Month: March 2017

I wholeheartedly agree with the article, “How Diversity Makes Us Smarter,” by Katherine Phillips. Not only does she tackle the benefits of diversity from a business perspective, but she challenges the notion from a social aspect. Growing up in Northern Virginia, which surrounds the DC metropolitan area, I have been blessed with the opportunity to experience many different cultures, races, foods, sports, and entertainment to just name a few. Additionally, my educational training was above average even though I went to a public school. The diversity among the students, staff, and teachers contributed to the success of the educational level offered and also challenged me to think outside of the box as cliche as it sounds. Growing up with diversity has definitely contributed to my success as a first generation college student.

Phillips’ statement, “The fact is that if you want to build teams or organizations capable of innovating, you need diversity. Diversity enhances creativity. It encourages the search for novel information and perspectives, leading to better decision making and problem solving,” stands out greatly for me. As an environmental engineer, we collaborate among scientists and engineers across many disciplines, including biology, chemistry, physics, food science, human nutrition food and exercise, computer programming, and statistics to name a few. I had the opportunity to collaborate with food scientists halfway across the world in Portugal last year. That opportunity gave me the ability to look at my research with a whole different perspective, and resulted in a well written journal paper. All in all, never underestimate the power of diversity in all aspects of making this world a better place.

While I do think diversity is important, I also find it to be a bit of  a buzz word. Maybe we should consider thinking less about diversity and more about equal access to tools of upward mobility that would offer minority persons the ability to accelerate at the same rate as non-minorities in education, careers, family life, health, wellness etc.

In many ways the idea and implementation of diversity suggests that business teams, for example, need one token individual of each minority group to meet the standard in order to hit their “diversity mark.” Yes, “diversity can improve the bottom line of companies and lead to unfettered discoveries and breakthrough innovations” (Phillips 2014). But does investing reportedly millions of marketing dollars into the idea of diversity have as great an output as focused attention paid to the structural barriers that create roadblocks for diverse individuals in their career trajectories? If – for example – having women in leadership positions results in increased innovation and increased revenue, then it seems more women should be encouraged to take on leadership roles and offered the same tools as men to navigate corporate spaces and be successful in their careers. This means encouraging young girls to explore areas of math and science, engineering and construction, entrepreneurship and leadership. This also might mean creating clear pathways from young womanhood to adulthood (funded programs specifically for women) that would suggest the corporate space is as convenient for a woman as it is for a man (e.g. paid maternity leave, extended maternity leave in general). This might also look like assistance to help low-income mothers realize their potential in traditionally male spaces.

Claude Steele’s Whistling Vivaldi gave me an epiphany when I read about “arranging informal cross-group conversations” in Chapter 9, on reducing identity and stereotype threat. I have a hunch that some of the interventions described in the chapter may have a broader effect on reversing underperformance than mitigation of stereotype threat. As a student club advisor, I have encouraged clubs to hold movie nights, which include a post-movie discussion.  The most memorable of these was a showing of Spike Lee’s “School Daze.” Several students (and one faculty member) of different racial and cultural backgrounds contributed to a stimulating 30-minute discussion after the movie.   My aim with the movie nights is to promote engineering identity formation by giving the group a common emotional experience in which they may identify with protagonists dealing with various challenges.  School Daze is not about engineers, but it is about college students, and it provides many poignant situations for movie night participants to identify with the characters and their struggles, which in our case, led to a rich discussion. The epiphany is that movie nights can precipitate interventions similar to those described by Steele.  So the movie does not have to be about “engineers,” just stimulating for cross-group conversations.  Perhaps the movie night intervention is one small measure to help level the playing field for many students, regardless of the origin of their underperformance.  The student who led the movie night discussion arranged a themed student-faculty forum about a different issue a month later.   I think he is onto something. For more information: Steele, C. (2011). Whistling Vivaldi: How stereotypes affect us and what we can do (issues of our time). WW Norton & Company. Lee, S. (1988). School daze [Motion picture]. United States: Columbia Pictures.

PROLOGUE
In October of 2015 a cohort of 40 or so people gathered in Squires for InterCom training. During the training one scenario required a person to use a slur word of some kind during the circle to give the facilitators the opportunity to navigate ways of responding to unexpected events in the process of a facilitation.

