Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Diversity

[Lyle Scheer (wonko]

Sigh.

I did just do that, didn't I?

gosh darn it... born and raised a cis white male, and living in a 
bubble.  I want to be an ally, but all I can seem to do is repeat the 
same errors.

I apologize to anyone who felt offended or hurt when I said in effect 
that people should have a thicker skin.

.... and now I'm probably going to step into it again, because it felt 
like there was a point in there somewhere, about different cultural 
norms.... about cultures basically self-selecting into their own little 
enclaves, because familiar finds familiar, and people *don't* like 
uncomfortable and don't want to have thicker skins.

It occurred to me, that to encourage diversity in coho US, might mean 
finding ways to help finance more diverse communities of lesser means to 
being co-housing communities.  It takes both money and time to create a 
co-housing community, and thus it ends up that the larger percentage of 
people pursuing it are people who have both money and time.  This is 
potentially a key driver in the lack of diversity.  Some of the 
literature in co-housing talks of self-selection in creating co-housing, 
but if the seeds of co-housing tend to be rich white liberals, that's 
all you get.

I am also questioning the concept of a fully mixed community as a 
realistic goal.  This may still be systemic racism talking, but I 
currently still feel that humans are still basically tribal in nature, 
and we do seek others like ourselves.  Back when I was in elementary 
school the schools talked about a "melting pot".  I was under the 
impression that this term has gone out of fashion and that we're more 
accurately a "mosaic".  Am I wrong to think this?

Also... thank you for calling me out. I need active help to get pulled 
out of my bubble.

- Lyle

On 2/24/23 4:30 AM, Crystal Farmer wrote:
> We've now come to the part of the merry go round where people are told not
> to have thick skin because being offended is part of life in community.
> Like Hafidha said, this is why you don't have diversity. I encourage you to
> at least consider that the harm caused in this conversation is more than
> discomfort that we have to put up with. It's unacceptable.
>
> Crystal
> _________________________________________________________________
> Cohousing-L mailing list -- Unsubscribe, archives and other info at:
> http://L.cohousing.org/info