DEI Dies at the Farm

We sat around my oldest brother’s dining table, in the old farmhouse he and his wife had remodeled. It is a stately home, in the family for many decades. Around the table were gathered my three brothers, my husband, my father’s second wife who is the mother of my half-brother, who was also attending. Three and a half brothers, and me, the only daughter.

The farmhouse is in rural Virginia, tobacco farming country. Southern Baptist country, with a few Methodists and Presbyterians mixed in. One synagogue in the county. One Catholic church. It was a 30 minute drive to the closest grocery, no stoplights on the way. It was a trip we made only every two weeks, kids in the back of the pickup, hitting the public library on the way home to get our 14-book maximum.

A family relative was to read my father’s will out loud. It was solemn. We were all subdued, respectful. There were coffee cups clinking on the table.

The pre-amble to the will set the stage, helping all understand that this indeed represented my father’s wishes. I was anxious. I was fortunate enough not to need assets, but I feared being treated as “other,” again, as not the same kind of child, not the same value as the boys. In our family and rural community, women and men were treated very differently: different expectations, different opportunities offered, different standards for success.

All that different treatment hits hard at puberty. Before that, kids were kids mostly. Having experienced life as one of the pack, I could not understand when the different treatment started happening to me. There were clues, like the church librarian every Sunday pushing the book “White Gloves and Tea” on me when clearly, “The Black Stallion” and “Misty of Chincoteague” were sitting right there on the shelf. I’m sure my confusion was on my face as I scratched my butt in front of her.

Having been treated differently most of my life, and I figured that my father would likely do it again in his will. I feared the hurt that would, once again, accompany that different treatment.

“The masculine shall be taken to include the feminine”

But it wasn’t my father who struck, it was the person reading the will. He adlibbed as he read this sentence: “The masculine shall be taken to include the feminine (for the woke among us).” His adlib landed poorly, but only on two of us.

I felt my husband stiffen. The solemnity of the occasion was replaced with something else for us – something ugly. Not from my father, from whom I expected it, but from his relative. It was as easy as breathing for him to diminish the women in the room. He had breathed all his life.

As he read on, it became clear that my father had been thoughtful about the distribution of his assets, clearly trying to take care of everyone fairly.

I felt relieved; I felt cared for. On this day I did not want to add more string to the ball of anger I had been adding to most of my life. That ball getting bigger with diminishment delivered by different people, different social norms, different unspoken and spoken rules. My father did not contribute that day. But my relative made sure the role was filled, lest the women forget we were ‘less than.’

I chose not to speak in that moment, partly from shock at the inappropriate remark and partly not to further soil the moment. I still haven’t spoken to my relative of it. But today, it’s worth exploring.

One could think that my relative thought the inclusion of “the masculine shall be taken to include the feminine” was something driven by the current effort to have inclusive language. He could have thought that the phrase was included to clarify that women could inherit and form contracts. (That right was clearly established by 1877. Of course, it took another almost hundred years until women could get a credit card without a male signature, 1974.) But knowing him, he’s too well-read to believe those things were the cause of the inclusion of the phrase.

The phrase–the masculine shall be taken to include the feminine–as he likely knew, is included simply so we don’t have to say “his or her” nor “he or she” over and over again.

He understood those things. But still felt the need to say, “for the woke among us.” Why?

Why throw that slur, then, in the reading of a will in a room full of people in pain?

Frustration Bubbling Over, or Something Else?

This happened during the height of white men’s frustration with the DEI movement. I understood that frustration. In my own work in nonprofit, I had been struggling to place highly qualified white male candidates. It was close to impossible at that time. Almost as impossible as placing women, black men, and people with disabilities had been earlier in my career, and again now.

One such highly qualified white man whom I tried repeatedly to place without success, said to me: “Katrina, I get it. I understand it. I agree with it. But I gotta put my kids through college. I need a job.”

Did frustration drive my relative to throw an insult during this solemn occasion?

No. He probably didn’t know that he did it.

Normalized Derision

His derision had been completely normalized in the circles in which he ran. Although he understood the rationale behind the legal language, his own identity had been threatened. He felt threatened by the elevation of those whom he had never had to consider.

Misogynistic? Yes. He was–probably unconsciously–mocking the idea that women were equal to men in their rights. But why say that ungraceful, full-of-malice statement, in that unfortunately selected moment?

Because he could.

And perhaps that is proof that indeed we are not equal. I would not have been forgiven a similar lack of grace. But he was, because white men can diminish women (and others) and not be judged for having done so. Even I, in the moment, did not judge him. What was unremembered by the table but for my husband and me, would have been unforgiveable had I or another woman thrown a similar slur.

The Psychology Behind It

The social psychologist with whom I ponder these things over coffee on Sunday mornings said, “People always have attitudes they don’t express publicly; but when they feel you can, they do.” My relative felt he could. Now, several years later when equality is out of favor, I choose to limit my time around my relative. If his unconscious social attitude was unleashed then, it could well be far more overt, unpleasant, and destructive now.

Does this person see himself as misogynistic? No. He likely sees himself as understanding the proper and effective social hierarchy. But, if and when confronted with the idea his choice to throw the slur was untoward, he will say, “It was just a joke.”

This is how the mind defends itself. The slur is repositioned as a joke, even to himself he will make this defense and follow up with, “Why are you so sensitive?” taking the diminishment full circle, to the entire issue being my fault. (You've probably played this game too.)

To the coffee-swilling social psychologist that means, “They are afraid of conflicting with a social norm so very directly, so instead they pose their beliefs and thoughts as a joke.” Anyone who has been on the sharp end of a bully stick has heard, “I was just joking” as a de-escalation and repositioning attempt.

What to Do

What does this mean for us today? It means our work is increasing in importance and in difficulty. It means that we have to re-establish the value of equality as a social norm in our America. It means that we have to define (again) “freedom and justice for all” to include people other than white, non-handicapped, cis-gender Christian men – which has been re-affirmed as the only “of value” way to exist as a human life form in the United States of America.

The backlash against DEI initiatives was born in dining rooms like the one I sat in during my father’s will-reading. While I am still glad I did not speak then, I am changing course.