🌟EXPLORE EXPERIENCE🌟
Week 3: Diversity, Inclusion, and Privilege
Hello everyone! In EXPLORE Experience, I'll be reflecting on my experiences at the EXPLORE Residential Leadership series on campus, and how each EXPLORE meeting reflects my work experiences and me as an individual.
This week's topic was "Diversity, Inclusion, and Privilege".
I really liked this one. I knew that diversity, inclusion, and privilege were all important in terms of doing things for others - you should advocate for the inclusion of people who aren't as privileged as you, end of story. But this EXPLORE session taught me to look inward. I found there were identities that I thought about more (like my disability, gender, and economic class) than others (like my age and national origin). In a way, if I found more people like me in a specific community (I live in college and I'm American, for example, so I'll see more people who are both), I tend to think about it less. It never hurts to think about people who don't fit into the mold of a community more often so that their voice is heard.
Unfortunately, not everyone is encouraged to or gets to learn about diversity and inclusion. It reminded me of a moment during my SAC Spring Training where someone from the WCU Career Center was hosting a session - and said to all the Sykes Union staff, "Knowledge is privilege." There are a lot less welcoming communities who don't give the privilege to learn about diversity and inclusion, etc. There are even places like Florida where that type of education is outlawed to certain students. Or, there are schools that are underfunded to the point of not being able to teach diversity education to their students. I have all this privilege through semesterly training, and the least I can do is set a good example and call for better education about these topics I've mentioned.
Overall, I think a welcoming community equals welcoming people, and welcoming people equals successful diversity education.