I wanted to write this up because it is such a pointed example.
So our family qualifies for this very special program at boichik's preschool where parents actually get to come in and work one on one with a child development specialist on improving our communication as a family.
We have not yet been able to take advantage of this great opportunity because E's health and endurance are not yet up to the weekly bus ride in to the preschool and back with a long meeting in the middle.
So, the other week, a staff member greeted me with an exuberant grin and the big news to look out for an email from the child development specialist about the possibility of meeting in that specialist's home office, which they'd just realized is in our own neighborhood exclamation point.
To her visible surprise, I did not respond with enthusiasm, but only with curiousity. "Oh," I said. "What's the address?"
As it turns out, the office, in our neighborhood, would be a forty-five minute trek for my legs and his powerchair along poorly kept streets with no sidewalks and at least one doozy of a hill.
It would take about the same amount of time as getting to the preschool, a huge amount more energy, very much less safety, and it would actually be physically impossible for me to pull it off and then get back to a bus stop in time to get to the preschool and pick up our boichik.
Now-- it is incredibly important to me to be clear here that I am not writing this up to shame the two staff members and the child development specialist who were all so gung-ho at the wonderful realization of how "close" the office was to where we live.
Quite the opposite, my point here is that three individuals, all of whom are tremendously intelligent, deeply invested in making things work, actively employed in social justice-oriented work, and not only aware of but actually focused on my family's particular circumstances, all missed the mark here the the exact same way.
They didn't know what they didn't know.
When you drive, Closer = Faster & Easier. This is a no-brainer. It's self-evident. It's the way of the world. It does not require any kind of awareness or analysis. Sure, if you want to be nit-picky you can come up with some exceptions-- but not between basics like someplace in your own neighborhood versus an infamously challenging address six miles away.
When you bus, there is no given relationship between closer and faster. Really. There are places in my own city that take me longer to reach by bus than my parents' house *three counties* away.
Our brains are not built to reinvent the wheel every new situation. Our brains are built to whip up quick, good ideas stretching out from the steady structure of what we don't have to think about. We *need* our "no-brainers" to function, and that is why all the sensitivity training in the world cannot teach someone to think about what they don't think about. No matter how well trained you are, you do not know what you do not know until you actually encounter it.
This is where the training pays off-- because the whole point here is that this is not the story of a sensitivity-fail.
**This is what SUCCESS looks like.**
The staff member I was talking to followed her training perfectly.
She caught that there was a difference in my perspective and her perspective as soon as I wasn't enthusiastic as she was.
Then, she listened.
She listened as long as I had something to say.
Then, she invited me to tell her more.
Once I was done, she repeated back to me what she understood, and checked in with me if she'd gotten it right.
And then, she checked in with me as to what I would like her to say to the other staff members, and where we could go from here.
At no point did she assume I wasn't catching on to the implications here, or that I must not care as much about this opportunity as she thought I did, or try to explain at me why I should be enthusiastic. She did not move to protect her perspective or defend her ego in any way at any time.
**This is what success looks like.**
We need to hear that. We need to remember that.
Because anyone who grows up centered, grows up told in a million ways that where *you* stand is the magic place of perfect potential from which you can be anything or understand anybody.
The very foundation of institutionalized prejudice is indoctrinating privileged children with the idea that all it takes to understand people is intellect and compassion.
If you believe that all it takes to understand people is intellect and compassion, that you are "supposed" to be able to relate to anybody and imagine anything, then you've been systematically taught that other people's life experiences don't really matter.
If you believe that all it takes to understand people is intellect and compassion, then every single time you face the fact that you don't understand where someone is coming from, you are going to experience it as insult and injury.
You are going to experience any evidence of your own failure to understand as an accusation that you aren't smart enough, you don't care enough, and without even meaning to you are going to start looking for reasons and ways to dismiss the person who is coming from different life experience.
It isn't just that inclusivity is a process, not a goal to be checked off after a few books or hours' training.
It is more. It is that this healthy, necessary, vital and unending process looks exactly like "failure".
There will always be another thing that you don't know that you don't know. Always. Always. Always.
Making peace with that truth is the first step out of one's own sense of centeredness.
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