But, there was a small hiccup. One of the participants, let’s call him J, who wasn’t a facilitator was out of the room when we disclosed who was going to be using a slur word and why. As such, he, a tall black man (these are important demographics to note), didn’t know going into the circle that another person, a white man, had been asked by the trainers to use the n-word during the circle.

The facilitators were brought back in, given their topic, and things started smoothly enough. Then, in the midst of the conversation, the white man used the n-word and a discussion quickly emerged about that word, its use, and reclamation. J reacted strongly to the use of the term and at one point said “Look, if you use that term again I’m going to have to do something”.

How would you interpret this phrase? How do you think people in the room interpreted J’s response?

INTRODUCTION
While this week’s readings were concerned with adjusting, and mitigating, the impact of implicit bias, utilizing “brave” space as opposed to “safe” space discourses, and what I took to be, in one respect, an appeal to long term tangible increases in profit that can accrue when a workspace and place is diverse, I want to take us in a different direction and talk about some things the readings didn’t discuss all that explicitly. While I will come back to elements of bias, especially given the title of this post, I want to start a bit differently than I normally do.

Rather than start with a long, rather drawn out explanation of the concepts at play, here are some scenarios to ponder.

 

SCENARIOS

Scenario 1:
Think back to the first day of class. If you’re teaching or a TA, or have been in the past, think back to how you take roll on day one (assuming you do so). If you’re not teaching or a TA, think back to when you were a student and how your teachers/professors took roll.

Question: How do we usually take roll in a class? Are there any unnamed impacts of certain methods for taking roll/learning names in a class?

 

Scenario 2:
You are in class and notice two students having a conversation. One student is talking and then the other student interrupts them and says “Look, just tell me when we need to meet. I can meet at 2. When can you meet?”. The first student looks frustrated and starts talking again making the same points they made earlier to the obvious frustration of their peer.

Question: What is going on? How might the parties feel?

 

Scenario 3:
On a different day in class two students, Alex and Sam, are talking about something before class. Suddenly you notice Alex using a lot of hand motions and get very close to Sam. Sam takes a step back before continuing the conversation.

Question: How would you read this scenario with only the information provided? Would anything change if you knew the gender, or the race, of Alex and/or Sam?

 

PERSPECTIVES

Scenario 1: Universal Design

When I reflect on my experiences in the classroom, the way roll/attendance tends to get called in classes where the professor cares about knowing names is as follows: on day one the professor goes down the list, calls your first and last name, you say you’re here, and if you have a different name that you go by you tell the professor and they edit the roster.

Sounds normal, right? Many folks I’ve talked with in my department say that this is just the model that they have always used and seen used. But who could be harmed with this model or, sometimes, put in danger?

For trans* students, especially those students who don’t have a name change in the system, and sometimes who can’t get their name changed in the system for a myriad of reasons, the first day of class can be a bit stressful. Some students email their professors, individually, semester after semester to give them a heads up that they go by a name that’s not on the roster (or “obvious”). But, there are a few hiccups here. The first is that the that name information doesn’t always make it way onto the roster that will be called on day one and thus the bootstrapping may have been in vain. The second is that this requires the student to “out” themselves to someone they might not know yet and not everyone responds positively, or even neutrally, to trans* students in the classroom.

As such, I think that when it comes to designing our classrooms, we ought to operate with a mind towards mitigating the harms, and the need for bootstrapping, for our students. This isn’t to say that universal design can fix everything, but certain design moves can help those who need it the most and also those didn’t realize that they stand to benefit from changes to the system.

As such, here is a proposal: when we take roll, rather than call out the first and last names for the students, call out the last name only. If you’re like me, you will still mispronounce it but hey, now we only have to mispronounce the last names! After you call out the last name, have the students respond with whatever they go by. There is no need for the entire “My legal name is William but I go by Bill” hoop jumping, for trans* students if they have a name that they want to go by that’s not their “legal” name no on in the class will be the wiser, and you only have to struggle to pronounce the last names (this time). This is one example of a universal design move in the classroom that benefits more than just trans* students even if they may benefit from it more than some others.

While there is more to say about universal design, to end this section, I want to ask a question:

What are some other examples of universal design that we can use in the classroom and what are our reasons for not shifting to different models?

