Category: Equity

Diversity?

.Reading time 4 minutes.

I am often asked why I chose to attend the University of Virginia for my PhD.  Particularly in that my study focuses on religion, race, equity and embodiment…words that are lightning rods in a largely conservative place like The Commonwealth.  My application included two essays, “The White That Binds: Unitarian Universalism’s Racial Covenant” and “Religious Equity: The Path to Greater LGBTQ Inclusion”.  I did not hide who I am personally or what my scholarly goals are in applying to the program.  My professional ambition was to have the experience of education outside of the “blue bubbles” that I have previously been part of: Princeton, Pacific School of Religion (Berkeley), Harvard, etc.  I recognized that if I am to be taken seriously as a scholar of race and religion in the world, I cannot have an experience that is limited to the traditional liberal bastions.

On Friday, the University of Virginia Board of Visitors voted to dissolve their office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.  What these recent actions of the University of Virginia Board of Visitors and Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin are telling me is that I may not have been bouncing between blue bubbles as much as hopping from one enlightened but unaware oasis to another in a toxic and potentially lethal sea.  As UVa students, we don’t know what the upshot of these actions will be, but the language from the governor, (“The Board of Visitors voted for common sense, saying ‘no’ to illegal discrimination and ‘yes’ to merit-based opportunity,”) and state attorney general (“For too long, diversity, equity, and inclusion regimes have been misused to guarantee equality of outcomes instead of equality of opportunity,”) –emphasis mine–is clear.  Any work, actions or directions that intentionally speak to “diversity” will not be tolerated by this completely anti-historical ideology.  This leaves the black, gay, Unitarian Universalist minister, aiming to write a dissertation about a religious history and evolution of whiteness, and who mentors black and LGBTQIA+ students, and who has aspirations of being a dean for Diversity or a dean for Religious Life in higher education in just a bit of a head scratching moment about his future in Jefferson’s academical village.

Read the statement from the Governor, the attached articles and the full resolution, all linked below.  Recognize how the language of civil rights has been twisted and doubled over on itself to justify this ideological agenda.  It ignores recent history (hello Unite the Right rally) and willfully leans into the chilling effect that these actions will have on someone like me.  To that end, recognize the language of “legally permissible” which calls into question what is legal.  Am I or my work somehow potentially “illegal” now?

Again, as a student, I don’t know what this will bring.  I am excruciatingly aware however that this was done at the beginning of spring break when there is the least student presence on campus. If the “University of Virginia highly values diversity, including diversity of thought and experience, and fosters an inclusive environment, encouraging a culture of opportunity for all, which immensely enriches our Grounds, and is committed to providing every student an education that is free from discrimination and grounded in merit…”, they need to be willing to come out in the open and say to my face how on earth this policy helps me.

–ALD

University of Virginia Board of Visitors Resolution

Board of Visitors votes to dissolve Office of Diversity Equity and Inclusion – Cavalier Daily

UVa Abolishes DEI Office – Daily Progress

Governor’s Statement on UVA Dissolving DEI Office

Turn off the Gas

.Reading time 8 minutes.

Ideology, Indoctrinate, Binarism…

Donald Trump has only ever been surrounded by whiteness and wealth.  His education lacked a moral compass and he was emboldened by an era (the 1980s) that celebrated everything big, regardless of its actual quality, logic or sustainability. While I do know the era, I do not know the man.  I cannot speak to what wakes him up in the morning (or in the middle of the night).  However, as he is the primary agent of political policies that are aimed at making my world a hostile and uninhabitable place he will be mentioned in what follows…

I’ve placed the words above and through this article with their definitions because what the individual man, Trump is attempting through his newly minted office of chaos is for Presidential Executive Orders to take on power that he, nor any government actually has: the ability to control, shape and speak on behalf of belief.  In the latest garbage (linked below), the administration is attacking a variety of “ideologies”.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/ending-radical-indoctrination-in-k-12-schooling/

But there are two problems.  First, the Trump administration is bundling together what they see as “radical-left” or “woke” into a single package and framing it as “indoctrination”.

The second problem is that those of us who are in the crosshairs of this and other policies are taking the bait.  We have let the true ideologues convince us that we are under attack.  Our response as a result is classic crabs in a bucket which will get us nowhere.  This is a big mistake.

The beauty of true equity work is that it is NOT based on ideology.  It is NOT built on a singular or narrow idea of what is right or wrong.  It is a philosophy of accommodation.  That is, it looks at individual unique needs and seeks unique solutions.  It empowers and fortifies individual agency. Equity is built on uniqueness, adaptability and flexibility, while what the administration is presenting as “making America great again” is doing the opposite.  In fact, looking at the definition of ideology and indoctrination, that is exactly what the Executive Orders are, just as was promised in Project 2025.

In addition to indoctrination, the administration is intentionally trying to confuse people into exhaustion; they are trying to convince people that they aren’t seeing, hearing, feeling what they are feeling.  Gaslighting.  What is being done is that the administration is trying to accuse the “radical left” of doing exactly what they themselves are doing.

Turn off the gas

To fight this insanity, it must be first remembered that while we may all want to play like we are “unified patriots” with “universal goals”, that is actually not helpful framing.  If diversity is what we truly believe in, and if it is really our strength, then that is what we need to muster.  The response to this shouldn’t be as simple as “give me back my rights” or worse some kind of self-hating apology for being “extreme”; the response needs to be “I don’t want your tired, narrow and inadequate rights” and “I will not be limited in my wholeness to make you feel safe.”  The hatred coming from Pennsylvania Avenue is pretty God-awful loud, but robust, authentic diversity can be MUCH louder.  Human diversity is literally endless and infinite and that’s what has the true ideologues shaking in their Cybertrucks. Diversity is the superpower.  What’s more, it is built in, so we just need to figure out how to harness it. The response cannot give in to the impulse to hold tight to single issues as diversity.  What needs to be embraced and pushed by leaders on the left is a better grasp of diversity as a powerfully organic capacity for humans to be different whether or not someone writes a poorly worded (and frankly petty) document.

Last week, I posted to my blog about how Unitarian Universalists are hamstrung by whether they first need to be free or human (Free or Human?).  What I’m trying to do in this new post is address the same challenge to a wider audience.  Being human is only limited by the limitless capacities of the human body.  Our embodied selves are vastly more expansive in body and mind (as any medical professional will tell you) than even in our advanced society is capable of understanding.

There is no “radical left”.  That is an invention of deeply troubled, narrowly educated and scared, ideologues.  What they are scared of is all the people who are able to look in the vast reaches of the human self and recognize infinity.  They don’t want that.  They want the safety of on-off, black-white, boy-girl, good-bad.  They’ve been taught that spaciousness is to be feared.  And yes, true innovation is terrifying, but the human body innovates every time it overcomes disease, or adapts to an environment, or gives birth. Innovation and the capacity for creative problem solving and the generation of ideas is what we do. The limited, uncreative, unenlightened mind builds a rocket and tries to get to a single destination (for example Mars) to create an empire.  The creative mind, builds a rocket to explore space and learn from all of existence.

Do I have an exact strategy for applying what I’ve written above?  Not yet.  But part of me looks to some of the most creative people I’ve known for help getting to the answers.  People who hear music that is first in their heads and then they are able to translate that music for the rest of us to hear; people who see themselves differently in the mirror than the rest of the world sees them and are brave and honest enough to live that truth; people who explore the reaches of human understanding and reveal better ways for us to be with each other; people who save lives, people who accompany those coming to the end of life.

Somewhere in the endlessness of our ability to be human is a way to drown out the annoying and harmful tune of one-note ideology, indoctrination and binarism.

–ALD