Doctor E. says of all the letters, equity is the most important. Equity is what actually leads to systemic, structural and institutional change. He will talk about each in the next three videos, diversity, inclusion and equity. Stay tuned and we'll talk about diversity.
Hello, Doctor E. Here. I hope you are doing well. I am going to start this four part series talking about the acronym of DEI. Lots of folks have asked me about the order of the letters. Is there any significance or relevance to what comes before? What and how did all of that play out, particularly as it relates to how we now recognize the acronym and use the acronym DEI? I am going to say right at the outset, the order of the letters, in my humble opinion, have no reflection on which is significant and which might not be as significant as the other.
I believe of all the letters, equity is the most important. I think equity is the most important because equity is what actually leads to systemic, structural and institutional change. Yes, all of them working together should lead to that. But once you start getting into the process of equity, once you start looking at what's working, what's not working, where you can make substantive changes, particularly in terms of what you might be doing as an organization, how you might be functioning, where gaps might exist, what types of process needs to be changed, how those processes can be changed, which practices have led to the orchestration and the continuation of those processes.
All of those things, to me, make equity the most significant piece in that Dei matrix or puzzle or orchestration. Now, some, particularly as it, when it first began, use the acronym EDI. Equity, diversity and inclusion. What I did not see, and what I have not seen is die, probably for good reasons, right? We don't want any initiatives to have the acronym of DiE. And so I think fundamentally, when we really begin to break down what's most important, how the order of the letters came to exist, I really fundamentally believe it's just a matter of which order is more palatable, what makes the most sense, what isn't going to take away from the meaning of the acronym, and how then do we begin to talk about the connection or the synergy between each?
And so, for me, diversity leads to inclusion. Inclusion and diversity lead to equity. And so when you start to think about fundamental change, systemic change, structural change, equity is where the evaluation and all of those other kinds of things take place. Inclusion is how you actually get to the processes in the examination of some of those things. And then diversity is the foundational building block of embracing and accepting differences. So I'm going to talk about each in the next three videos, diversity, inclusion and equity.
I'm going to try to break each down so you understand what they mean fundamentally and foundationally, and how you can go about practicing and pursuing them. And then you'll hopefully have a really robust picture of what diversity, equity and inclusion truly mean how they're connected, how they work together, and how you can begin to examine and compartmentalize each one as you go about your dei efforts and pursuits. So stay tuned and we'll talk about diversity. Coming up.
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