 

Scenario 2: High Context and Low Context Communicators

For me, I see this kind of interaction fairly regularly and it speaks to a difference in context communication. By this, I mean that some people are high context communicators (HC) and some people are low context communicators (LC). For folks who are HC communicators, especially in new settings, it is not uncommon for them to need to speak uninterrupted in order to feel heard and valued. If they are interrupted, or rushed by folks who are LC communicators, they may feel dismissed or unheard. In contrast, folks who are LC communicators tend to want to get to the point, can come across as blunt for HC communicators, and may also become very impatient with HC communicators.

In the classroom, or in spaces in general, we need to be aware of how differences in context communication can aid, or hinder, the interactions of folks in those spaces. Folks with different styles of communication, or with different context and cultural traditions, may interpret classroom activities, films, or discussions in different ways and respond to those things in a myriad of ways. If we were to ignore the roll that a difference in context played in those interactions, we risk ostracizing a group of learners if the classroom is set up for a certain kind of context learner to the detriment of the other types of learners in the space.

As with the last scenario, oo end this section, I want to ask a question:

When designing classrooms, how to we create and make space for multiple styles of communicators? How do we address conflicts that arise when there are differences in styles?

 

Scenario 3: Oral vs Print Culture

Sometimes when students interact, body language, tone of voice, mannerisms, and other indicators can be actual indicators of mood/affect. Other times they can be misinterpreted to indicate moods/affects not currently present. In the above scenario, it is not uncommon for folks to take the actions of Alex as either indicating excitement, anger, or other moods that tend to reflect what we as the observer have tended to associate certain actions with (e.g., hand motions means angry) in our own histories. As such, the purpose of this scenario was to get folks to reflect on how we as educators and facilitators may interpret language, especially bodily language, based on our own preconceptions of what anger, excitement, engagement, and the like look like with our academic training.

For, within academia we operate in what is called a “print” culture (PC). This kind of structure is such that emotions tend to be rather limited, communications for formulaic and dictated by tradition and norms within the academia, boundaries and distance (literal and metaphorical) tends to be emphasized, etc. Sound familiar?

In contrast, “oral” culture (OC) operates in a more emotional and expressive manner. The communications are focused on the relationships among the interlocutors, there isn’t really a formulaic or structured element to the conversation as opposed to flowing narrative, and boundaries and distance (again, literal and metaphorical) tend to be down played. The interlocutors connect with one another via emotions, physical closeness, etc.

When folks from a PC interact with folks from an OC, there can be tensions that we need to name. To the PC folks, the OC folks may come across as hostile or threatening due to their close proximity and use of hand motions when, for the OC folks, how they are acting and interacting is an indication of their engagement with the person and topic at hand. There are other things to name, and we can process though them later.

To end this section, I want to ask another question:

How might someone from an OC find academia? Specifically, how might someone who is a first generation college student, with an OC background, find their peers and professors and how would their perception of the climate effect their success?

 

EPILOGUE/CLOSING THOUGHTS
When the scenario with J played out in the circle, we processed through not only what was said but also how people interpreted J’s words. For some people, and this was the case for a number of the white folks in the room, J’s words came across as a threat.  One person said, “I thought he was going to hurt someone” hence the title of this blog post.

When we asked J what he meant by his words, he said that he had meant he would leave the room. His “doing something” would be removing himself from that space.

When it comes to our classrooms and how we design them there are a few things I think we must all be conscientious of. On one hand there is the design of the space, its accessibility, the removal of needless barriers for students, etc. This can include changing how we do class rolls, for example, or even using only gender neutral/name only references for students when we don’t know their pronouns (a bit more contentious of a UD move).

On the other hand another important element is knowing ourselves. Sometimes, we might misinterpret what a student says, much like J’s colleague very much erred in their reading of his exclamation. In trying to move through those tensions both for ourselves and among the students we work with, we need to know what we’re bring to the table and what they may be bringing to the table.

While we facilitate a classroom, we should know the culture we have, our communication styles, if we are Low Power Distance or High Power Distance (something I didn’t discuss), etc..  We will be bringing our histories and biases into the classroom. Rather than be ashamed to acknowledge our tendencies and biases we can use our knowledge of them to be better facilitators across and among differences in the classroom.

