Hiding Who We Are

 

By Marilyn Moore

It was a hard conversation.  At a meeting of one of Lincoln’s many fine nonprofit boards, we talked about the new reality for organizations that seek or rely on federal funds…the reality that such funding is in jeopardy.  In particular, the reality that such funding is no longer available to any organization that has even a hint of DEI about it.  You know, DEI…diversity, equity, inclusion.  Words that our board members, and our staff, regard as important, because of what those words mean.  Words that describe an important part of who we are.  Words that, if found on our website or in any public documents, will most assuredly mean the immediate cancellation of federal funds, with no warning and no appeal.

So we talked about it.  Do we proceed as we are, an organization that publicly affirms the values of diversity, equity, and inclusion?  Do we tone it down a little, and hope for the best?  Do we delete all references to workplace and organizational values from the website and from any piece of paper that might be seen by anyone?  What became clear in the course of the conversation is that nearly every person around the table works for an organization, private or public, nonprofit or for-profit, that is asking the same questions.  

This is a funding question.  It’s also a strategy question.  It’s a short-term vs. long-term question.  It’s a means/ends question.  It’s a cost/benefit question.  And it’s an identity question.  If we can’t say, up front and with pride, who we are, are we really who we are?  And the counter to that question is, if we stop talking about who we are, but act in accordance with who we are, does it give us the chance to be who we are in the future?  What’s the cost of public speech?  And what’s the cost of not speaking?  

These are not easy questions.  I’ll not disclose our decision, as it’s not mine to disclose.  We  committed to continue to live our core values.  We will not abandon those values, and those values will guide us as we navigate this new political reality.  

And as I drove home from that meeting, in despair that we were having to consider hiding who we are to assure our survival, I realized that persons living as a minority have done this their entire lives.  Across the ages, around the world, persons who were of a minority faith just kept quiet about it; they prayed and worshipped and practiced the rituals of their faith behind closed doors.  Jewish persons in fifteenth century Spain were forced to convert to Christianity to save their lives.  Jewish persons and gays and Communists were imprisoned and executed in Nazi Germany.  (The Nazis also burned books, and arrested and imprisoned persons who wrote, read, and owned “banned” books.) For most of human history, gays and lesbians just kept their sexual orientation to themselves, because it wasn’t safe to be out.  

And lest we think that such atrocities were somewhere else, or a long time ago, we have our own stories of forcing people to hide in the United States. Women who were healers and mystics in Massachusetts in the 1600’s kept quiet, lest they be deemed witches and put to death.  Immigrants from Germany, right here in Nebraska, stopped speaking the German language and preparing traditional German foods during WWI, lest they be thought to be German sympathizers.  Indigenous parents hid their children, so they would not be snatched by government officials and sent to Indian Boarding Schools, where the goal was to take the Indian out of the child.  And today, trans teens and adults are receiving the message, from a presidential executive order and from legislation proposed or enacted in so many states, including Nebraska, that to be safe, they must hide who they are…harsher yet, they must not be who they are.  With an attempted suicide rate higher than any other subgroup, trans teens and trans adults are told they must not be who they are….

I don’t know where all this will end.  I suspect most organizations will figure out a way to play by the new rules…with some angst, with some defiance, with some not able to live out their mission if they are required to deny diversity, equity, and inclusion.  I suspect the harm to individual people, who find themselves in a situation where they must hide who they are, will be much more significant.  Most mental health practitioners I know would say that mentally healthy people are people who know who they are, who act in accordance with that, who do not try to be someone they are not.  A person forced for too long to hide who they are will result in either an explosion or an implosion…and I think the same is true of an organization, and a community.

Denial of diversity, all of life in its grand diversity; denial of equity, the hoped-for outcome of all persons living into their potential; denial of inclusion, that sense that we all belong…hiding all of this is not good for anyone.  In the long run, it is damaging to the body, mind, and soul, of an individual, and of a nation.

I have a new perspective on the lines Emily Dickinson wrote about hope: “Hope is the thing with feathers, that perches in the soul; and sings the tune, without the words, and never stops, at all.”  Sometimes it’s not safe to sing the words, so you sing the tune….to remind yourself of who you are….

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