Early on in my Master of Social Work program the question was posed “Is there anything good about White Privilege?” I am so thankful to my fellow life experienced classmate and strong woman of color stated “Yes, when it is used to uplift others”. The question was only brought to the attention of the class after the professor and I had a rich after class discussion on my thoughts surrounding her presenting herself on day one as “An Unapologetic Black Woman” and asking what my response to this was supposed to be. As a white, middle-class, rural American who comes from a place of higher means than the average Buckeye, I had been finding myself lost for direction. You see, I am from a state still being referred to by trend casters as one of “the fly over states”. I am the daughter, granddaughter, sister and more to the good White men who wouldn’t dream of standing up for themselves – but I will. When the highest suicide rate by far is middle aged white men and we can’t even say that out loud for fear of triggering someone who hates that same group, we have got to believe we are approaching this ALL wrong.
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I am a Midwest mut who knows where my roots come from. In one of the D.E.I. trainings I went through I expressed my ongoing distaste over my life for the term ‘Caucasian’ as I feel it has taken away from my heritage in my knowledge of the specific countries my ancestors come from. These are of England, Germany, Sweden, Ireland, and some potential not yet verified drops of Cherokee. The leader laughed at this idea proclaiming, “they will never do that!” This combined with the statement anticipating black and brown people to be on track to become the majority made it very clear that this was not in fact about diversity and inclusion but in a turning of the tables so to speak. The leader also spoke on the differences she has lived with coming from a small community with a population of 85,000. When I brought up my upbringing as being from the much smaller community of 15,000, she laughed in judgment rather than to ponder our unique differences. It was made clear repeatedly that this PhD of Education did not believe she had room to learn from the likes of me.
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The collectivist community in which I was raised was one which allowed space for both my top 1% Patriarchal family and my bottom 1% Matriarchal family to provide opportunity to their families through hard work, ingenuity, and a commitment to faith, family, and community. At the same time, as a primarily white farming community in origin, they have not been allowed to embrace their collectivist nature at the same rate of as any minority group. Even in this primarily industrial and agriculture town with railway roots who has embraced migrant workers from our southern border since the early 1990’s and on. This brings another conflict I attempted to bring to the D.E.I. providers attention – the diverse culture of all countries south of our location which are diluted to one term despite their unique and dynamic differences. Recent attention to the Latinx community has really disparaged the majority Latino community which is unfortunate. One group I had hoped to bring light to at a larger corporation with a D.E.I representative who saw me for my true servant’s heart and also knew I was against an insurmountable battle. That was to be a voice for the neurodivergent population – one of the largest and most over-stigmatized and underrepresented populations there is. I had evidence of facing discrimination from my colleagues up to my own manager and did not want conflict but to educate. This woman of color had of course built up this large network’s D.E.I. program, only to have a man of color hired over her – in true Booker T. Washington fashion. They then went on to do this large presentation which everyone doted over yet on my ask of what they were doing to support rural diversity as half the counties they claim to serve fall into that range. I received an email suggesting we scheduled follow up which got forwarded to some scheduling assistant and then put off indefinitely.
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Recently, I came across my original journal plans for this business which I had put into chicken scratch in August of 2016. Later that week the grandmother who had loved me like only a mother could died of a stroke. I journaled then of my need to suppress my emotions surrounding her death in pursuit of this longterm goal which involves restoring a community that had supported her family as migrant farm workers in the 1930’s, coming from a cotton sharecropping farm in Missouri – more of that Caucasian diversity. The 2016 election had been the first time I voted Democrat. This was the first time I learned the DNC thinks it knows better than it’s voters. I was a big Bernie fan as a fresh BS holder. I thought he and a Republican Congress could make real things happen in the terms of mediation and change for the masses. Then Bernie won Indiana, the state I live, but through the use of Superdelegates Hillary received more votes – again the DNC wants you to think you have a say when they know better and just fix the vote. I still voted for Hillary – I held my breath, but I did it. As I told my staunch Republican grandfather who asked what I thought of President Trump once he was in office, I am so disappointed in the Republican party which left him floored. I told him I did not think that in 2016 you could have the rhetoric about woman that he had and be elected President of the United States of America. Then all of these strong conservative men who I had respected my whole life bit their tongue – for the sake of pushing their agenda. Paul Ryan truly broke my heart. About a week before the end of 2017, I stopped following all major media sources. I did this after becoming consumed with negativity about things that weren’t affecting my day to day life. I did not vote in the following presidential election. Due to the state of the economy, I didn’t see a matter where Donald Trump was not re-elected. At the same time I could not vote for President Biden as what they were doing was elder abuse – again for the sake of pushing an agenda. In this past election, I could see that Donald Trump was likely going to win. While I was not happy about this, I could see it as a means to support my business plan in an effort to pull us back to the center.
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What I will say of Donald Trump is that my primary problem with him was his rhetoric about women – he’s not doing that anymore. As someone who truly believes in systemic injustice, I see someone really shaking up the system and think – how can I take advantage of that? I grew up under parents who did the real work of colorblindeness. This was to become enlightened and to return to their home community to teach this and work towards natural integration. The majority of their classmates fell to colorblindeness the noun – this was to take their Enlightenment to the suburbs to be together and casting judgment to those they’ve left behind. Over time we have seen this animosity of the low income urban and low income rural pitted against one another polictically, each staring to the hills in resentment towards those on the other side. As a political purple, I waited three years in that MSW program for my rural population to be acknowledged. It came up in the in-person classes one time – this was by the one openly transgender of the cohort and it was to say “farm communities are really weird” and everyone agreed in unison. What an oppressing and judgmental statement to make about an entire subgroup of humans. Another person who had been assigned to my hometown complained how awful it was – social work in an area without resources certainly is not as easy as the telehealth and hands off approach promoted by COVID. Many people in the program came from the coasts and even more left the state following their draining of resources from a primary state university in a seventy percent rural state. It was in an online course that I did get the attention of a rural engagement group. They came to do a round table in my home community and when I left I can tell you – I did not feel comfortable sending those students in to work with the people I came from as it was. I reached out to these guys in my business plans with a hope to partner with them. It was five minutes before our scheduled meeting during the month after the election that I emailed them my business plans and they cancelled the meeting. I still have hope they will encounter the humility they need to be passing on to the students they are teaching. As a member of the final graduating class of IUPUI prior to its dissolution, I can testify so much likely causal link to the lack of teamwork from each school. As it is, the psychology department I came from maintains interest in a partnership – point Purdue.
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My final thoughts on the pulling of D.E.I. initiatives is that a primary law they were attempting to bring light to – the 1990 Disability Rights Act – has not gone anywhere. As someone who participated in the flawed programs, it’s not a bad idea to refine it before we cause much more harm than the good that should be intended by this. I will refer to one more experience from the first, smaller organization training I participated in. This was two powerpoint slides after learning about implicit bias when the leader attempted to attack people using the term “mansplaining”. Now I know what she meant by this, she meant when a superior over explains something in a condescending way. I asked, “do you think they could come up with another term for this considering we just learned about the impact of implicit bias. Perhaps we should consider what we are saying explicitly about the group with the number one suicide rate in the nation”. Her response was to laugh, and declare they are working on that on the coasts. Isn’t that just it? These coastal driven policies for resources we don’t have in the middle and then judgment when we aren’t able to apply it correctly. As a multi-generation Midwesterner, I am sick of my homesteading heritage being attacked. I grew up knowing I was hated everywhere I went, just for being who I was. And I still only ever wanted to help people. I won’t apologize for that.
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