Diversity Equity Inclusion & Belonging - September 12, 2024
by Alison Shroeder, GHA Art Coordinator
“Privilege is invisible to those who have it.”
-Prof. Michael Kimmel
Wherever and however we grow up, it takes some time and distance to reflect on it with perspective. Things that are commonplace for some people are exotic for others, and it is only by opening our world that we can see truths about ourselves in context.
Some years ago, I heard about a young woman who grew up in a family that prepared and ate the same thing for dinner every night of the week—baked chicken. When she went away to college and saw, for the first time in her life, that people would generally eat different things for dinner each day, or at least not always the same thing, she saw that the extreme culinary consistency she had experienced in her own family was unusual.
When I heard this story, I made assumptions. I speculated that this person’s limited exposure to food must have extended to other areas of her life. It seemed almost unbelievable to me that someone could have such an insulated experience for so long.
The environment I grew up in was unusual in kind of an opposite way. I, too, didn’t really see how different it was until I moved away. My mother, a Colombian immigrant and immigration lawyer, worked with clients from almost 100 different countries. People and circumstances from her professional practice often overlapped with our life at home. We had dinner and house guests from Spain, Cameroon, Bolivia, Germany, Vietnam, Ecuador, Ghana, Sweden—you name it.
Meeting people from across the globe, hearing their languages and getting to know their stories was extraordinary, and had a tremendous impact on my life. I knew from an early age that there were many possible ways to be.
Still, I was at home. I was seeing things from one particular point of view. In The Innocents Abroad, Mark Twain famously wrote, “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” One could argue that meeting people from everywhere was like traveling; that the world came to us. But it wasn’t. There’s a difference between learning about others when you’re on your own turf and immersing yourself in their world.
After college, I had an opportunity to study Spanish abroad. I knew some basic phrases that would allow me to “get by” on visits to Colombia, but never enough to truly communicate with that side of our family. Interested in the art and culture of Mexico, I enrolled in an immersive language program in Cuernavaca. I met the person who would eventually become my husband, and the time I lived in Mexico extended from 7 months to 12 years. As I learned and grew in the culture, assumptions I made early on dissolved. Local practices that occasionally rubbed me the wrong way when I arrived eventually became my modus operandi. I was able to see my home country from such a different angle. I began to understand that some of the things that had I previously revered, taken for granted or not even seen about my upbringing were like my own version of baked chicken every night for dinner.
One afternoon, I was helping my mother-in-law prepare a meal. She’s an incredible cook and makes everything from scratch, so this is no small feat. Elbow-deep into the ordeal that making chiles rellenos is, we got to talking about water and the different ways it is approached between Mexico and the United States. In the middle of our conversation, she narrowed her eyes and grabbed me by the arm, pulling me closer to her level. “Alison, are you meaning to tell me that all the water in the United States is purified for drinking?”
“Yes, Margarita.”
She lowered her voice and looked around, as if someone were spying on us. “Even the water…in the toilets?”
I sighed. “Yep. Even the water in the toilets.”
A general sense of guilt nagged at me all through dinner, and once it was over and we were cleaning up the kitchen, I wanted to explain how we sometimes don’t think about something if we grow up with it. Scrubbing the plates, I started to tell my mother-in-law the story about the girl with the baked chicken. Knowing her own compulsion to outperform herself in the kitchen every day, I assumed that the monotony of the meal would strike a chord. “So, there was this girl, and she grew up in a family that prepared the exact same thing every single night for dinner—they never ate anything else.”
Margarita stopped drying the plate in her hand. “Well, what did they eat?”
“Baked chicken.”
She raised her eyebrows and went back to drying the plates. “Well, they were very fortunate. Enough money for chicken every day.”
It is so easy to fall into assumptions, even when we know we should avoid them, even when we try to keep an open and empathetic mind. We make assumptions and we make mistakes. It’s what happens when we learn any language–we stumble through and mess up along the way.
To connect, to learn the language of compassion, and for us to be able to see who we are, we have to put ourselves into situations that allow us to listen, observe and converse with people who have different backgrounds, identities and points of view than our own. Once we’re there, we must be present, and we must be humble.
If you’re interested in expanding your point of view, you might enjoy starting with the links below:
Goodwin Living DEIB Committee: Statement of Purpose: Educate, Embrace and Empower team members, residents, members* and all served by Goodwin Living to support Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging.
Goodwin Living DEIB Committee Desired Outcome: The Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging Committee (DEIB) will seek open and honest communication and collaboration that will inform and celebrate the age, culture, ethnicity and sexual orientation of team members, residents, members* and all served by Goodwin Living without bias.
*Members include Priority Club members and Goodwin Living at Home.
Questions or comments? Please contact us at DEIB@GoodwinLiving.org
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