August 24, 2025by Kelly SimsNo Comments

DEI-cover

The Quechee DEI Council continues its commitment to educating and bringing awareness to the community on matters of diversity, equity and inclusion. This spring, the council hosted Xusana Davis, the State of Vermont’s Executive Director of Racial Equity, as well as Shalini Suryanarayana, the Director of Education & Outreach at that same office. Xusana Davis holds a Juris Doctor with a concentration in International Human Rights Law. Prior to her appointment as Executive Director by Governor Phil Scott in 2019, Xusana led the Health & Housing Strategic Initiatives at the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. She was also Director of the Black, Latino, and Asian Caucus of the New York City Council. Here in Vermont, Xusana engages with state agencies to address and identify systemic racial disparities and provides strategic and policy guidance on issues of equity. Shalini Suryanarayana’s academic credentials include mechanical engineering, industrial management and an MBA in business. From those disciplines, she branched out into DEI graduate certifications from Cornell and Stanford University (in progress). Her work has her interacting with communities throughout Vermont. She aids state and local leaders, she says, to “apply an equity lens to their work through education and close communication.” Ah, equity! “What is equity?” you may ask. Equity is not the same as equality. While equality focuses on sameness, equity focuses on fairness. With equality, everyone is treated the same, receiving equal resources and opportunities. But equality does not account for different needs. Equity accounts for various people (individuals and groups) having different circumstances and needing differing resources. To have equality, we must first acknowledge equity. Imagine a classroom where all the students are provided with books to read. However, one child is blind; another child has hearing difficulties; another child is just learning English. Yes, all these children are provided with books equally, but not equitably. The company, Recite Me, educates various organizations on how to serve communities online with equity and accessibility. Their analogy for equity vs equality is this: a group of differing heights is trying to watch a sporting event over a fence. Equality is giving each person the same size box to stand on. Equity would provide each person a box of appropriate height so that all could see equally well! Glenn Harris, president of the organization Race Forward, says, “Racial equity is about applying justice and a little bit of common sense to a system that’s been out of balance. When a system is out of balance, people of color feel the impacts most acutely, but to be clear, an imbalanced system makes all of us pay.” Shalini reminds us that addressing equity is an ongoing process that doesn’t end with a few hours of training. Since systemic issues have persisted over centuries, DEI requires continuous effort as an antidote to the Dunning-Kruger effect. According to the Dunning-Kruger effect, people can overestimate their abilities and knowledge, particularly in new areas, which can lead to a false sense of expertise. To counteract this effect, Shalini advises learning more in lieu of false confidence. Shalini also discussed the concept of implicit (unconscious) bias. To assess a barrage of information, our brains take shortcuts by relying on existing pairings. This can lead to biased perceptions. Project Implicit (www.ProjectImplicit.net) was founded in 1998 as a cooperative endeavor among several universities to educate the public about bias. We may have an implicit attitude that we might think we don’t have. One riddle often told to highlight this is: a father and son are in an accident; the father dies and the son is taken to the ER and needs surgery. The surgeon says, “I can’t operate on this child, he is my son.” With implicit gender bias, one might assume the surgeon should be male. In fact, the answer is the surgeon is the child’s mother. To check out your own implicit biases on any number of issues, from race and ethnicity to gender, you can take various online tests. (See implicit.harvard.edu.) How are these implicit biases formed? Shalini discussed how implicit biases begin early on in childhood development. I know my growing up in the early 1950s was rife with stereotypes. Children’s books featured white children whose mommies wore dresses and cooked and cleaned and whose daddies came home to a hot meal. Nurses were female; doctors were male. We may look at parental attitudes, too! If parents carry implicit biases from their upbringing, they need to become informed, as well. Are racial and other stereotypes being formed by the school, media, or home environment? Who has not seen on TV or heard in the news that after a huge natural disaster such as a flood, there is looting and crime. And, of course, the footage is often of people of color. Retired Army lieutenant general Russel Luke Honoré helped with the military response to Hurricane Katrina. When survivors scavenged for food and supplies, he notes “That’s not looting, that’s survival mode.” (Ross and Lowry, Washington Post, September 1, 2017) Instead of recognizing their own implicit bias, news media exacerbate the stereotyped perceptions of racial bias. Honoré reminds us, “There’s a bias at play. People think that if you’re poor or black, you’re always trying to steal something. … These warnings about looting validate the stereotypes that people hold about poor people.” I myself wouldn’t think twice to break into a flooded grocery store if my children hadn’t eaten for days or my infant needed diapers! How about you? Racial disparities and biases are no stranger to bucolic Vermont. Shalini cited data that show racial