Transcriber: Hân Nguyễn Minh Bảo Reviewer: David DeRuwe
When I envision a better tomorrow, I see people serving their communities.
Part of that is understanding the specific needs of the whole community,
even those that may not have a voice or whose lives may not look like yours.
It has always been important to me to serve the community that I live in,
but that has not come without some challenges.
I spend much of my free time volunteering in communities
that I could never have imagined being a part of.
There are times where advocacy work
and volunteering can leave me feeling othered,
and I’ve come to realize that that feeling is not unique to me.
Moreover, the characteristics that have left me
out of the majority may not be readily apparent.
Sure, I’m a Black woman,
but there are other things that place me in the margins.
I’m an attorney and sometimes the only attorney in the room,
and I can be rigid when it comes to rules and policy.
I come from humble beginnings,
and I am proud to tell anyone who will listen
that I am a first-generation college graduate.
I even received public assistance in my youth.
As a mother who works outside of the home,
participating in school activities can be a very isolating experience.
All of these experiences, which is not an exhaustive list,
color how I view the world.
They’ve given me a unique perspective,
and if you could imagine the lens of a kaleidoscope,
we all see the world differently based on so many factors,
and that includes our lived experience.
So your lens is going to be different from my lens,
no matter how similarly situated we are today.
Even if we are working together on a common goal,
the way that we see that issue or that goal could even be different.
Our lived experiences, they’re going to change the variations in that lens.
So to thrive in these spaces,
we need to recognize that not everyone is aware of what has shaped our views
in the same way that we cannot possibly know what has shaped someone else’s.
We can be curious.
We can explore, and I don’t think it’s enough
to just acknowledge that we’re all different.
I think we should spend more time reflecting
on our actions, our contributions, and the impact that it has on people
who are not living life the way that we are.
We should be engaging and accepting our differences,
yes, but what if we did that with more empathy and compassion?
I think that our engagements around disagreement
could result in more solution-focused discourse.
We are not fighting to convince other people to view the world through our lens;
we should be fighting for perspective, for understanding, and grace.
There are needs that are universal,
and some people have needs that we may not even be aware of.
Volunteering will often require you to engage people with whom you disagree
on strongly held beliefs,
working towards a common goal in my experience
with limited money and people.
I want to encourage people to focus on what needs to be done,
the task at hand, and the mission of the organization you’re supporting,
rather than allowing these differences to keep us from working together
because that's how we get our better tomorrow.
It's together, so while supporting a student advocacy organization,
a group of parent leaders were grappling
with a proposed increase in membership costs.
I understood and agreed with the need to increase costs to meet goals.
I also understood that this change could pose a challenge
for our low income families.
Everyone at the table discussing the issue had the means
to sustain an increase in costs,
but I can remember being a part of a family
who would not be able to sustain even a minimal, a nominal increase.
That would have had a huge impact on my ability to participate.
So for me, this immediately raised issues of access and equity.
If a person can’t be at the table to express how it’s going to impact them,
do they not matter?
The people working on the issue
did not represent our diverse socioeconomic school population,
but they could still use empathy to consider the needs of someone else.
I proposed setting aside funds to cover the cost of membership
for our low income families,
and I wanted to use already-established criteria.
Since income eligibility guidelines were already being used
to determine whether families qualify for free and reduced price meals,
it seemed like a no brainer.
We could have the school counselor engage the families as a liaison
and could estimate the amount we needed to put aside using already established
data that the school has to collect and report.
I was stunned when another member objected,
stating that every person who gets free and reduced lunch doesn’t need it.
My mind raced. I didn’t want to understand her perspective.
I wanted to tell her all the ways that her argument was flawed.
I honestly didn’t know how we were going to continue to work together.
I was frustrated and confused
by her lack of empathy for all the people who were in need.
I wanted to ask her, “Can’t more than one thing be true?
That maybe someone is taking advantage while others are desperately in need,
and shouldn’t that be enough for us to want to help?”
