong. I didn’t get over it. I was a virgin on my wedding night.

My passion for social justice and my work as a Racial Intelligence coach make wrestling with the concept of inclusion a professional activity. For example, I believe that, for many, the idea of inclusion is (unconsciously) narrow and unidirectional. Its unacknowledged intent is to dismantle structural isms without dismantling the structure. As such, its focus is limited to directing attention toward those who have been traditionally marginalized and excluded from the structure’s benefits and keeping those who benefit from the structure invisible and untouched.

For example, in my experience, most Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging (DEIB) programs and efforts focus attention on developing and providing resources intended to get more People of Color and other demographically underrepresented people into the organization and provide them with “help” adjusting to the organization. In that dispensation, White/male people (generally speaking) are still the actors. People of Color (and other marginalized people) are still the objects. The attention paid to transforming mindsets for actual inclusion (which demands relinquishing control over specific domains of power, amongst other things) often constitutes mere lip service. Awareness of unconscious bias without practical individualized transformative activity to address its manifestations doesn’t cut it, and yet that is the extent of what so many DEIB programs provide.

Transferring power from those who dominate to the whole demands intrapersonal and structural transformation that allows for the following insight: It is an assertion of power to say, “We are including you. We have erred in the past by excluding you and now we are opening our doors and providing seats for you at our table.” A more blunt and, I believe, illuminating way to say it is “Welcome to Whiteness.” Or “Welcome to masculinity” in the case of gender inequity.

This posture still assumes, without acknowledging, an expectation of adapting or assimilating on the part of the “newbies” who must, otherwise, continue to endure the chronic discomfort of not quite fitting in. The struggle for lactating people to be fully integrated into the corporate structure’s concepts of “normal” presents a useful example. Being “accommodated” is not inclusive, in my opinion. This posture also ducks the glaring “cake and eat it too” issue of draping the cloak of inclusion over a racist/sexist/ableist/etc. structure. Who is the “We”? And doesn’t having a “We” demand a matching, othered “You”? Is it inclusion if the power to determine the structure’s architecture remains (functionally) off limits to the “newbies” (no matter what the marketing says)?

This brings me, finally, to this potentially confounding problem for inclusion. The foundations of DEIB are based on specific conceptions of right and wrong. But is inclusion actually inclusive if DEIB espouses a particular morality to which all people do not ascribe?

It is important to frankly consider how right and wrong are defined within the concept of inclusion. What happens with people whose cultural and moral foundation includes the belief that homosexuality is wrong, for example, or that Black people (while deserving of fair treatment at all levels) actually are inferior? Are we to be inclusive of them, too? Would it have ruined feminism if the professor/admin had included my posture regarding pre-marital sex?

What does it mean to be inclusive of differences of morality and belief?

If “we” who believe in freedom are to fully realize the dream of being “paid in full” what Dr. King first described in 1963 and which found new life in 2020, we must consider how to incorporate a much broader horizon of difference within the movement toward inclusion.

In her powerful essay, “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House," Audre Lorde famously states the following:

What, then, is the place of difference in inclusion? That question defines the central quandary that those who would practice inclusion must address. If we are to credit Audrey Lorde, all things must be considered. In this newly dawned era of our experiment in inclusive democracy, can we exercise the courage to confront our assumptions in the context of the struggle between difference and inclusion? Whether we can include those whose morality threatens us will determine if we are telling the truth about inclusion.

¹ Lorde, Audre. “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House.” 1984. Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches. Ed. Berkeley, CA: Crossing Press. 110- 114. 2007. Print.

About the Author

Bathabile K. S. Mthombeni, J.D., M.S., is a mediator, racial intelligence coach, and organizational ombudsperson who is passionately committed to facilitating difficult conversations at the frontiers of social justice and social change. She is the founder of Untangled Resolutions, a company dedicated to improving leaders' capacities to manage conflict, and Come Abide Here, a company dedicated to helping White people to deepen their self-awareness about race.