On September 19th, three of us attended the Virginia Center for Inclusive Communities’ 2022 Virginia Inclusion Summit. We all had so much to say (much more than is here), but we landed on presenting it interview fashion for 3 overarching thoughts.

1. What was your overall experience? 

Angela: I had a blast seeing old colleagues and connecting with new people. The workshops were full of multiple perspectives and experiences which lead to rich discussions. Participants were not only able to learn through the facilitators, but also from each other. There was a feeling of “we are all in this together, now - get to work”. What I didn’t expect, is that I was able to understand myself more after attending the summit. I am very familiar with a lot of the content that was shared, and this inadvertently helped me with this pesky imposter syndrome I have been working through. Being a professional that works within a space where there is still so much work to do, sometimes it seems like I'm climbing a mountain and I don’t own the right hiking boots. I realized that we are all hiking down a fairly new path and/or creating new ones so it makes total sense that I may feel like I'm losing my footing at times.

Avi: The VCIC Conference opening plenary was a perfect start to engaging the open spaces in our DEI journey. Particularly interesting were the conversations related to perspective. I drew from my own experiences, the presenters shared ideas, and I connected to the thought that the open spaces on our journey, those areas where we leave space available for deeper understanding, can be uncomfortable and sometimes contentious. Open spaces are places of vulnerability, places of reflection, and opportunities to Yet, it is in those open spaces where we can wrestle with the differences and allow others thoughts and ideas to collide with our own, often resulting in fragments of others’ wisdom, belief, and ideals strengthening our own.

Rita: Every VCIC event I’ve been to, and it’s been a few now, I’m overwhelmed by the sheer power of engaging with like-minded humans. This time, I suppose, I approached that with unanticipated emotion. I moved to Richmond in March of this year. I was ready for new spaces with new challenges – a shake up! It is the best type of uncomfortable, but it’s still uncomfortable. I’m grateful to have volunteered for VCIC previously and engaged in a few other DEI settings, and attending this year’s summit meant seeing some familiar faces that I’ve connected with previously – and that did my heart some good. Along with the comfort of familiarity, it was valuable to remind myself that those individuals that I was calling friends and so overjoyed to see were once also strangers to me.

2. What are some tangible facts or resources that you would like to share?

Angela: This statistic jarred me: Black knowledge workers rank “making sure their employer knows they are working” as their second-most-pressing challenge (for white employees, it ranked at number 8). (Future Forum.) I don’t think this is caused by the employer necessarily, but by the challenges that black people have had to overcome to be in their place or residual cultural traits that have survived the generations in both black and white communities. Other statistics: 1 in 4 transgender employees report experiencing discrimination in the workplace. DEI trends were great to hear but disappointing. 27% of employees feel that their organization informs them of opportunities to promote inclusion in their day-to-day work and only 36% of D&I leaders shared that their organization has been effective at building a diverse workforce. One may think, “Well, what could they do better?” In the second statistic, is this because of a systemic issue or that companies and organizations are not doing the work? Maybe both? We are constantly looking for ways to make practices more equitable. Artificial intelligence may be a tool in reducing bias in hiring practices. While this is an interesting concept, I was under the impression that artificial intelligence can also learn bias. I looked into this and found in a Forbes article that stated, “There are now tools designed to weed out implicit human and data biases that surreptitiously make their way into Artificial Intelligence.” Just as we examine our biases, AI can as well! Lastly, The Ladder of Inference is an effective tool to help with reflection and navigating through conflict. It shows what steps we go through when choosing our actions. By examining this, we can make sure we are making thoughtful decisions, rather than just reacting.

Avi: Reflecting on all that was shared during the individual breakout sessions, I appreciated the conversations related to governance within an organization’s DEI strategy. Kerrol Cadallo did masterful work in shaping the healthy governance of DEI through ideation and decision-making. Through diverse stakeholders, the inputs are gathered by data reporting, associate/staff feedback, communities, foundations, and best practices. These stakeholders might include a board or executive committee, staff inclusion group, DEI council, and DEI team. Ultimately the outputs may be represented in this collective work as education programs, DEI programming, community partnerships, and policies and practices. The outputs are only as good as the team’s effectiveness to execute the plan. It is vitally important to determine who must be involved, develop work units or roles for the governance framework, and define the accountability of each.

