Inclusion
Gandhi once stated that “No culture can live if it attempts to be exclusive.” The artificial boundary of “us versus them” is one of the ways one group attempts to place itself in a superior position to other groups. We have seen the use of exclusion in many arenas in the course of human history. The exclusion is usually based on some criteria out of control by the excluded—gender, race, age and so forth. It was not that many years ago in the United States that women were excluded from voting, from serving on juries and from participating in certain professions. The absurd nature of that exclusion is that women, who comprise the majority of citizens, were excluded from fully participating as citizens.
Exclusion seems to be a major force in many of our institutions and the fight against exclusion appears to be a battle which has no end. LGBTQ persons are being excluded from certain church denominations in the U.S. and that battle is splitting these churches. The lack of women and persons of color from the CEO positions of Fortune 500 companies is another example of exclusion. The attempts to limit women’s education are another form of exclusion. Gated communities are popular in certain areas of the country because such gates keep out persons who are not deemed to belong. At our borders, persons in search of a better life and even asylum seekers fleeing persecution in their homelands are excluded from entry into the country. Potential parents are excluded from adopting children because of sexual orientation. Even in the mediation profession, groups with certain educational backgrounds want to prohibit persons who lack those backgrounds from holding the credentials of a mediator. And as anyone who has studied dispute resolution knows, historically, the most successful peacemakers in our world did not come from a single profession or educational background.
The irony is that exclusion does not provide the safety that seems to be one of the strongest arguments advanced for exclusion. The reality is that the most dangerous people for any group, community or culture are those who have been excluded and marginalized. This time of COVID 19 has exposed and increased some of the fault lines in our societies, in areas such as access to health care, access to food, access to vaccines and access to education. The disparity between the “haves” and the “have nots” has expanded during this time. The safest and most humane response to all these disparities is to open the access to everyone. Inclusion should be the goal, rather than exclusion. Those of us that view ourselves as peacemakers need to do our part to be sure that there is inclusiveness in the policies around these issues and we need to use our particular skill set to encourage inclusion and access. Anthropologist and author Pearl S. Buck noted that “Exclusion is always dangerous. Inclusion is the only safety if we are to have a peaceful world.”