Diversity, Humanity, Inclusion, and Authenticity

I am a Fort Collins kid, born and raised. I grew up loving camping and the outdoors. I grew up with a “typical” family and went to a very small school where everyone looked like me and had the same families. I didn’t realize things outside my bubble were any different, and this was an absolute loss to my growing up. My first experience with diversity was from my adopted sister. She is a double amputee and has dark chocolate skin. She is beautiful and perfect in every way, but the world didn’t see her as such. I watched the world notice her differences before anything else, furthering my experience of difference was not always welcome. 

In high school, I transitioned to a large and diverse public school where I went from a class of 10 to a class of 450. The culture shock was unreal and I didn’t feel comfortable for months. I didn’t know what I didn’t know and as a 15-year-old, I gravitated toward the people who were different than me in order to learn stories and create relationships, but I quickly learned this was not the social order of things in a high school. People created their own groups of individuals that had the same skin tone, some family life, same cultures, and while there was vast diversity in that school, there was no integration of community or differences and you could see it in the culture. It was a loss.

Maybe what I now see, in hindsight, as the most tragic, was the separate hall for individuals with diverse abilities. I found this community by participating in unified sports in high school. Seeing how I didn’t have a lick of athleticism and a need for relationships, I gravitated toward the one team that would cheer on their opponents in a game. I created some of my fondest memories with individuals of all backgrounds. Kids from every grade level, every culture, with Cerebral palsy, Down syndrome, and Autism all didn’t care about the differences of one another and only cared about the team. This was so against the social order of the high school and it was a breath of fresh air.

After high school, I learned the deep inequities that run in American education for this population. Despite the good experience I had as an ally, I can now see how I was being complicit in a system that was “separate by equal.” While the administration and staff of this cohort did everything they could in terms of their advocacy, the systems were so deeply engrained that there was not much one could do to include these individuals in authentic and meaningful ways.

This has stuck with me and motivated me every day in my secondary education to become a social worker. My goal is to continue to challenge systems that maintain the façade of equity while they perpetuate the opposite. While I don’t have a loved one with Down syndrome, my experience in high school and by seeking out these communities in other ways, have motivated me to continue to seek genuine and equal relationships with a population that is far too often seen as a “service project.” This is why the message of GiGi’s Playhouse rings true in my heart. At GiGi’s, individuals are not on a hierarchy based on ability. This isn’t the helpers and the helped, rather a collaboration between groups to form a large and diverse community that is better for it.

My childhood was less authentic, less rich, less human because I didn’t have the honor of collaborating with individuals of diverse backgrounds and abilities. Since being in relationship with individuals with diverse abilities and needs, my heart is more human, we are all more empathetic, and I feel more connected as part of the human family. We lose humanity when we lose what makes us unique. I am forever honored to be a part of GiGi’s playhouse, an organization that honors diversity and humanity and maintains that inclusion for all is the most true and authentic option we can chose every day. 

Sincerely, 
Whitney B.