Why "DEIAIA" Matters

DEIA(IA) - diversity, equity, inclusion, accessibility, intersectionality, and accountability

There’s this oppressive notion spouted that says diversifying and expanding protections, social programs, and laws (like Medicare for All, universal education, and protecting forcibly marginalized peoples’ rights and access) would result in “reverse ism” situations. As mentioned in my first blog post, this is a falsehood because equitable distribution of resources and protections under the law would still have everyone accessing the same healthcare, education, food, water, shelter, protections, etc. It would just mean less privileges for some and effectively end “positive vs negative eugenics”.

In my opinion re: these phenomena, positive eugenics is the privileging of certain groups to have resources over other groups for the betterment of the privileged while negative eugenics is under-resourcing certain groups to the detriment of forcibly marginalized groups.

For instance, as detailed in “Medical Apartheid” by Harriet Washington, Black people were not only under-resourced in healthcare access, but they were also actively tested on and abused by the medical system (like the Tuskegee syphilis experiments, lobotomies on “hyperactive” Black children, and the use of Henrietta Lacks’ cancer cells to advance cancer research without compensating her or her family for their continued use (“HeLa cells”)).

This had a disabling effect on Black people and communities at-large. To rectify the situation for Black people who are still under-resourced and mistreated by systems in the US, they need radical accessibility to equitable healthcare, education, and compensation (meaning reparations as well as financial investment in their communities’ betterment).

People who upheld the institutional violence and the privileged people who benefitted from Black people’s mistreatment, former enslavement (or current, if they are in the prison system), and lack of protections under the law also need education on empathy, DEIAIA, and accurate history.

It is important to name that just because you are privileged in one or more ways doesn’t necessarily mean you don’t experience marginalization; it just means you have mitigating circumstances to your oppression, and that you have biases that you need to address. We all have things we need to learn and unlearn about the world. For instance, a White cishet man living on the street or in and out of shelters doesn’t have financial nor housing privilege, but his Whiteness, gender identity, and sexuality mitigate his experience of this socioeconomic oppression and affect how systems and societies perceive him. His Whiteness, cisgender manhood, and heterosexuality are not seen as the reason that he is houseless and poor. In fact, conservatives and our current administration often point to DEIA initiatives as the reasons for that man’s misfortune.

However, we all are oppressed by White supremacist cisheteropatriarchy, including those privileged under this system. White supremacy and racism negatively affect White people’s empathy and humanity and isolates them from the world around them by making everyone who is not them the “enemy” and therefore disposable, worthy of coercion, and otherwise subhuman.

Intersectionality is a framework to understand diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility in a way that necessitates interdependence (depending on each other in different ways at different times that fluctuate over time and situation), community building, empathy, and resistance to the privileges we have.

Now, where does accountability come into play?

I touched on it earlier in regard to reparations, but accountability is not only tangible, material resources and repayment to marginalized peoples but active acknowledgments, apologies, and transformative actions taken to reimagine systems for collective betterment and to equitably distribute resources in communities.

This can look like:

Reparations for Black people in the US for historical abuse, enslavement, and systemic racism across the board

Black history being taught as a core part of K-12 and higher education

Culturally competent medical care and Medicare for all

Accurate and culturally specific research into what the Black people in the US need to transform their relationships to the systems that oppressed them.

For intersex people (as elucidated by activists like Pidgeon Pagonis), it can be:

Ending the oppressive practice of mutilating babies’ genitalia to make them look binary and normative instead of embracing difference in sex characteristics

Teaching the history of this practice and the precolonial embracement of sex differences

Financial restitution for the harm these surgeries caused the intersex population.

For trans and gender expansive people (as well as intersex people), it can be:

Teaching of LGBTQIA people and their history

Age-appropriate gender, consent, sex, and sexuality education being taught in K-12 and higher education

Identity-based protections under the law on all levels of government

Financial Restitution for historical harm from systemic cisheteropatriarchy.

For all of us, accountability and intersectionality alongside DEIA looks like transforming the systems we live under in the name of collective humanity; resisting fascism and the isms that hurt us all; and learning our accurate histories and radical empathy while unlearning harmful behaviors, ideas, and ways of connecting.

I believe in me, in you, in us. Let's get into this work!

-Artemis

ALL OPINIONS ARE MY OWN.