Rita: So, I think all of us wanted to be able to attend every single session, but when I saw Charm Bullard’s Understanding Advanced Inclusive Facilitation Skills session listed, I was ready to arm wrestle my colleagues for that one. She shared with us SO MANY facilitation techniques, a bunch of which can be found online at Liberating Structures. I’ve had the opportunity to facilitate with VCIC and NAMI Coastal Virginia and am always seeking new ways to inform my time in those roles with better practices. That said, both have really defined structures/models, so looking at honoring those while diversifying my approach and incorporating new practices is always a fun challenge. Part of our group work during the session looked at being nimble within structures and plans – something I think I always consider but also can always benefit from more practice with.

3. We all had the opportunity to be in the same space for the closing plenary titled “Making Meaning of this Moment in DEI.” What are some of your thoughts from that session?

For some context, here’s what we knew going in (pulled from the attendee booklet):

The past few years have been a period of great change in Virginia and across the country when navigating diversity, equity, and inclusion. There have been major advances – and also significant challenges. In the closing plenary, three experts will reflect on their experiences and share ideas and recommendation for how to make meaning of this moment in DEI work. This will be a candid, open, honest consideration of where we have been, the current moment, and ideas about the road ahead.

Angela: I often hear people talking about a “political divide” and how we should be careful with our language because we don’t want to offend anyone. I don’t see it as a political “divide.” What I see is fascism in politics. Panelists discussed that Fox News and similar media outlets use fear-mongering tactics to push their agenda. They manipulate words like “woke” and “CRT” to instill fear in their viewer base. The context in which they use these words may be full of falsities and propaganda to promote fascist ideologies. The conversation turned to how we can find the “right” way to explain white supremacy in order for people not to be offended and automatically tune out. Is it productive to call what is happening in the US white supremacy? One of the panelists said, “I have another word for it – fascism.” Cultures around the world promote fascist ideals regardless of what race they are. Fascism can be but is not always based on race. My thoughts: Race is a social construct. It was constructed for a reason, but that may not be widely understood. When some people hear white supremacy, are they hearing that supremacy is a by-product of whiteness? Does this cause some people to be offended, tune out, or not understand the full scope of the problem?  Would it be a more accurate (and inclusive) statement if we just called it supremacy? On the other hand, if using the phrase white supremacy in an accurate context makes a person uncomfortable then they should be encouraged to examine that. As mentioned earlier, the Ladder of Inference is a great tool!

Avi: The closing plenary spoke a message to me about going forward and continuing the work. It became clear during the panel discussion that even having the same vision and goal, there will be disagreements about how we achieve it. We cannot allow these disagreements to become distractions. We must be vigilant and continue seeking justice, not justifying our beliefs or strategies. The journey will continue to challenge each of us. We must remain optimistic in the fight for justice. Even in the face of adversity and through difficult moments that seem endless or insurmountable we must fight for what is right. Martin Luther King Jr. says this, “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” Even in our own disagreement about how to become a more just society, we must speak out by doing what is right.

Rita: I had so many varying thoughts on the closing plenary and I’m still processing all of them and how to make them live together in my head. It’s hard to know what to pick here, which is how I landed where I wanted to focus, I suppose. I’ve volunteered in the mental health space for a long while now, and, intentionally or not, I’ve trained my brain to look for emotive responses as part of that. The panelists seemed to agree on most concepts at the end of the day, I think, but whether those things created their responses of fear or hope for each varied from person to person. When they looked at that together, they found parallels and that’s something I think about a lot – in emotive response, the things that seem antithetical sometimes also live really close together. Sometimes this piece doesn’t seem to matter, since responses so often come from the same concepts and leads to the same solutions, but I also think it might be the most human-centered bit, so I’m going to keep paying attention to it.