How might we share our inequity stories in ways that promote the humanitarian virtue of equity?
How might we build a story movement to co-create a fair-free-flourishing-future on a healthy planet?
Think about a personal and/or professional story about BIPID: Biases, Isms, Prejudices, Inequities, Discrimination.
Everyone has untold stories about unfairness.
Who influenced you the most to redress the unfairness of BIPID issues in your life?
Some of us are reluctant to explore our inequity stories because of negative associations (feelings of shame, self-blame, humiliation, and guilt), especially if affected by past histories of abuse and traumas.
Untold stories about BIPID keep us prisoners of our past. Story-telling and retelling of our stories have the power to heal our wounds.
How might you:
Tell your story in ways that people can learn from?
Share your stories in ways that prevent, preempt, and minimize future the negative impact of BIPID?
Who is the hero or heroine of your story?
I have been asked many times about why I deeply care about equity. I am blessed by the advantages that my parents provided to me in overcoming my dyslexia within an apartheid educational system in England.
My family history
The unrecognized heroine of my story is my mother. My mother was an extraordinary, ordinary woman. Let me elaborate on how my mother influenced me to care deeply about equity and equality.
My mother taught me all about equity and equality without ever mentioning those two words in the spring waters of my upbringing. She endeavored to treat my siblings equally, each according to our needs (equity).
My working-class mother left school at the age of 14 to work and support her family. She was inspired by Winston Churchill's after-the-war speech. He encouraged young people to travel abroad during the post-war rationing of food. She immigrated solo as a young woman in her early 20s to Kansas City.
After being hosted by an American family in rural Missouri, she won a music scholarship but opted early out of college to make money. She met my Portuguese Hawaiian father playing bridge at the YMCA. My parents married in 1952.
As a family, we went back to England in 1960 to visit my grandmother. She was in the hospital dying of jaw cancer with a disfigured face on her left side. As a six-year-old boy, I vividly remember how pleased she was to see me. Her joy in seeing me shone through her distorted smile and preempted any instinctual reactions of fear and revulsion. Decades later, I discovered that my younger sister remembered this experience as frightening.
My experience of an inequitable educational system
At the age of 7, my father took a job in England, so all of my formative education was in England. I first went to a primary school for all children. At that time, the British educational system practiced a form of segregated education based on intellectual abilities with the 11-plus exam.
This exam was a form of educational elitism based on classism. Middle-class children mostly went to grammar schools with opportunities to go to University. Disadvantaged working-class children mostly went to secondary modern schools that prepared them for vocational training. This exam started in 1944 and was gradually phased out after 3 decades.
Cyril Burt was an arrogant academic practitioner who had a profound elitist influence on developing the English educational system, including the 11-plus exam. Decades later, his eugenic research was deemed flawed and discredited.
At the age of 9, my mother took me to an educational psychologist because of my severe writing and reading difficulties. I was diagnosed with dyslexia. In the early 1960s, there were no treatment programs for dyslexia. The psychologist advised my parents to send me to a private school because of my high probability of failing the 11-plus exam.
My parents provided me with the support to overcome my limitations. Our family was divided by the 11-plus exam. My parents sent me and my dyslexic brother away to a private boarding school because we both failed the 11-plus exam.
Unbeknownst to my parents, the Headmaster of Dolphin Prep School near Newark, Lincolnshire, was a closet white supremacist who later came out as a Friend of Rhodesia. I distinctly remember that I did not agree with his position, no doubt an influence of my mother. A few years later, the prep school closed down after I left the school.
In contrast, my youngest brother and sister who passed the 11-plus exam went to the local Grammar schools in Grantham, the hometown of Margaret Thatcher and Sir Isaac Newton.
I remember my mother asking me at the age of 16 what I wanted to become. I replied: a doctor, an airline pilot, and a hippie in that order. At the age of 17, I read a book review in the Sunday Times (UK) book review about "Our Bodies, Our Selves." I bought that book for my Mum. Who influenced me?
