Community - Equality Diversity and Full Inclusion - Speak your truth

What is it like to be diverse in Devon? I’m not sure we’re too great yet with diversity and full inclusion in Devon. I have friends of colour and a mixed-race daughter with ASD and being accepted as a person of colour, is still difficult for them in schools, on our council estate’s and in highly professional services too. Racism still seems to be out there, lurking about and whether its conscious or not, we really need to look in on ourselves and check out if we’re harbouring any unconscious bias.

Diversity adds so much to our communities and the gene pool ultimately making us better, stronger, and wiser as human beings! Whether this be diversity in sexuality, body type, body shape, body race, body fitness, ability, disability or neuro-diversity, and needing to favour people who are like us in some way, is a form of unconscious bias, as is the need to shame another for their differences. To attempt to shame another for their differences is never about the diverse person, but always about the shamer. So, the shame is on them really!

Please be on the lookout for unconscious bias and call it out for what it is when you notice it. No other person ever has the right to make another person feel less than. We need to be lifting each other up and empowering each other as life can be hard enough without making it more difficult. I do not know about you but I personally celebrated when the statue of Coleston was toppled into the river Avon and saw it as a monumental moment of people power, metaphorically stating the rule of the white privileged man is officially over, and diversity reigns supreme here!

I was somewhat concerned when conducting research for this diversity subject to know that people of colour and diversity can feel that they have not been able to truly integrate, because despite their best efforts we can do much more to welcome and accommodate them into our societies. If we don’t embrace, include, love, and accept we are hurting ourselves and our children. Why? Because maybe our children will fall in love with their children, forcing us to look at our shadow side.

Do you know that I personally find the forms we’re asked to fill in about our nationality, race, and diversity quite offensive and when I’m asked what my race is, I always write ‘human!’

“Why Is this?” Do I hear you asking? It just feels that in being asked this question serves only to accentuate differences rather than normalising them. We are all part of ‘the human race’, no matter what our culture, sexuality or background is. We all started our evolutionary process into the human form, at the same place in Africa too, (allegedly,) and then spread North, East, South, and West. Chromosomes in genetic make-up are very clever and responds to the environment around us. We know this because if you were to put identical stem cells into petri-dishes and leave them to grow within different environments they would grow into different forms. This is also why, through our evolutionary process as we spread North, East, south and West, the raw genetic material within us reacted within the different environments causing us to evolve diversely and change in our skin, eye, and hair colour and giving us different blood types too. However, we are all still human beings and needing love and is at our core as is the need for acceptance and inclusion into our communities.

What is your sex? - Human.

What is your sexuality? – human.

What is your age? – yes human too!        

I know it’s silly and recognise bureaucracy uses the information to prove its acceptance and inclusion of diversity, but I just cannot help myself being silly, with these silly forms. 😉

Melanie Mahjenta Ph.D.

Petri dish science - by Dr Bruce Lipton https://youtu.be/h9SIKB-qjvA