Three words, treated like curses

Diversity, equity and inclusion. In some circles, saying them out loud lands like stringing together three four-letter words.

“In some circles, those are bad words and uttering them is like spewing three four-letter cuss words in a row.”

There was a time

Alden Loury used to hear those words and feel hope. That feeling is what this column is mourning.

“There was a time when I viewed those words with hope and promise.”

Weeks of training, whole staff

About a decade ago at a former employer, Loury joined a DEI initiative. The entire staff sat through group sessions for weeks, not a single lunch-hour seminar.

What he expected to happen

He assumed the sessions would be people of color recounting marginalization, essentially teaching their white colleagues about life in a white-dominated society.

The stories were real

Being called the N-word. Getting stopped by police over and over. Sources who didn't believe he was the reporter they'd spoken to on the phone.

A house that lost value

He spent thousands upgrading his home and watched it plummet in value anyway. Readers sent hate mail over his stories on racial inequality.

Then it went deeper

The sessions didn't stop at the expected script. Loury found himself learning as much as anyone else in the room.

“But the sessions went much deeper than that.”

He has privilege too

Life as a Black man in America carries a heavy burden. It also, he realized, comes with advantages he had never counted.

“While life as a Black man in America comes with a heavy burden, I learned that I also live a life of privilege.”

Difference has many axes

One session mapped every line of difference in the room: race, ethnicity, gender, age, income, education, religion, immigration status, sexual orientation, disability, military service.

The list he was spared

Able-bodied, heterosexual, college-educated, middle-class, Christian, native-born, male. Each one exempted him from a set of doubts and suspicions other people carry daily.

Blind spots become bias

Not knowing what someone else has survived dulls your sensitivity to it. That gap warps how you judge their circumstances and choices, and it hardens into bias, conscious or not.

Why the nonprofit bothered

A diverse staff serving a diverse Chicago region needed to understand difference to do the work. Better colleagues, better journalism, better shot at the mission.

The hope is fading

The promise of what America could do with DEI still stands. Loury's confidence that we'll ever take the steps to get there does not.

“The lofty goals of DEI have been hijacked, they've been overpoliticized and overracialized.”

None of this is partisan

There's nothing Democratic or Republican about naming how we differ, or about examining how those differences shape our read on each other.

“There's nothing inherently political about creating a space for us to acknowledge the many ways we're different from one another.”

What DEI is not

Not quotas. Not hiring unqualified people. Not anti-white or anti-male. The training doesn't pick a side.

“And DEI is not about racial quotas or hiring unqualified people. It isn't anti-white or anti-male.”

Our resistance is the enemy

Everyone has felt overlooked or diminished at some point, and that shared pain is the common ground. We stay too comfortable with hate to reach for it.

“Our resistance to finding our commonality is our true enemy.”