Our D+I efforts fail for a number of reasons:
- Beautiful statements and a handful of ghettoized programs don’t fundamentally change behavior.
- We create “goals” that are not actionable and have no measures attached.
- Every single person has implicit biases – sometimes against things that they themselves are – and we don’t do enough to combat them.
- Mandatory training tends to bring out our inner misanthropic teenager: “You’re not the boss of me!”
Fortunately, there are proven strategies to combat all of these problems, one of which is consciously training yourself to be an ally.
What is an ally? To quote Jessica Pettitt’s sidebar on allyship:
An ally supports the struggles of a historically underrepresented group even though she is not personally a member of that group.
Becoming one involves doing work on oneself and then reaching out to engage in advocacy and agency, and her sidebar includes details of how to go about all those things.
To learn more, download your free copy of Include Is a Verb: Moving from Talk to Action on Diversity and Inclusion, at http://bit.ly/2peWwP0, no divulging of information about yourself required.