DEI at its heart IS heart.
An intentional structured strategy to notice and include those who historically have been systematically or unintentionally overlooked.
And now the system has swung to unneglect the historical and systematic in-group. "What about me? I don't see any of us in those efforts to unneglect others."
Will anyone feel any better as we use the system to explicitly re-neglect and performatively re-ostracize?
"You were starting to feel included? Hold my Modelo."
I can not claim to know the lived experiences of those not the most privileged.
I am NOT a "protected class".
I am among the most privileged class. Cishet white male. Grew up Middle Class - briefly upper middle, sometimes free-lunch poor. Very engaging, always a smile. And for a while beautiful in the way that all young and athletic youth look from old eyes. In short, I had it about as easy as it gets as far as being welcomed.
I went to five different elementary schools. We often moved in the middle of a school year. We weren't in the military, where moving is so integral that they have multiple strategies and programs to help welcome, integrate, cope. We were on our own and were winging it.
My fourth school (5th Grade, mid-year) was the first school where I felt my outsider status was a formal unshakeable attribute. Cliques and bullies. I got targeted, threw my lone "socially-forced" punch - a hiccup in the normal assimilation process.
Transferring to my fifth school (6th Grade, mid-year), I led with something of a bad-ass persona. Stern, quiet. I didn't know why at the time, but clearly it was to not to look vulnerable. Eventually, I felt safe and let goofy me (the real me) out.
We moved a couple more times, but didn't have to change Middle or High schools.
I joined a military academy. We were all actively, systematically, insulted and psychologically abused for the first year. But it was a universal abuse - where every flaw was ruthlessly exploited. To me it felt like a tactically flawed but fair meritocracy. I didn't see any out of the ordinary (telling phras) explicit race-based anti-favoritism, but the female cadets (10% of the corps) endured continual prejudice (most subtle). Homophobia was rife.
It took me about a year and a half to find my people there.
I transferred to a highly-ranked Party College after the two-year pause in my overall social development (and an actual degradation in my emotional robustness). One of those lifetime moments: I'm in a throng at the Campus Bookstore and even though I had heard the song hundreds of times, I for the first time really connect with Jim Morrison when he laments "Women seem wicked, when you're unwanted."
My longstanding joke was my goal at UF was "to get back up to Social Zero... I'm still working on it."
It took about about 10 months to find my group.
Most of my remaining Outsides were city moves for work. Orlando, Huntsville, Orlando, San Diego.
The social and emotional onboarding, for me, typically was sports, either work-"sponsored" or found on my own.
San Diego took a while. Hang-gliding, roller hockey and open-gym volleyball. The volleyball players were younger than me and much better players. They were always so gracious to me, making me feel welcome, even though I was older, less skilled, and basically not like them. I ultimately stopped playing because I didn't want to burden them (Ididn't realize at the time that having someone over half a foot taller than anyone else on the time is valuable even if that lunk isn't that skilled). It may be my first experience with wide intentional kindness rather than spontaneous/earned. To this day, I am still thankful to them.
It was probably a year in San Diego that I found my place. How did I find my place? I paid to be in a club of "Athletic Singles". Peers in play and playfulness. I felt included; paying for it was money well spent.
But, like I often come to understand, my tendencies towards apparent altruism are extensions of my own experiences.
While I not be diverse from The Us, and I never need lift to Equity, I understand some struggle to be included.
We don't need to experience the same level of pain to feel compassion towards others in pain.