Towson students, faculty get a lesson in radical inclusion

By Muhammad Waheed
Baltimore Watchdog Staff Writer

People should not hesitate to share their true identity with society while allowing others to freely express themselves as well, a communications studies professor from St. Louis University said Friday at Towson.

Associate Professor Amber Johnson defined the concept of “radical inclusion” as an attempt to foster debate and discussion in an open atmosphere that does not make some participants hide their feelings because of fear of ridicule.

Johnson said people should feel free to show their true selves and not feel like they have to leave part of themselves on the sidelines because it may turn others off or make them feel uncomfortable in some way.

 “What do you leave at home when you come to school,” Johnson said. “What don’t you share with your classmates, your colleagues, your friends even – and how can we bridge those gaps?”

Johnson, an award-winning scholar, artist and activist, was the keynote speaker at the “Showing Up, Making Space and the Political Imagination of Diversity Symposium” at Towson University on Friday.

The event was designed to get participants to engage in difficult conversations about identity-formation, social justice, diversity, inclusion, racism and post-racial rhetoric.

“I bet you remember people telling you, ‘Why do you seem so angry,’” Johnson said. “‘Why do you keep bringing that stuff up? Why are we still talking about this? Can we not talk about that?’”

Johnson said that while a table becomes messy when everyone puts all of their stuff on it, a messy table also helps people understand each other.

Johnson said that people should ask themselves, what are they leaving out, who are they, what matters most to them and what is their social identity.

Planning a dinner party is a good example of using radical inclusion, Johnson said.

Having the event on the day the host is available, cooking the foods the host cooks best and seating guests where the host desires is not radical inclusion, Johnson said.

“How about we start with, ‘Do you want to have dinner with me,” Johnson said. “You start with the idea.”

Johnson said that the next questions in planning a dinner party would be asking when guests would be available, what do they want to eat and what are triggering foods.

Johnson said collectively assessing the dinner party also would showcase radical inclusion.

“If I assess my dinner party where I cooked the food, I’m going to say it was great. So instead, I’m going to ask us to assess this together,” Johnson said. “That’s what radical inclusion looks like. It looks like bringing people in from the very beginning and keeping them involved throughout the entire process so that when you get to the end you say we did something not I did something, but we did something.”

Radical inclusion will require radical forgiveness, Johnson said.

“If we are not radically forgiving each other for that mess, that bias, that prejudice, those secrets then it’s going to make it real hard to be radically inclusive,” Johnson said. “It’s raising towards a higher state of understanding that includes empathy for everyone and all living things. It’s accepting the realities of societal conditioning and physical determinism as they shake the actions of both yourself and others.”

Johnson said that social justice is defined as merit and that some people have their merits decided prior to being born based on social identity.

To get the point across that society often lacks diversity, Johnson did a Photo Google search using the word “professor.” Most of the photographs that were displayed on the screen were of white men.

“White men,” Johnson said, “except for this one person who is maybe not white. So, that’s a problem.”

Johnson also looked up company CEOs.

“Both of these I would scroll down and it would take about like five or six full scrolls to get to a woman,” Johnson said. “Pages sometimes to get to women of color.”

Johnson talked about personally experiencing the lack of diversity and inclusiveness.

“Every time I go into a new facility on campus I get asked, ‘Can I help you’ and then I’d say, ‘I’m Dr. Johnson, professor of communications,’” Johnson said. “What about my students who don’t have those credentials? So, the idea that I don’t belong –  this is a visual representation of why that happens.”

Johnson said visionary play can be used to allow people to reimagine a different world in order to build a database of ideas as well as one day funding various ideas.

One example Johnson used was building accessible bus stops in neighborhoods.

Johnson plans to continue to present ideas in the future as well as grow a project to fund future ideas to increase diversity and inclusion.