{"id":23671,"date":"2025-04-03T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-04-03T17:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/customwordpresssites.com\/mjb\/?p=23671"},"modified":"2026-02-09T08:26:58","modified_gmt":"2026-02-09T14:26:58","slug":"do-we-need-dei","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/customwordpresssites.com\/mjb\/2025\/04\/03\/do-we-need-dei\/","title":{"rendered":"The Discomfort of DEI"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Keep your windows rolled up<\/em>, we were told. Don\u2019t leave a wallet or purse out in sight.<\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Being confronted with race is uncomfortable for white people. I\u2019ve felt that discomfort. One of my earliest recollections of it was when our all-white rural Nebraska high school football team played against a team from North Omaha, a part of the city notorious to surrounding areas. I don\u2019t remember it being explicitly acknowledged that we would be driving through majority Black neighborhoods, but it was understood. It was like being prepped for a safari through the savage wilderness, but no wolves, bears, or mountain lions ever showed up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I had grown up with a vague notion of the existence of poverty in places like inner cities and sub saharan Africa, but my notion of injustice as a child was naive at best. We were taught to be kind, care for our neighbor, and lend a helping hand to those in need, but the realities we saw in TV commercials seemed so far from our own existence that they may as well have been in another world. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Around the same time as the drive through North Omaha, I spent a week playing with children at a Black Catholic church on the South side of Chicago through a Catholic service program for teens. That\u2019s when my perspective started shifting. Marked by the short-lived relationships with the kids in this program, I felt sorrow at their exposure to violence. I felt disgusted by the quality of parks in their neighborhood. I felt frustrated that they wouldn\u2019t have access to the opportunities I had. I felt the joy of jump rope, of a girl whose participation in summer school meant she passed fourth grade, of playing catch with giant red rubber balls in a cement courtyard. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
Photo by Aaron Blanco Tejedor on Unsplash<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I felt that, contrary to how I had grown up thinking people oppressed by injustice were a world away, we were connected to each other somehow.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This experience even inspired me to write and perform a persuasive speech about child poverty for competition. Yet still, any conversation about race was not a part of my vocabulary. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

At that time in my life, I identified as conservative. I had no real idea what that meant. I only knew that \u201cconservative\u201d was good and \u201cliberal\u201d was bad. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I also had no idea that by leaning into a call toward service and social justice, I would be led further and further away from the political platform that claimed to represent the values I grew up with.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I really only began to consider the role of race in college, when a professor presented the class with a white privilege checklist<\/a>. The discomfort churned in my stomach again as I read through statements like: <\/p>\n\n\n\n