Belonging is a critical element of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DEIB) work done within professional and learning communities. However, emphasizing diversity and equity without first centering belonging and inclusion fosters disingenuous DEIB efforts. Belonging must be addressed before educators can ever meaningfully incorporate inclusion or equity.

To paraphrase equity strategist Dr. Darnisa Amante-Jackson, belonging refers to the culture created where all people feel welcome across relationships, conversations, physical spaces, and written words. Inclusion acts as a function of participation, while equity references concepts of power and privilege.

Throughout my own career, I have often felt that others expected me to speak during conversations on topics of race, largely because of how my own racial makeup fit into the homogenous communities where I’ve worked. Most of the time, I felt included, but I didn’t feel like I belonged, as if I existed to validate inclusion through my very presence. However, as Dr. Amante-Jackson identifies, inclusion without belonging is tokenizing; it does not lead to greater equity through a redistribution of power and privilege.

In her essay, “For the White Person Who Wants to Know How to Be My Friend,” poet and activist Pat Parker writes that “The first thing you do is to forget I’m Black. Second, you must never forget that I’m Black.” Experiencing transformative shifts in my own racial identity, that sentiment could easily fit the perspective of any marginalized group: “The first thing to do is forget that I’m [not part of the sexual, gendered, racial, ethnocultural majority]. Second, you must never forget that I’m [not part of the sexual, gendered, racial, ethnocultural majority]. Knowing this, how do you create and sustain safe environments where I feel as though I belong?”

While Parker weaves her frustration into her words, I see opportunities for reflection. I’ve developed the following advice for anyone who wants to ally but might not immediately know how to create and sustain safe learning environments.

• Provide opportunities for members of marginalized groups to share, but don’t expect us to share, educate others, or act as representatives of specific groups.
• Listen to differing experiences even if they are angry ones. Don’t summarize or appropriate another person’s experiences by making loose connections to fill the silence. Being quiet reinforces that you represent a safe space.
• If you make a mistake, don’t dwell on errors, try to clarify your intentions, or temper an emotional response. Avoid taking the focus off the person who has been wronged and placing it elsewhere. Just apologize, and then go to the next topic.
• Increase diverse representation in curricula, visual imagery, and conversations. Representation contributes to belonging, which improves student and staff outcomes. Make these contributions authentic for their intrinsic value, as opposed to a virtue signal that shows how caring you are.

Weaving themes of belonging into curricula does not have to be difficult. Following a student-initiated class discussion of melanin in one of my science classes, I posted to Google Classroom, citing the work of Chidiebere Ibe alongside a short narrative related to the intersection of melanin and belonging. I made this post without comment or follow-up and waited for students to ask more questions. For the students who engaged with the post, I responded in simple, brief terms and waited for more questions. At the end of a two-minute discussion with one student, she signed off by telling me, “That’s really cool. Thanks for sharing.”

Maya Angelou once wrote, “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” To that end, belonging pertains to how people feel about being included. When belonging is prioritized within intentional communities, engagement and student outcomes benefit.

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Christopher Dancy, M.Ed, SHRM-CP
‍Organizational engagement, DEIB educational policy leader

Christopher Dancy is a longtime educator, advocate, and mentor.  He teaches middle school science, and is a leader in the educational equity space with particular focus in the ways that identity, belonging, engagement, and opportunity intersect.
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