Ethics of Inclusion

The Ethics of Inclusion
John OBrien & Marsha Forest
We want to begin a dialogue on the expectations about personal behavior that

go along with a commitment to inclusion. Unattainable expectations confuse
good people and fragment efforts for change into factions organized around
hurt feelings. We who care about inclusion can reduce this drain on the energy
necessary to work for justice by being clear about three delusions which are
common but mostly unconscious among advocates for inclusion. When we re-
place these false and destructive beliefs with simpler expectations of decency
and working constructively in common, we will all be better able to live out the
real meaning of inclusion by honoring and growing from our shared struggle
with our diverse gifts, differences, and weaknesses.
Delusion 1: Inclusion means that everybody must love everybody

else or We must all be one big, happy family!
This delusion is at work when people who care about inclusion feel shocked
and offended to discover that other inclusion advocates dont really like one
another. Sometimes this delusion pushes people into pretending, or wanting
others to pretend, that real differences of opinion and personality dont exist or
dont really matter. The roots of this delusion may be in a desire to make up for
painful experiences by finally becoming part of one big happy family, where
there is continual harmony and peace.
The one big happy family delusion is the exact opposite of inclusion. The
real challenge of inclusion is to find common cause for important work that can-
not be done effectively if we isolate ourselves from one another along the many
differences of race, culture, nationality, gender, class, ability, and personality
that truly do divide us. Educating our children is one such common cause: it is
too important for us to give in to the many forces of divisiveness that surround it.
The reward of inclusion comes in the harvest of creative action and new under-
standing that follows the hard work of finding common ground and tilling it by
confronting and finding creative ways through real differences.
The one big happy family delusion destroys the possibilities for inclusion in a
complex community by seducing people into burying differences by denying
their significance or even their existence. People in schools or agencies or as-
sociations which promote this delusion lose vividness and energy because they
have to swallow the feelings of dislike and conflict they experience and deny
The Ethics of Inclusion - 1

the differences they see and hear. Denial makes a sandy foundation for inclu-
sive schools and communities.
Community grows when people honor a commitment to laugh, shout, cry, ar-
gue, sing, and scream with, and at, one another without destroying one another
or the earth in the process. We cant ever honestly celebrate diversity if we pre-
tend to bring in the harvest before we have tilled the ground together.
Delusion 2: Inclusion means everyone must always be happy and

satisfied or Inclusion cures all ills.
A group of good people came together to study inclusive community in an in-

tensive course. One person, Anne, angrily announced her dissatisfaction from
the groups first meeting on. She acted hostile to everyone else and to the
groups common project.
At first, the group organized itself around Annes dissatisfaction. A number of

members anguished over her participation. It was hard for the group to sustain
attention on anything for very long before the topic of how to satisfy Anne took
over. The group acted as if it could not include Anne unless she was happy.
And, they assumed, if they could not be an inclusive group (that is, make Anne
happy) they would be failing to live up to their values. Two other members
dropped out the group, frustrated by their inability to overcome the power of this
delusion and move on to issues of concern to them.
The group broke through when they recognized that true community includes
angry and anguished people as well as happy and satisfied people. After over-
coming the delusion of cure, the group gave Anne room to be angry and dissat-
isfied without being the focus of the whole group. Let out of the center of the
groups concern, Anne found solidarity with several other members, whom she
chose as a support circle for herself. In this circle of support her real pain
emerged as she told her story of being an abused child and a beaten wife. She
did not go home cured or happy, but she did find real support and direction for
dealing with the issues in her life.
The delusion that inclusion equals happiness leads to its opposite: a pseudo-
community in which people who are disagreeable or suffering have no place
unless the group has the magic to cure them. Groups trapped in this delusion
hold up a false kind of status difference that values people who act happy more
than people who suffer. This delusion creates disappointment that inclusion is
not the panacea.

Real community members get over the wish for a cure-all and look for ways to
focus on promoting one anothers gifts and capacities in the service of justice.
They support, and often must endure, one anothers weaknesses by learning
ways to forgive, to reconcile, and to re-discover shared purpose. Out of this hard
work comes a measure of healing.
Delusion 3: Inclusion is the same as friendship or We are really all

the same
Friendship grows mysteriously between people as a mutual gift. It shouldnt be

assumed and it cant be legislated. But people can chose to work for inclusive
schools and communities, and schools and agencies and associations can
carefully build up norms and customs that communicate the expectation that
people will work hard to recognize, honor, and find common cause for action in
their differences.
This hard work includes embracing dissent and disagreement and sometimes
even outright dislike of one person for another. The question at the root of in-
clusion is not Cant we be friends? but, in Rodney Kings hard won words,
Can we all just learn to get along?
We cant get along if we simply avoid others who are different and include only
those with who we feel comfortable and similar. Once we openly recognize dif-
ference, we can begin to look for something worth working together to do. Once
we begin working together conflicts and difficulties will teach us more about our
differences. If we can face and explore them our actions and our mutual under-
standing will be enriched and strengthened.
To carry out this work, our standard must be stronger than the friendly feelings
that come from being with someone we think likes and is like us. To understand
and grow through including difference we must risk the comfortable feeling of
being just like each other. The question that can guide us in the search for bet-
ter understanding through shared action is not Do we like each other? but
Can we live with each other? We can discover things worth our joint effort
even if we seem strange to one another, even if we dislike one another, and,
through this working together, we can learn to get along.
The delusion of sameness leads away from the values of inclusion. It blurs
differences and covers over discomfort and the sense of strangeness or even
threat that goes with confronting actual human differences. Strangely, it only
when the presumption of friendship fades away that the space opens up for
friendship to flower.

An ethic of decency and common labor
Inclusion doesnt call on us to live in a fairy tale. It doesnt require that we begin
with a new kind of human being who is always friendly, unselfish, and unafraid
and never dislikes or feels strange with anyone. We can start with who we are.
And it doesnt call for some kind of supergroup that can make everyone happy,
satisfied, and healed. We can start with the schools, and agencies, and asso-
ciations we have now.
The way to inclusion calls for more modest, and probably more difficult,
virtues. We must simply be willing to learn to get along while recognizing our
differences, our faults and foibles, and our gifts.
This begins with a commitment to decency: a commitment not to behave in

ways that demean others and an openness to notice and change when our be-
havior is demeaning, even when this is unintentional. This ethical boundary
upheld as a standard in human rights tribunals around the globe defines the
social space within which the work of inclusion can go on.
This work calls on each of us to discover and contribute our gifts through a
common labor of building worthy means to create justice for ourselves and for
the earth through the ways we educate each other, through the ways we care
for one anothers health and welfare, and through the ways we produce the
things we need to live good lives together.
In this common labor we will find people we love and people we dislike; we
will find friends and people we can barely stand. We will sometimes be aston-
ished at our strengths and sometimes be overcome by our weaknesses.
Through this work of inclusion we will, haltingly, become new people capable of
building new and more human communities.

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The Ethics of Inclusion

John OBrien & Marsha Forest

We want to begin a dialogue on the expectations about personal behavior that

Delusion 1: Inclusion means that everybody must love everybody

The Ethics of Inclusion - 1

Delusion 2: Inclusion means everyone must always be happy and

A group of good people came together to study inclusive community in an in-

At first, the group organized itself around Annes dissatisfaction. A number of

The Ethics of Inclusion - 2

Delusion 3: Inclusion is the same as friendship or We are really all

Friendship grows mysteriously between people as a mutual gift. It shouldnt be

The Ethics of Inclusion - 3

This begins with a commitment to decency: a commitment not to behave in

The Ethics of Inclusion - 4

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