Learning to rightsize our responsibility

i’m so honored to be able to join you

when i was thinking about what it would

be good to talk about today

i thought it might be helpful to talk

about what gets in the way

of us actualizing this goal of unity and

diversity

and i thought the west best way to talk

about that would be to share a little

bit about my story

and how i learned to think about these

issues a little bit differently

and how that change and perspective

equipped me to feel comfortable and

responsive

in working in the area of diversity so

to start with my story we’ll start with

the beginning

when i was a little kid i went to martin

luther king jr elementary school

and all of my heroes were these

international figures right i

idolized mother teresa and gandhi and

medela

mandela i was a kid right so where do

you go

if you want to be a peacemaker you go to

war

and for me that meant attending

university in washington dc

and studying conflict resolution and

international service

and when i graduated i landed my dream

job and i worked for an organization

called seeds of peace and what seeds of

peace does

is it brings youth from opposite sides

of a conflict

together to a summer camp in maine

so americans and afghans

indians and pakistanis new immigrants

and traditional white communities

youth from these prospective places come

together

and they get to have a traditional

american summer camp experience

go on the ropes course swim in the lake

but in addition they meet for two hours

every day in facilitated dialogue to

talk about the roots

of their conflict so the theory of

change with this

organization is that if you bring young

people together

and they learn to humanize the other

side

their enemy that when they go back to

their home countries

and they access positions of power

they’ll use that power

to change and in the conflicts between

them

so the organization started doing this

work around 1993

and i started in 2007

so by the time i joined it had about 15

years of experience doing this type of

program and i do want to say

that the personal transformation that

took place in that summer camp

was real i saw young people

who were afraid to go to sleep at night

because they were sleeping in the same

cabin as an israeli or a palestinian or

an american completely distraught

on departure day because the

relationships that they had formed were

so powerful and deep

we actually kept a running list of how

many cross-conflict marriages

were a result of this program so the

personal transformation was real

but what happened to that transformation

of the conflicts from which they came

does anyone know much about the

israeli-palestinian conflict in the last

20 to 30 years

not many people would say it got better

right so what happened how can we have

this strong personal transformation

and not that societal transformation

the the experience that i think answers

this question most for me

is with an israeli participant named gil

so gil came to the program in the early

90s he was one of the first

who joined and part of my job was to

actually do our alumni relations so to

keep track of participants and see where

are they now

and gil was one of the participants that

we were really watching because slowly

but surely

he was making his way up through the

political

establishment in israel and by 19 or

excuse me by 2008

he had became the chief of staff to the

israeli foreign minister tiffany livni

so all of our staff and all of the

organization and

all of the other youth who went to

summer camp with gil

were ready to see what he was going to

do

with this position of power and it was

with that hope

that we all watched as gil stood behind

to tisny libny as she announced

the war on gaza in 2008.

and so a little bit about the gaza

script it’s a palestinian territory

where almost 2 million people live

70 of the people who live there are

refugees from the israeli war of

independence

and the territory is so small that you

can’t actually run

a marathon in it you’d have to turn back

there’s not enough space

and gill stood there as

they were announcing an aerial

bombardment and invasion

so how could this be how could he stand

there knowing what he knew about

palestinians and their humanity having

gone

to summer camp with them as they were

condemned to die

eventually a thousand unarmed

palestinian civilians were

killed so what happened here

i learned a couple things through this

experience the first thing i learned is

that proximity

does not equal equity or equality

as i was thinking through this problem i

came across the fact that

africans fought with the colonists in

the american revolution

that didn’t change our country from

expanding and institutionalizing slavery

men and women can be in deep and loving

relationships with each other

but that man can still go to work and

pay a female employee

less than he would play a male employee

to do the same job

so it’d be wonderful to think that we

could solve

issues of diversity and exclusion by

just getting together and understanding

and knowing each other a little bit

better

but unfortunately that’s not the whole

picture

we have to do more we have to be more

intentional

in our work the other thing that i

learned

is what a disservice we were doing to

those young people

by bringing them when they’re 16 telling

them their leaders

and telling them they were responsible

for changing the societies in which they

came

while we did nothing about the ways in

which

their societies would change them upon

their return

because what actually happened in the

end is the influence of their societies

was more powerful than the knowledge

they gained

of their enemies humanity

so again what does that have to do with

us and this conversation here

well for me once i saw this power of

socialization

happen to gil and the thousands of other

participants in our program

i had to ask the question what is the

influence of our society

on me and

the answer to that question is why i can

stand here and say that i

know i can exhibit racism

i also know that i’ve internalized

limitations on myself

because of what our society says about

gender

and i’m not saying that because i’m

proud of these things but

because i’m no longer naive to think

that i’m immune to

all of the messages and all of the

experiences

that we’re surrounded by i say it

so that i can face it

here’s the thing if we can’t face our

socialization

if we don’t believe it exists or we

can’t see it or name it

if we can’t see our socialization

then we only have ourselves to blame

when we’re faced with inequality

or injustice around us and if we only

have ourselves to blame

then more often than not will react with

shame

and shame is a really powerful emotion

for us as humans

and it can exhibit itself in a lot of

different ways

sometimes shame can look like silence we

shut down about an issue we don’t engage

we can’t talk about it sometimes shame

can look like a justification

for the way things are or defensiveness

so we have to start becoming more aware

of these reactions as we have them

and again i’m not trying to overwhelm

you but i’m bringing this up because

maybe you’re having some of these

reactions tonight

maybe something that you’ve heard or

will hear tonight

makes you a little bit uncomfortable or

maybe even offended

so i wanted to share with you what i’ve

learned to do when those feelings arise

in me

so the first thing i do is i have to ask

myself

am i responding to something that i

personally

said or didn’t say or did or didn’t do

that’s within my frame of influence

right so part of being able to answer

this question is we have to understand

what we have control and capacity to

influence

and that’s going to be different for

each one of us a politician has a lot

more influence and control than a

student

so part of answering that question is

figuring out where i have an impact

and if your answer to this question is

yes

this is within my spirit of influence

then that is amazing

because that means that you can do

something about it

you can repair the harm you can

apologize you can

learn you can grow you can be held

accountable

those are all amazing things we can do

if the answer to that question is yes

and if the answer to the question is is

this within my spirit of influence is no

then we have to learn to let it go we

can’t allow ourselves

to get stuck in shame we can’t

allow ourselves in taking responsibility

for the whole of a system

to be immobilized from changing the part

that we can mend and if your answer to

that question

is yes this is within my spirit of

influence

but i have no idea what to do about it

then i

hope that you’ll reach out to me and

that we’ll do this work together

thank you