"Inclusion" Re-Defined For A New Assassination Era

I knew nothing about Charlie Kirk prior to his assassination. Now everyone knows his name and millions more are hearing his words. If the goal was to cancel his political ideas, the shooter picked the worst strategic plan for doing so. And yet, political assassinations will continue to rise in America as predicted last year until we get to root causes as a nation and re-learn some ancient lessons the hard way.

This is not the first time America has suffered a wave of political violence. It is, however, the first time younger generations have had to live through such an era, which partly explains why they are more open to the use of violence in polling. They do have a point, though, in that violence is not a root cause. It is an outcome resulting from a person’s or group’s underlying beliefs. Therefore, the generational divide around acceptability of violence should not be surprising given young people’s shifting ideology over the past twenty years about what being “inclusive” truly means.

“Inclusion” is the act of an in-group opening its doors to an out-group.

The best definition is usually the simplest. It suggests we have arrived at the root. This is as close as I can get it. The definition does not include an instruction manual of who has been more or less historically wronged. It also does not specify exactly what these groups are. They could be anything. Race, gender, & religion are constitutionally protected groups, but the out-group could also be the new kid at school. It could be someone with different beliefs than you. We are tribal creatures, and inclusion does not come naturally to us.

I’ve recently had the pleasure of joining a new service at my hospital. It is run entirely by women who have been luke-warm to the idea of a large white male joining their ranks. The service is well organized, and staff relations are very close, more so than any I have worked on before, but this is not entirely unexpected. These are well documented advantages to having a highly homogenized group in the workplace. The tradeoff of a homogenous group is it misses other benefits that more diverse teams can offer, such as connecting with patients (or clients) with a wide range personalities and backgrounds.

At my work the gossip mill began to churn a couple weeks after arrival about this new male outsider. There were concerns about my tone. It was nothing that could not be overcome with a bit of time, hard work, and positivity, but it could easily have festered without the support of management and some good advocacy work. (Good patient outcomes also help.) It is not hard to imagine a slightly altered set of circumstances in which I might have been forced out for the crime of being different. In management speak, they would sit me down and explain how I am, “Not a good fit.”

Like many men, my baseline is not super extroverted or “Happy, happy Joy, joy” compared to many female counterparts. It does not intuitively occur to me that I should be complimenting everyone all day every day and putting smiley faces at the end of sentences, but the challenge runs deeper than just personality traits. A man joining an all-female team is intrinsically an awkward integration experience, just like the reverse would be.

Women joining all male teams of course have a similar experience. Anyone joining any distinctly homogenous group that is different from oneself understands this feeling. It is the feeling of being at a slight disadvantage from clicking with your colleagues and being accepted by the in-group. Specifics may vary, but of course this is a universal experience no matter your race, religion, or gender.

It has always been this way since before humans were even human. We were tribal little monkeys with fancy brains thousands of years ago and we remain largely the same today. We like our in-groups. We want to be part of the in-group. We are suspicious of out-groups. The majority of our formative years are spent instinctually categorizing endless traits of the people around us. You need only look at any fashion magazine and watch kids cutting out pictures from them.

Academic mental gymnastics over the past twenty years has attempted come up with a more complex definition of what it means to be “inclusive.” Large socioeconomic datasets that demonstrate disparities in society are the justification for these new definitions that younger generations have grown up with, but these efforts have a fatal logical flaw that has unintentionally produced more division and violence. The flawed assumption is that macro data can be generalized and then appropriately applied to micro situations.

We see this all the time with large data sets in medical research. It can mislead providers about how to manage some individual patients. One size does not fit all. Macro-economic data also does not evenly apply to every industry. Trump tariffs, for example, may not cause inflation on some products where demand decreases, but can cause significant inflation on others like coffee beans where demand remains unchanged.

Similarly, we might observe at the macro level that white males still have a disproportionate amount of power in society, but it would be a gross error in judgement and false assumption to apply that conclusion to my work situation.

Rationalizing the mistreatment of some groups and individuals based on macro data is a philosophical and moral failing as bad as if I started a black patient on insulin simply because diabetes is higher in the black population.

The one benefit of age is perspective. I was there in the ‘90s. American society was more tolerant and more inclusive than today. The worsening divisions in our society are undoubtedly multifactorial in cause, but technology cannot be completely blamed for a moral failing. At the micro level, the correct philosophy is the same as it ever was. Resist your tribal monkey instincts. Try to be as inclusive as you can. If enough communities succeed, the national data will fix itself.

Look around your tribe, your neighborhood, and your work. What is the in-group? What are the out-groups? I’ll bet a paid subscription to this column that the biggest dividing line for most groups in America is not race or gender. It is beliefs. So, if you really want to work on being more inclusive, try finding somebody with different beliefs than your own, extend an hand, and engage with them politely. You will likely discover they are an interesting and kind person not so different from yourself.

Alternatively we can continue to weaponize and justify exclusionary behavior within our own tribes in our own backyard, the outcome of which is utterly predictable. Welcome to the new assassination era.