Examining Your Default Settings

The work of inclusion requires that all of us examine our “default settings.”

Many white people don’t acknowledge that systemic racism exists; instead, we say that America is a society of equal opportunity. Deep down, we believe our advantages are because we deserve them, because we are “good people.” And we tend to blame Black, Brown, and Indigenous people for their own experiences of marginalization and exclusion. “Not everything is about race,” we say. “There was unfairness in the past but everyone has the same opportunities now.”

🎯Whiteness is our default. We don’t recognize that we have internalized what Toni Morrison calls the white gaze, often imposing it in the workplace in ways that require people of color to expend energy and resources to accommodate whiteness.

Many heterosexual cisgender people say that they support LGBTQIA2S+ rights. We believe we are “accepting” when we affirm that everyone should have the right to live their own lives. But we typically still think of ourselves as “normal” and queer and trans people as “abnormal.”

🎯Cisheteronormativity is our default. We don’t see the common and hidden ways we participate in the silencing and marginalization of queer and trans folx. We fail to recognize that when the freedom and choices of LGBTQIA2S+ people are under attack nationwide, “love is love” and “bring your whole self to work” are empty unless we are doing the work to build cultures where all team members feel valued, seen, and heard.

👉🏽 👉🏽If you profess that everyone should have the right to make their own choices, it’s time to support the structures that would make these choices possible. Without this, there can be no authentic respect and justice for marginalized communities.