hatred of or discomfort with people who are attracted to members of the same sex
Transphobia: Dislike or discrimination against trans people or gender nonconforming people because of their gender identity
Xenophobia: Dislike of people from other countries or anyone deemed “foreign” because of their immigrant or visitor status
Islamophobia: Dislike or hatred against anyone practicing or perceived to be a practitioner of Islam because of their religious affiliation
COMBATING FEELINGS OF LOSS AND FEAR AROUND DEI
Loss and fear are often at the core of people’s feelings around DEI practices. It’s the fear that those who benefit from majority-favoring practices and white privilege will lose out on success. But these fears are unfounded. Actually, one workplace leader I know stated that “fear of the unknown could be standing in the way of the success of DEI practices.” One thing to note is that diverse employees recognize that their white counterparts aren’t responsible for the years of inequity experienced by people of color and other underrepresented categories of people, but these white counterparts can be allies to help dismantle those inequitable systems. However, everyone has to recognize that everyone has to participate in the conversation about DEI (that means including white men).
All people experience fear; it impacts everyone, and therefore everyone needs to be engaged in the DEI conversation. Women, people of color, disabled people, and the LGBTQIA+ community fear mistreatment, prejudice, and continued marginalization. White men, especially, fear living and working in a society where they’re no longer the majority. Millennials fear not being respected because of their age. This aspect of humanity can serve as a connection point to help level the playing field in the workplace.
LGBTQIA+
(Adapted from Human Rights Campaign’s and Catalyst’s Glossary of Terms)
An initialism for the community of people who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer or questioning, and any other sexual or gender minority. People often refer to the I as “intersex” and the A as asexual. Some of my colleagues also use the IA to refer to inclusion allies.
Originally, the first four letters of the LGBTQIA+ initialism were commonly used to group various sexual and gender minorities. Although it was first considered an evolution toward inclusion, these four letters proved to be limiting to individuals who didn’t identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender.
Other LGBTQ terms include the following:
Sex: Biological classification of male or female based on reproductive organs and functions.
Lesbian: Women and nonbinary people who are attracted to women may use this term to describe themselves.
Gay: Men, women, and nonbinary who are attracted to people of the same gender may use this term to describe themselves.
Bisexual: A person who is attracted to more than one sex, gender, or gender identity may use this term to describe themselves. These attractions don’t necessarily occur simultaneously, in the same way, or to the same degree.
Transgender: People who feel that the gender assigned to them based on their biological sex is a false or incomplete definition of themselves. Being transgender doesn’t imply any specific sexual orientation. Therefore, transgender people may identify as straight, gay, lesbian, bisexual, and so on.
Queer: This term is often used as a catch-all adjective to describe many people, including those who don’t identify as exclusively straight and/or folks who have nonbinary or gender-expansive identities. This term was previously used as a slur but has been reclaimed by many parts of the LGBTQ movement.
Microaggressions
Microaggressions are subtle verbal and nonverbal slights, insults, indignities, and denigrating messages directed toward a person due to their group membership, often automatically and unconsciously. Microaggressions can be seen as innocent, harmless comments, but they actually reinforce stereotypes and are a form of discrimination.
For example, if you ask the Asian member of your team to complete a task that requires extensive math because you know they’ll be great at it, you probably just made the statement without thinking. You don’t know the Asian member of your team; you just assumed they’d be great at math based on a stereotype. That’s the challenge with microaggressions — they often operate outside of the level of consciousness.
Throughout my career as a woman and a person of color, I’ve experienced many microaggressions at the hands of supervisors, senior leaders, and other authority figures who were from the dominant group of power and privilege in the organization. I’ve been complimented for “sounding white and speaking proper,” been told how articulate I am, and been used as a photo op for the company’s annual report or marketing brochure and as a token for meeting diversity goals. I’ve been present at the table but had my voice be invisible, been designated as the one to go get lunch for all male colleagues — the list goes on. These microaggressions left me feeling used, undervalued, emotionally exhausted, resentful, and hurt.
Similar to implicit bias, microaggressions are an unfortunate outcome of the human experience. Check out the discussion of microaggressions in Chapter 7 to help to raise your consciousness about these matters and how to mitigate them.
Neurodiversity
The concept of neurodiversity is newer in the DEI space but not the medical and social science fields. Neurodiversity is a term that was introduced in 1998 by an autistic sociologist named Judy Singer. It comes from a number of brain studies that reveal that people who think, learn, and process information differently than others have brains that are wired that way. Advocates seek to set the record straight that people who are neurodiverse are not suffering from a disease or dysfunction. Rather, the idea is that people should expand their understanding of what’s “normal” in terms of brain function — that many things that have been considered problems are actually just differences.
Neurodiversity is important for the workplace because often those who are considered neurodiverse fall under the disability umbrella; however, John Elder Robison, a neuroscience scholar in residence at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia stated that “neurodiversity