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The talking points for this blogpost are taken from and inspired by materials found in the VT InterCom: Dialogues for Social Change program run by Dr.Christian Matheis and the IEC here at Virginia Tech. They can be found, in much more detail, in the Human Relations Facilitation, Modes of Communication, and Responses to Conflict training packet. Additional information can be found in: Intercultural Sensitivity for the Health-Care Professional Eric H.F. Law, M.Div. with Elizabeth Snow, MA, OTR 1995

“Stereotypes are valuable,” he said. “But only if you use them to your advantage. They present your readers with something they’ll recognize, and it pulls them into what appears to be familiar territory, a comfort zone. But once they’re in, you have to move them beyond the stereotype. You have to show them what’s real.”

“What’s real?” I asked.

Without hesitation, he said, “You.”

It was one of those things that you instantly recognize as profound, and then, because you don’t quite understand it, try to forget as quickly as you can. It was also one of those things that you cannot forget. And so it roamed freely in my subconscious, occasionally coming into sharp focus to remind me of its presence, but I allowed myself to be consumed by it no more than I would a housefly.”

—Jerald Walker, p. 55-56 of “Dragon Slayers”

While the above excerpt is not from the “Inclusive Pedagogy” readings for the week, I couldn’t help but think of this short essay by Jerald Walker as I made my way through excerpts from Claude Steele’s Whistling Vivaldi: How Stereotypes Affect Us and What We Can Do. (If you haven’t read Walker’s piece, you really should; you can find it in Best American Essays 2007. I find it moving every time I read it. Anyway, moving along…)

In the introduction, Steele* doesn’t take long to get to the tough stuff; it’s only on page 6 where he first tells us the story of Brent Staples, the young black man who started whistling Vivaldi (classical music) to signal to people he passed on the streets of Chicago that he meant no harm:

By the end of this page, I was reminded of the different ways people experience being “othered” based on stereotypes, and I thought back to some personal experiences that have driven me to be a more inclusive person. All I could think of was the following sentence I had heard from two people on two different occasions: “They wouldn’t even look at me.”

The first time I heard someone make this observation was in a classroom at the community college where I used to teach first-year composition. One of my non-traditional students (picture a friendly, funny, average American white guy) shared with the class that he had been homeless for over a decade of his life, and that one of the worst parts of that experience was how often people would look through him like he wasn’t there or ignore him completely. “They would’t even look at me.” And at that moment, my eyes were opened to yet another injustice the homeless often suffer: a total lack of acknowledgment from other people, even through a kindness so small as the slightest eye contact.

(I was ashamed; as an introvert and a female, I avoid a great deal of eye contact with strangers, especially men. It’s likely I wouldn’t have looked at him either.)

The second time I heard this statement was no less surprising than the first, although it made just as much sense the second it was brought up. I was attending a professional development seminar here at VT and the speaker (picture an eloquent and educated black man in a nice suit with a pretty good proclivity for jokes) told us (a mix of graduate students, adjuncts, and faculty members) that we needed to remember to acknowledge one another. That we needed to look each other in the eye. He reminded us that, even as a well-educated man who was dressed in a suit and just walking a college campus, most people still wouldn’t make eye contact with him as he walked by. “The students,” he said, “They wouldn’t even look at me.”

(At this point, I made a mental note to work on this more, but it’s not easy; I could write an entire post on the complexities of making the mistake of making eye contact with the wrong person, especially if that person is a man. Alas.)

At any rate, that one sentence is the part of each story that’s stuck most with me over time, not just because its isolating and heartbreaking nature, but specifically because it speaks to our collective tendency to ostracize (or worse, dehumanize) that which we don’t understand. And here I am, with two different times in my life that demonstrate the need to be more inclusive, both at school and life in general. Here’s hoping for some good to come of it.

To close, I would like to refer to the end of Katherine Phillips’ piece “How Diversity Makes Us Smarter,” specifically because her conclusion really summarizes what I think we’re getting at when we think about this process.

That is, the task of working toward an inclusive pedagogy is a continual one where there is still more progress to be made:

This is how diversity works: by promoting hard work and creativity; by encouraging the consideration of alternatives even before any interpersonal interaction takes place. The pain associated with diversity can be thought of as the pain of exercise. You have to push yourself to grow your muscles. The pain, as the old saw goes, produces the gain. In just the same way, we need diversity—in teams, organizations and society as a whole—if we are to change, grow and innovate.           

