The Super Powerful Walk In Another Person’s Shoes
Care to walk in another person’s shoes?
Do you feel judged or even shamed sometimes? I do. Because there is a lot of pressure to do the right thing. Always. To never fail at doing such important things like inclusion and diversity. Be an ally and know exactly how and to make no mistakes.
This is at least true if you care. If you are someone that is outraged by racism, bullying (or a victim yourself) and injustice. Then you probably already put a lot of pressure on yourself to be a good human. The road to hell is paved with good intentions after all, isn’t it?
Right. I wholeheartedly agree that my intentions do not matter. Especially if what one is doing is based on conscious or unconscious bias, is maybe even bullying or plainly racist. This is not ok. It never will be. It should outrage especially those, that are not impacted. Because we are the ones who need to drive the change.
So how to transition from here without using a but? Good question! There is no but. These statements stand for themselves. I am not going to say something stupid like “I am not …. (fill in the blanks with racist, biased etc.) but…” because that’s a very racist or biased thing to say.
And yet despite the pressure I am putting on myself to be a good human I am sometimes just that. A human. Humans make mistakes or are at least not perfect. And I can tell you my life story is less than perfect anyways. You can learn more about me, here. And unfortunately trying hard does not always lead to the right outcome right away. So now what if the effort and the intentions do not matter? Then we enter the grey area and being there means, you are likely going to be still shamed or blamed.
Because these days, thanks to Social Media, if you are not an ally that goes all in and does the right thing all the time, you are part of the problem and people will judge you and shame you as a problem yourself. Oh, the joys of not having to physically face the consequences of our virtual actions.
And here I am admitting that there are things happening in the world around me, that I do not fully understand. That are new to me, that I have not been able to make up my mind about or that I simply just need to get used to or learn more about. And that is my problem. No one needs to feel bad for me because of it. I really wish I could walk in another person’s shoes just for a mile, so that I could speed up that process of understanding. But I really cannot. Yet, I will always continue to try because I care. Question is, is caring enough?
I will give you an example. I grew up in a conservative household in Germany. No Nazi’s in my household, but not super open minded to anything new and foreign, either. Other than me. I did grow up appreciating different cultures, I was curious to understand how my friends who were gay felt and I tried to be an ally to those that were disadvantaged, hated or even harassed because of their culture, religion or for being gay.
Why? That is how I have always been. And, because people have been bullying me, I developed a deep empathy for others early on. To a point where I can feel others’ pain as mine sometimes. Story for another time.
While there was exposure to different cultures in my childhood and I had many gay friends in my life, there was not much information or news about people being transgender. And I think I have not heard the term “non-binary” as a gender identification before I turned 35, maybe even much later. This is new to me.
And since I think the end of many problems is education, I am trying to educate myself best possible. Thankfully, I am curious, and I care. And I understand it is not new to a non-binary person and if I don’t get it, it’s my problem. It totally is. I need to learn to see them for who they really are and educate myself on how they would like to be treated. And I am.
But. Yes, here it is the dreaded but. But I am not at all comfortable using pronouns. It just does not come naturally to me. It looks weird when others use them, and I really cannot get myself to use them publicly. Yet. I even must think about how that would work in my mother tongue, German. Which means it was not a topic I even thought about when I still lived there 7-8 years ago.
Let the shaming begin. Am I excluding anyone because I am not using pronouns? I sure hope not. I do not want to say it is not my intention, because you know, the road to hell thing. It really is not though. I am also far from being ignorant. I am just not there yet. And there is a lot of shaming happening online if you are not. Even when you try to educate yourself, you often find judgement.
I recently read a blog post that basically said if you are not using pronouns, you are a problem and you are not inclusive and you do not deserve to exist. The author was a man who identified as male, not non-binary. And he apparently thought his ally-ship needed to result in a war against everyone and anyone that did not do the simple easy step to use pronouns and introduce themselves by adding the pronoun in all of their conversations.