Getting into medical school was extremely competitive. My housemaster at school encouraged me to pursue a science degree and not a medical degree. I disregarded his advice. When I applied, I was not even offered a single interview even though my A-level grades were good enough.
Undeterred, I went to People's Community College in Nottingham and took an additional A level in Zoology (usually done over 2 years) in one year. Despite many applications, I was only offered one interview at my first-ranked Nottingham Medical School. Allegedly, there were 1600 applicants for 48 places.
With shoulder length, hippie-style hair and not wearing a tie for my interview, I was extremely fortunate to be admitted to a new Medical School, where the admission criteria included a diversity of socio-economic classes. I passed my English "O" level exam after my 9th attempt (a requirement for medical schools) and passed my 4th A level grade to be accepted to my first choice medical school.
At my graduation from medical school, my paternal grandmother flew from Hawaii against medical advice because she had a large aortic abdominal aneurysm. She returned home and had a successful repair operation. My maternal grandfather, who worked for British Rail all his life, attended my graduation too. He smiled so hard with pride that he had tears in his eyes. None of my parents and grandparents completed College. I was the first doctor in my family.
Without my mother's support in addressing my writing and reading difficulties, I would never have become a doctor.
Mid-career as an academic family physician in the USA, I returned to England when my mother was dying from terminal colon cancer. I vividly remember giving my mother a foot massage with rosemary-scented massage oil shortly before her death. My only regret was not thanking my mother and father enough for all that they did for me.
I am eternally grateful to my mother and to my father's support. I dedicate my advocacy interests to promoting equity and equality, especially to my mother.
I now think about and remember my mother almost every day in deep gratitude for her unconditional love and advocacy. What a privilege it was to be the son of my mother.
My mother faced the cultural inequities of her era. She was a stay-at-home 1950s mom. Her full talents and potential were never realized. My mother gave me and my siblings opportunities that she never had. My sister was a speech therapist. My next brother completed a business degree, and my youngest brother became a dentist.
How might we cultivate a deep appreciation of philogyny?
Philogyny is derived from the combination of two Greek roots: philo meaning love and gyn meaning woman. Philogyny is a profound respect, appreciation, fondness, admiration, and plutonic love for women.
Women have more of a caring disposition than men in promoting the fairness of equity and redressing the unfairness of inequities.
Misogyny and systemic sexism are drivers against treating women equally and equitably.
How might we cultivate philogyny to prevent and redress the injustices of misogyny and sexism?
What’s lacking and valued is a deep appreciation of women’s caring and nurturing roles.
How might men:
Learn from women about how to nurture and care?
Appreciate and value women more for how they care and nurture?
Support women to co-lead in promoting equity?
This calls for men and women to collaborate to address this question.
How might we, as men and women, cultivate the cultural humility to assure equity and equality for all?
Write your own inequity story
I invite you to journal, write, tell, share, and reflect on your personal-professional histories and stories that explore the relationships between redressing the unfairness of inequities and promoting the fairness of equity.
Who are your heroes and heroines who inspired you to redress the unfairness and promote fairness?
How might you give them their rightful recognition for their positive influences, ideally before they die?
How might we launch a story movement about inequities?
Story-telling about unfairness and fairness provides ways to generate advocacy and interest in redressing inequities and promoting equity.
What are your personal and professional stories about unfairness and fairness?
Who influenced you the most in caring for equity?
Who are the heroes and heroines of your story?
This learning process involves sharing personal and professional experiences where you felt culturally:
Depreciated, diminished, undervalued, and treated unfairly
Appreciated, understood, valued, and treated fairly
Or share experiences where you witnessed situations where people were treated unfairly and fairly.
This collaborative learning process is essential for building story movements about redressing the unfairness of BIPID issues and promoting the fairness of equity.
How might we use story-telling to set the stage to:
Learn about the meaning of inequity and equity?
Discern the differences between equality and equity?
Understand how cultural hubris and competence disable the development of cultural humility?
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Use this blog to set up small group learning circles for story-telling.