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*Some of my other observations from various chapters of the Claude Steele readings are included below:

• Chapter 1 – An Introduction: On the Root of Identity”
  • p. 4 – 5: Steele’s use of the term “identity contingencies” was an apt one. In summary, he’s referring to all the shit you have to deal with because of one (or more) aspect(s) of your identity. (This is how I defined it in my notes, and that’s how I would like to write here, because really, it is some shit.)
    • I couldn’t help but wonder if the term “stereotype threat” and Steele’s work on this issue would be under fire by the “this is overly PC” and “you’re just a bunch of whiny snowflakes” crowd. I don’t agree with that assessment, but I know those comments would occur.
  • p. 6 -7: Displaying knowledge of the dominant culture, especially examples of “high” culture, can help some individuals deal with stereotyping—even though they shouldn’t have to prove themselves—and that’s one of the themes that contributes to the main focus on the book:
    • “The stereotype in the air that threatened him is fended off. And the change in the behavior of those on the street, and in his own behavior, reveals the power that a mere stereotype—floating in the air like a cloud gathering the nation’s history—was having on everyone all along. Whistling Vivaldi is about the experience of living under such a cloud—an experience we all have—and the role such clouds play in shaping our lives and society.”
  • p. 14: Because everyone is capable of bias:
    • “We simply are not, and cannot be, all knowing and completely objective. Our understandings and views of the world are partial, and reflect the circumstances of our particular lives. This is where a discipline like science comes in. It doesn’t purge us of bias. But it extends what we can see and understand, while constraining bias.”
• Chapter 9 – Reducing Identity and Stereotype Threat: A New Hope
  • p.190: “You should focus on making the identity less ‘inconvenient’” with respect to creating a classroom environment.
• Chapter 11 – Conclusion: Identity as a Bridge Between Us
  • p. 218: We should use our multiple identities as bridges to get to know one another and work better together.

Inclusive pedagogy is a comprehensive topic. To discuss it, we need to fully understand diversity issues first.

I took the course, Diversity and Inclusion for a Global Society, last semester with Dean DePauw. The course talks about diversity issues from different aspects. I learned a lot from that course, I do suggest anyone who would like to learn more about diversity and inclusion can think about taking that course.

The most important lessons I learned from the course is that we always thinking about diversity issues as big, obvious aggressions, but microaggressions in daily life are more urgent for us to realize and solve. I recommend a short video from YouTube for microaggressions, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDd3bzA7450.

The video used a metaphor that comparing microaggressions to mosquito bites to emphasize how microaggressions hurt people in daily life. Sometimes, even if people think they are so nice to say something can hurt others in different ways.

 

 

I just finished reading an article by Vedantam, How ‘The Hidden Brain’ Does The Thinking For Us. My dissertation dabbles with the concepts of biased mental models and implicit bias, so I found myself nodding to all of the author’s points. However, he included an excerpt from his book, Hidden Brain. I found the details of this excerpt highly disturbing. For one, I have found myself in similar situations, and quite like some of the characters in the selected scenario, in postmortem I questioned my reaction to the moment and/or the reactions–or lack thereof–of others.

In the excerpt, a young lady by the name of Deletha jumped from a bridge as a result of a brutal assault from a stranger. While I am reading this passage, I kept asking “why didn’t anyone help this young lady.” I sat with the story and tried to apply the author’s logic of the hidden mind. This is what came up with. If the aggressor and the victim were of the same race, some people may have assumed that they were lovers. And if those people tend to operate on the wisdom my grandmother shared with me–don’t get in the middle of a lover’s quarrel–they may have been were operating with their hidden mind. I think the autopilot [hidden mind] the author is referring to is the behavior we express that isn’t always logical, useful or helpful and it can cause harm.

While I don’t anticipate the average class session to be anything like the death of Deletha, educators must make an effort to avoid operating on auto-pilot; we must stay “woke”. We must be aware when someone is being injured, ostracized, singled-out or mistreated, and create the type of environment where every student feels comfortable enough to state when they feel attacked. Sometimes, a toxic environment can be hard to detect if the facilitator of that moment is in a numbed state.

And for Vedantam’s effort to illustrate the hidden brain–I think his use of an extreme case really drove the point home.

