Musings on Inclusion
One does not join a community by loudly and obnoxiously demanding entrance. One joins by sharing the community’s goals and working with others to achieve them.
-Jay Maynard
One of the persistent problems with left-wing solutions to social problems is that their solutions are based on a sense of what humanity should be, rather than what it is. Communism and suchlike require humans not to be humans to work … and, as humans are humans, they fail spectacularly. Diversity and Inclusion, one of the current left-wing bugaboos, tend to hit the same problem when left-wingers try to devise solutions; their Diversity and Inclusion educational sessions (nagging sessions, to everyone else) are based on faulty understanding of humans, so they fail. It shouldn’t be surprising that the results of Diversity and Inclusion lectures are almost always less Diversity and Inclusion.
This would be bad enough, but what makes it worse is the fact they are unable to acknowledge the flaw within their understanding. It is unthinkable, for them, that they might be wrong. Instead, they seek to devise theories that transfer the blame elsewhere – ‘white fragility,’ for example. This further weakens Diversity and Inclusion, not least because it is obvious to the targets of their nagging that they simply don’t know what they’re talking about. An obvious show of ignorance is not conductive to respect, let alone agreement. Instead, people pay as little lip service to Diversity and Inclusion concepts as they can get away with and then conduct themselves as they see fit.
I do not claim to be a social psychologist. However, in the course of my life, I have transferred between multiple schools, colleges, a lone university and several workplaces, as well as attending a number of conventions. I know more than I want to think about social exclusion because, not to put too fine a point on it, I was one of the excluded. I feel more than words can say for the victims of social exclusion, simply because I’ve been through it myself. But I also understand – as a member of groups that have been regularly marginalised – that social inclusion and exclusion issues are both surprisingly simplistic and yet strikingly hard to overcome. Counterproductive social engineering techniques are not the solution.
And I don’t stand to gain by prolonging the problem, so that’s another mark in my favour .
It’s easy to say that social exclusion is the result of racism, sexism, whatever-phobia or something along those lines. However, this cannot be true. If it was, I wouldn’t have had any problems finding acceptance in groups that matched me. But I did …
There are, essentially, four ironclad rules of social acceptance:
1) It takes time for people to accept you, particularly if the social groups are already established by the time you arrive.
2) The more different you are from the group, the longer people will take to accept you.
3) The more you push for inclusion, the more people will push back and exclude you.
4) Some people will never accept you at all, no matter what you do.
Pretend, for the sake of argument, that you’re a teenager who’s just transferred from one school to another. You don’t know anyone at your new school. Worse, everyone else has spent the last few years building friendships and relationships that don’t have any room for you. They may not deliberately exclude you, but – to all intents and purposes – that’s what they’ll do. They simply won’t be used to having you around. You won’t get invites to parties, you won’t make easy friendships … etc, etc. I’ve been there. Believe me, it’s thoroughly unpleasant.
If you happen to be a great footballer, for example, you’ll probably find acceptance very quickly. Social groups are organised about core purposes and the footballers will be delighted to have a new player who loves to play (although if you displace someone else, as Harry Potter did, beware of the knife in the back.) However, if you happen to be someone different – a nerd or geek, or a transgender – expect to find it harder to gain widespread acceptance. The more you focus on what makes you different, the more you’ll be pushed away.
It can be painful – oh yes, it can be painful – to be excluded. It’s easy to lose one’s cool and demand inclusion, either by forcing one’s way into the group or appealing to authority to order the group to let you in. And yet, it doesn’t work. The child who forces someone to play with him gets pushback, hard pushback, as soon as the teacher is looking away. It gets worse when kids become teens (and later adults, even though they’re meant to be grown-ups) and they demand inclusion. People will resent you and resist you even though you just want to be friends. And if you want the group to change, that will be a thousand times worse.
And yes, some people will never accept you. They may be scared to change – if they had problems getting accepted, they’ll fear what’ll happen when someone new joins the group. Or they may be afraid of what you’ll bring in your wake, rightly or wrongly; they may fear that you will demand changes after changes until they’re kicked out or simply made permanently uncomfortable. Or they might be just jerks. .
It takes time for people to accept change, to accept someone or something new in their life. I know, it isn’t easy for the person who wants – who needs – to be accepted. Why, their leftist allies demand, should they wait? Why shouldn’t they be accepted at once? It isn’t fair … yes, it isn’t fair. But it’s very human. And pushing someone too hard often makes them push back. Hard.
I’ve said this before, but it’s worth repeating. Groups exist to work towards common goals, from military teams to bible study clubs and fandoms. Social groups, in particular, are organised around something the members have in common. A Superhero Movie Club, for example, will welcome someone who wants to watch superhero movies. Someone who praises romance movies and insists the group should watch them will raise eyebrows, then incur dislike and hatred. And why not? They’re trying to change the group!
The more you focus on something irreverent to the group – Diversity and Inclusion, for example – the more the group pushes back. Of course it does. The group does not want a diverse membership. It wants a particular lack of diversity – it wants, to use the movie club I mentioned above, its members to love superhero movies. If you do, you’re in; if you don’t, why would you want to join? It isn’t unreasonable to be suspicious of someone who clearly doesn’t love superhero movies and yet wants to join. What do they really want?
Diversity training fails for a number of reasons, but the most important – in my opinion – is that it draws attention to diversity. The more people become aware of diversity, the more it overshadows their thoughts; the more they dwell on it, the more they mentally edge away from the other. There’s nothing wrong with a co-worker who happens to be [whatever]; there’s a great deal wrong with a [whatever] co-worker. And if it looks as if someone had an unfair advantage because they were [whatever], expect bitter resentment and (eventually) outright hatred.
People want to feel comfortable. They don’t want to live and work in a place where the slightest thing, taken out of context, can lead to accusations of microaggressions and career destruction. And if you don’t even know where the landmines are, how can you guarantee you won’t step on one? Simple – you keep your distance from them. You exclude them because inclusion might come with a cost. This is human nature. If you make someone uncomfortable, they will exclude you for their own peace of mind. And where Diversity and Inclusion, a single bad example somewhere else can lead to the entire group being regarded with extreme suspicion.
It can get even worse. If Alice’s ‘safe space’ comes at the price of Bob losing his ‘safe space,’ why would Bob not resent it? Why would Bob be happy about losing something precious to him? Why would others not fear the same happening to them? The problems damaging fandom happen everywhere.
I don’t pretend there’s an easy solution to any of the problems posed by the push for Diversity and Inclusion. But we can at least start by recognising the truth behind human nature – and how it drives us to reject diversity and exclude those we see as potential threats.