Look, everyone agreed that we needed to find a way to support the families
that may need financial support.
It wasn’t our “why” that we were struggling with;
it was the “how” we would accomplish that goal.
And if I engaged her by telling her all the ways that she was wrong
and wasn’t showing empathy and didn’t understand,
I don’t know that we could have gotten to that goal any faster.
Spoiler - we got there.
Someone asked whether she was proposing that we use different criteria.
It was a very direct and pointed question,
and the focus there
was to ensure that she understood that we did have a goal to get to,
and if she had a better way to get there, everyone was open to it.
The person who asked that question was focused on our goal
and not on berating her for her speculative misstep.
They showed her empathy, empathy that she did not extend
to the low income families that we wanted to support.
That grace that she was given that day, it helped us accomplish our goal.
Some may view this as a missed opportunity.
Why not teach her all the ways
that this public benefit helps provide basic needs
for both both unemployed and low wage-earning families alike?
To that, I say pick your battles.
There will be times where finding common ground is easier than others.
I serve in another advisory group,
and this one is comprised of a cross-section of my community,
and we’re assigned different areas of focus during our term,
and this year that included examining how this educational body that we serve
could be more culturally responsive.
It even included action items for diversity in hiring.
After the conclusion of our initial meeting this term,
a white woman recounted an independent study
that she had voluntarily conducted over the summer.
As I recall, she mentioned that she asked nearly 100 Black members of our community
whether having a Black teacher would have improved their educational experience.
I replayed the question, trying to understand her role,
what she set out to accomplish by asking what for me was a poorly-worded question,
one which as a Black person, I would have struggled to answer
and probably would have had follow-up questions.
Most of the remaining members left.
While she was telling her story, and only a few of us stayed behind,
I can remember the tension I felt internally and in the room
while listening to her, and this was a very diverse group.
I remember feeling like it would be impossible
for her to truly understand how I experience the world
if she could frame a question in this way, but I decided not to make that assumption.
Instead, I asked her.
I asked her what she sought to accomplish with that study,
and that question turned into a nearly hour-long conversation
and a book club.
That hour-long conversation took place on a cool night
in a dimly lit parking lot after the building closed.
I could see her passion,
and we had that in common,
and while her passion was about something that I found off-putting,
I have often been given grace when I was being rigid or outspoken
or said something offensive.
So I didn’t walk away, and to be clear, I could have.
I could have created that boundary, and it would have been more than OK.
To me, our mission had been clear,
and her study not only had the potential
to undermine the work we were charged to do,
but also demonstrated a lack of awareness
about the importance of equity and diversity in hiring.
So I asked probing questions, and I did it with compassion.
I didn’t have a malicious agenda.
I just wanted us to understand one another.
I found ways to show her the lens through which I see the world
and how different that was from hers,
and she was open.
I was open too. We were both vulnerable.
When discussing pet ownership,
I asked her whether she would have concerns about her husband or son
walking their dog late at night
because that is the type of dinner table discussion that happens in my home.
Those are calculations that I have to make.
And active listening paved the way for trust.
We both decided that night in a dimly lit parking lot not to talk past one another,
waiting for our turn to speak.
I think we both navigated through some discomfort to do this,
to listen to each other.
So when you encounter a new piece of information
that’s inconsistent with strongly held beliefs,
what will you do?
Or what if it’s you?
What if it’s you who has said the wrong thing?
What will you come to expect from the people that you volunteer with?
Empathy extends beyond the people that you serve when you are volunteering
or advocating and should include the people you serve with.
We cannot be expected to show people everything that has shaped
the complex lens with which we view and experience the world,
but you know what we should be responsible for?
Kindness. Civility.
We should be responsible for compassion and empathy.
As volunteers, people advocating for that better tomorrow,
we should be expected to extend grace, leave room for mistakes,
to never be afraid to be seen trying, and that makes room for growth.
And when we are given that grace,
we should express gratitude when it has been extended to us.
Thank you for listening.