And despite being a white female, aware of all the privileges that come with that, I wished for this man and everyone agreeing with him, to walk in my shoes. For just a mile. Just a little bit. So, they could accept that not being there yet, does not mean you do not care, or you won’t get there. It simply means, you must overcome decades of different experiences and some are doing so quickly while others are not. Why could they not walk in another person’s shoes?
Instead of finding the education I was looking for, I found judgement. And while there might have been helpful information in that blog post, all that stuck with me was the judgmental use of language. It was not thought provoking. For me it drowned every single glimpse of thought in shame.
I felt excluded and put on the pillory for everyone to see how I was not inclusive as I did not use pronouns. And this feeling could as well have led to me giving up and just declining the validity of pronouns and their usage altogether. I could have decided not to walk in another person’s shoes myself.
I did not. And I will continue to educate myself. But how many others that we “shame” instead of continuing to invite into a dialogue – however painful that dialogue might be – will give up? How many people, who are on the fence of giving up their i.e., racist beliefs, they have been raised with their entire lives, have stopped making progress thanks to public shaming and blaming? Have stopped trying to walk in another person’s shoes because they got judged and attacked in the process?
And it really dawned on me. The process, that I had started after reading Kim Scott’s second book “Just Work”, became even more clear. I have been doing the same thing. I reacted with disagreement and a closed mind to anyone that made comments online or in my personal life, that I fundamentally disagreed with. Comments that I considered to be racist or condescending or invalidating certain cultures, etc. Or comments that went against my own values. And while I am not one for public shaming, I did do it in my head and that is just a step away from doing it.
I was disregarding these people’s history and experience that might have led to their beliefs and actions. And I asked myself the following:
This approach of “if you are not doing the right thing all the time, then something is wrong with you “, will that really lead to progress, inclusion and ultimately diversity? Is someone, who is not there yet to become an active ally, really part of the problem? Or could we consider them as neutral? Could we think of them as a story, that needs to yet be written? And if we do that, can we maybe influence the outcome of the story much better, than if we judged the book simply by the cover?
Judgement, shaming and blaming are quite common in the ages of Social Media. They are also not helpful. Having blamed someone publicly will not open their mind or their heart. Agreeing to disagree on the matter by still showing respect for the person and their personal story can be so much more powerful. Much like the powerful walk in another person’s shoes.
I am not talking about the public bullies and racists who do not miss any opportunity to spew their hatred and conspiracy theories. I am talking about those who have questions before they can become an active ally. Who are wondering what’s right or wrong. And who are simply on the fence. They might be willing to listen. And even educate themselves to better understand or make progress. If they could be met with education instead of judgement, maybe?
We, as a society, can either invite them into a dialogue or continue to talk at them from a pedestal. I cannot speak for others but after that experience, I changed my own approach to meeting people that I fundamentally disagree with. However hard it is and how much I might be struggling with it, I will try kindness and dialogue. In the hopes it will be worth the effort. I wrote a LinkedIn post about it here (to hold myself accountable mostly).
Of course, it is fair to say, “I have endured exclusion or the feeling of it my entire life, it’s your problem if you are not there yet”. It absolutely is. And it’s not on me to judge. I cannot expect those that have been mistreated their entire lives to also make the effort to walk in another person’s shoes. It is not my place to do that.
All I can do is keep showing up and keep working on becoming a better ally. If I make a mistake on my way, maybe try talking to me without shaming or judging me. I might have tried to walk in your shoes, and they just did not fit. Yet.
I love this campaign here and can’t get that song out of my head. It inspired me to write this blog post now. Also planning on taking on some of the activities they are proposing to be a better ally. Stay tuned for more as I will share as I go.
You can find the initiative here.
And this page here is uncomfortable to read, but super helpful if you want to educate yourself on being an ally against racism. It points out that being an ally is a verb and not a noun. Talking about it, is not putting in the work and I could not agree more!
Let’s keep on keeping on!
Nannette