The article that most resonated with me this week was Arao and Clemens “From Safe Spaces to Brave Places”. I believe that the increasingly visible fragmentation along racial and religious lines that we see in the US and in some European countries can only be changed (not hidden) through dialogue across those lines. Dialogue involves both speaking bravely—perhaps through fear, pain, or shame– and listening bravely–with judgement suspended and open to the possibility that you will change. Without brave listening, brave speaking ends up as words dissipated into space. Neither activity is easy, but I think that it is the listening which is most often missing even in safe spaces. Too often, we are ready to listen to another person’s story without interruption and with affirming comments only as long as we are not placed in a position of needing to change the way we see ourselves. However, the most important part of listening when talking about social justice is the effort to acknowledge the ways the story may disrupt your sense of self. I believe that we can learn to do this with practice and that we can welcome our students to brave places where they can practice, too. But if we only do this in our classrooms, then we have already excluded the majority of our neighbors. What I wonder is how we can create these brave spaces in our communities and in the world. How can we incite civility and reason and invite change?

Teaching public speaking allows me to meet a wide array of students all with immensely diverse backgrounds. My students come from a wide range of majors and places. One of my favorite things about teaching public speaking is the fact that I can allow my students so much choice and range in what topics they discuss in the class. They never fail to amaze me with the multitude of topics that they choose to cover, and I am even more amazed with the varying knowledge and experiences they back themselves up with.

I can’t imagine how bored I would be if I had to sit in a class day after day and discuss the same types of topics over and over again. I love going into the classroom on any given day and knowing that I will learn about any range of topics from utilitarianism to organ donation and from computer vision to Gestalt Psychology.

This freedom does come with responsibility on my part however. Although students generally choose to talk about things like the growing use of drones or the financial collapse of 2008, at least a few times a semester I will encounter a more controversial topic, like abortion, capital punishment, religion, or gun control. I try to give my students as much space as I can to be themselves and talk about topics that interest them, but I have to keep the class as a whole in mind. There is a fine line between giving my students freedom in the course and giving them a platform to push an agenda, especially when it’s a controversial one that has the potential to offend other students, cause arguments, or harm the welcoming environment I strive to foster.  I have felt it necessary to suggest that a student avoid a topic they chose to give a speech on. Although some teachers would say this stifles creativity and diversity, I believe it is important to teach my students that in a group as diverse as ours some topics either aren’t appropriate to talk about, or must be discussed extremely carefully, and that they do not have the time or expertise to give such sensitive topics the time that they deserve in order to be covered fully. I would never want a student to take on a difficult topic and end up giving a speech that would harm or suppress relationships with other students or hurt their credibility in the eyes of their classmates. Diversity of ideas and opinions is an essential part of my classroom; however, so is mutual respect.

I recently read an essay by Anna Agathangelou, M. Daniel Bassichis, and Tamara Spira called, “Intimate Investments: Homonormativity, Global Lockdown, and the Seductions of Empire.” Their basic thesis is that as new groups, such as the LGBTQ community, gain territory in their fights for rights, we should not be so gleeful in their victories without a much deeper criticality. The valence of power within these configurations of new rights and privileges, according to the authors, obscures the reproduction of capitalist values and neoliberal practices.

Notions of privatization, for instance, were at the core argument “dubbed the Pricacy Project,” by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, in their campaign to relinquish anti sodomy laws in Texas. They also analyze a 2003 advertisement featuring Keith Bradkowski, who testified before the U.S. senate using the argument that the terrorists of the 9/11 attack who killed his partner targeted him as an American, not a gay man. True, but the authors point out the Heteronormative logic behind Homonormalization (removal of sodomy laws, legalization of gay marriage). The ad features a white man, who pays his taxes, thus engendering him as an ideal citizen protected under the law through private property and private rights. According to the authors: “Through the stress on monogamy, devotion, and a relationship constrained within the bonds of privacy and propriety, the ad participates in demonization of all other forms of sexual expression, practices, and relationships … heteronormative logics are refueled in the production of the good gay subject” (Agathangelou 126).

All this refers to subject formation. The authors are concerned with how capitalist and neoliberal forces squeeze subjects into consent, demobilization, and rationally segmented demographics. The logics at work grant privilege to some (white) members of the gay community, while by default excluding bodies of color. This demobilizes gay communities and puts them at odds with each other by making complicit a fraction of the community at the cost of the rest of it. So diversity is great, but we must always be weary of shiny new rights at the cost of newly re-marginalized groups created out of the very winning over of said rights.