disparities in Vermont arrest rates, depression, home ownership, and income. She referred to a report published in the Vermont Digger on May 8, 2025. It shows that “Black and Hispanic drivers continue to be stopped disproportionately across Vermont. This traffic study was commissioned by the Vermont State Police’s Fair and Impartial Policy Committee. There was an uptick of stopping Asian drivers, as well. “Pretextual stops” are the crux of the issue. Law enforcement has great leeway on who gets stopped and then who gets cited. “The pretextual traffic stop occurs when an officer stops a vehicle for a minor infraction [e.g., a broken tail light]. Then the officer goes further searching for illegal behavior [e.g., drugs]. These stops target, most frequently, people of color, “due to negative stereotypes that have proven to be inaccurate, according to the researchers.” This behavior should not be rationalized away by considering how Vermont is predominantly white and “inexperienced” with people of color! Jay Craven, writer and producer of the movie Lost Nation, reminds us that, in fact, Vermont has always been racially diverse. His film recounts the story of the Prince family, Blacks who were Vermonters alongside Ethan Allen. Lost Nation was shown at the Quechee Club on June 11, 2025, to a sold-out audience. The Prince family’s struggle for land and freedom intersected with Ethan Allen’s similar pursuits. Jay Craven believes that people may be drawn to the movie’s rendering of Ethan Allen. But it is Lucy Terry Prince as the first African American poet and defender of her family’s rights, repeatedly in court, who shines as a woman of persistence and integrity. Jay Craven notes, “Vermont in particular needs to experience its racial past.” Lost Nation’s depiction of Lucy Prince certainly is one path for that. Craven’s first encounter with Lucy Prince was in an interview with Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina, author of Mr. and Mrs. Prince: How an Extraordinary Eighteenth-Century Family Moved out of Slavery and into Legend. (As an aside, note that Gerzina is an alumna of Marlboro College where Craven has been a professor of film studies.) Craven did note how Lucy’s relationship with Native Americans may have evolved over time and he touches on this in Lost Nation. Lucy, as a teenager, wrote the poem “Bar’s Fight” about an “Indian ambush” she witnessed. Craven depicts her meeting a Native American woman while washing clothes in a lake. Theirs may have been an uneasy recognition of each other. Eventually, Craven would like to create a six-part series that would include indigenous history. Right here in Quechee, there is an active recognition of Native American Abenaki culture. The Abenaki Garden is flourishing and is a living reminder of the Abenakis whose land this is. Upcoming events at the garden include a public event and tour on August 14, 2025. An open house is planned for August 30, 10am – noon. This event is part of the Hartford 250th commemoration. (See hartfordvthistory.com.). Earl Hatley, of the Abenaki Nation of Missisquoi, tends the garden regularly and is working on protecting the sunflowers and gourds from busy woodchucks, as he recently noted. Earl is looking forward to planting plum trees and ground nuts. After visiting the Abenaki Garden or volunteering there, another activity to consider is Ellen Bettmann’s ongoing discussions, “Necessary Conversations About Race” which will resume in September. This past year her Zoom discussion group focused on various movies, such as “To Kill a Mockingbird” and James Baldwin’s “I Am Not Your Negro.” This fall, Ellen’s theme is how racism manifests itself in various arenas, such as health, housing, education, etc. Ellen is impressed with QLLA’s DEI Council, saying it’s “fantastic!” Another past event that is held annually is the reading on the Quechee Green of “The Meaning of the Fourth of July for the Negro.” This is Frederick Douglass’s speech delivered in Rochester, NY, on July 5, 1852. If you’ve never read this speech or heard it spoken, please consider doing so – even before next July 5, 2026! (Search for “Frederick Douglass July 4” to find many renderings of this speech.) Douglass describes how, after Congress nationalized slavery in all the states, Black Americans, who had been free, were “hunted down and, without a moment’s warning, hurried away in chains and consigned to slavery and excruciating torture. Some of these have had wives and children, dependent on them for bread; but of this, no account was made. The right of the hunter to his prey stands superior to the right of marriage, and to all rights in this republic, the rights of God included!” Nevertheless, Frederick Douglass ends with hopeful words and he doesn’t despair… “That day will come all feuds to end and change into a faithful friend each foe.” Vermont state senator Joe Major was the emcee of the Quechee event and he, too, holds hope. He notes, “It’s dark for us but there is always hope. We had the Civil War, then reconstruction. Something sets us back but then we bounce back. The cycles come but there is always hope.” Attending as a member of the Quechee Library Trustees (a co-sponsor of the event), Debbie Marcus said “This community reading … was stunning and powerful in ways I did not expect. The speech … was completely astonishing and relevant to America today. As I looked around at the participants assembled at the Quechee Green Gazebo, I saw heads shake, eyes raised skyward, and heads in hands, as Douglass’ powerful words resonated around us. I am struck by how much Americans and American Institutions continue to struggle daily with issues of race, diversity, and inclusion despite our reverence to the opening lines of the Declaration of Independence. I will be back next year for this event.”

Share: