I have Parkinson’s. In addition
to the rigidity of my feet and other body parts, I often have “brain
fogs.” With no cure for Parkinson’s in
sight, I know that one day I will
inevitably be almost totally immobile without assistance. But I try through
various means to limit the fogginess of my mind to keep my memory and word
recognition as sharp as can be. The means to this end I have used are reading, writing
two books, tutoring, general social interactions, and playing word games and
pattern puzzles on my smart phone.
One
of my favorite pattern puzzles is the Ball Sort Puzzle. The objective here is
to rearrange four balls of the same color into a vertical tube (there are generally
6-9 sets of different colored balls with two extra tubes). My goal is to reach
the objective without starting over. Over time, the puzzle has become enjoyable
to “solve”, so much so that I have noticed a pattern in my strategy of
solving the puzzle.
When the puzzle is expanded to
twelve sets of colored balls, one particular set of colored balls was always in
the bottom half to be sorted correctly and was often the last set to be sorted
in the same tube. And I quickly discovered that the color in question is my
least favorite color in the puzzle (and this color only appears in the expanded
sets of twelve).
So, I decided to pay attention
to those particular balls. When I did I found that I completed a tube with those
balls faster than previously accomplished and they would be in the top half of
the sorted balls a good deal of the time and would be the tube sorted first a
few times. But the completion rate could only be accomplished if all things
being equal and I did not attempt to manipulate those balls over the other
eleven sets.
“So what?,” one may ask. So, let’s
apply the Ball Sort Puzzle to society at large and to marginalized people
groups in particular. One major concern of those marginalized and their
advocates is that those folks existing on the margins of society are not seen
as in Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man and that their possible
contributions to society are overlooked. Therefore, they feel undervalued and
unappreciated as their underrated skills, talents, and passions remain
undeveloped and denied access to society at large, the very society that pushed
them and continues to push them to the margins, whether intentionally through
active and passive discrimination or unintentionally by merely not seeing them
through avoidance and other means.
One response to this societal
dilemma is a “one-size-fits-all” approach. This response over time does not
remedy the situation and can actually worsen the lives of those on the margins.
They differ in their hopes and dreams as well as their skills, talents, and
passions. This response is often associated with government edicts and regulations
(aka coercion) with the attendant bureaucracy which often has unintended
consequences like many persons feeling government agencies are in the business
of choosing the winners and losers of a new and more just society but in
reality little in the lives of those existing in the margins. This can be
called the DEI response- diversity, equity, and inclusion- with the emphasis on
equity, meaning guaranteed outcomes regardless of personal readiness. The advocates
of DEI often engage in some sort of social engineering to pursue their goals in
diversity and inclusion to place people
This is not to say that government
has no role to play. Government can and should promote and defend equal
opportunity for all citizens. All people deserve a level playing field in which
they are treated with dignity and respect. This is an essential beginning for
the response, the DOI response- diversity, opportunity, and inclusion- which, obviously,
I favor. In this response diversity
would mean not only race and class but various and differing ideas. Inclusion would
mean all persons are invited to roles previously denied to them provided they
meet tough but fair standards congruent to the role desired.
Opportunity is the centerpiece
of the DOI response, Equal opportunity, not guaranteed outcomes. Opportunity provides
newly liberated marginalized persons not only with the dignity and respect they
deserve but also the motivation they need to break real and perceived ceilings
to their personal and professional progress. Equal opportunity also provides
assistance to those needing a hand up, not a handout.
For DOI to have truly and lasting
success, it needs to be a part of a partnership of the public (government),
private (business), and nonprofit (voluntary) sectors. The public sector
provides the level playing field ss previously discussed, the private sector
provides opportunities to their employees for short-term service, albeit their
profit motive, and the nonprofit sector releases thousands of volunteers for
both short-term and long-term service projects,
My portrait of DOI is incomplete,
nevertheless I will offer a final word to conclude my thought experiment, To
truly see a marginalized person is to respond with compassion and empathy
offering, either directly or indirectly, assistance congruent to that person’s
needs with the result that formerly marginalized person to be a contributing member
of society.
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