Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Diversity

[Sophie Rubin (yophiest]

Both Lyle and Sharon's responses effectively say "we are already as diverse
as we can expect to be." How awful! Accepting that we are hurting others
and declaring defeat is NOT the answer!

Minorities, POC will *always* have work to do. They have no choice but to
endure micro-aggressions and a general lack of empathy, and figure out how
to live with it. Figure out whether they *can* live with it in cohousing.
They should not have to do this!

If you're here and you're interested in cohousing evolving into a more just
and equal society, then I would suggest the following are more productive:
We did not truly hear and understand what you were trying to convey. In the
future, we will assume concerns raised in our forums are valid and consider
how to address those concerns instead of considering whether the person has
the right temperament for our community. We will consider, "with my speech
right now, WHO am I helping? Am I being defensive, or am I actually
forwarding the mission of diversity in the community?" We will not change
the subject to some other oppressed group or some other anecdote.

I am extremely grateful to Crystal and Hafidha for contributing to the
conversation. They should not have to be doing this work.

Sophie



On Fri, Feb 24, 2023 at 11:08 AM Sharon Villines via Cohousing-L <
cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org> wrote:

> > On Feb 24, 2023, at 7:30 AM, Crystal Farmer <crystalbyrdfarmer [at] 
> > gmail.com>
> 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.
>
> I don’t want to open this thread again because I think it has exhausted
> itself with hypotheticals, but the other side of the merry-go-round is
> believing that what people (of whatever majority or minority population)
> are saying is that you have to have thick skin to live in community. And
> that this is why we don’t have diversity in cohousing.
>
> In my experience, we have as much diversity in cohousing as there is
> likely to be in any small community of choice. This is why it is important
> to have efforts like the one Alan is spearheading. And to have
> conversations about the kinds of things that people find difficult to live
> with. But it is partly just the nature of the beast. People like to live
> with people like themselves.
>
> It’s also hard to talk about hypotheticals because we tend to assume that
> everyone is talking from the standpoint of the majority European American,
> college-educated, business/government/non-profit/professional class. My
> cohousing context is probably quite different than many cohousing
> communities. We have households that include trans, single and coupled gay
> men and women, with and without children; “biracial" households; physically
> challenged people; adopted children of several nationalities; low-income
> and wealthy, etc. We have devout Jews and devout Christians. Army colonels
> and Quakers.
>
> Because we are in DC we also have had native Nigerian, German, and
> Spanish-speaking households. We have a Mayan Indian, too, which is ironic.
> She had her DNA done because she was convinced she was predominantly
> African American but she came out Mayan. Not too incredible because she is
> Columbian, but a surprise for her.
>
> And still, people will say we aren’t diverse because DC is 40% African
> American and we are far from that. But it is also a generalization that DC
> is 40% African American because the Black community is exceptionally
> diverse because of the Embassies from many African and Middle East
> countries. There are major differences between the French and
> British-English speaking communities. And the Jamaican communities that
> don’t all identify with the others.
>
> Sharon
> ----
> Sharon Villines
> Takoma Village Cohousing, Washington DC
> http://www.takomavillage.org
>
>
>
>
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