Making mistakes is an unavoidable part of doing Social Justice and Diversity work. I’ve been doing this work for some time now and I make them often. No matter how much you know, no matter how hard you try, it’s going to happen. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
Mistakes can be our greatest teachers.
When handled with care, they can create the most incredible teachable moments that all parties involved can learn and grow from. The active phrase here is “handled with care”.
When someone calls attention to our mistakes, the way respond is of the utmost importance. This is where many of us tend to get into trouble. One of the most common reactions to making a mistake is to fall back on our good intentions. By this I mean, our first response is “I didn’t mean to” or “That wasn’t my intent.” The problem here is that your attention is focused on your feelings and how you’re being perceived rather than on understanding the mistake you’ve made and the impact it had.
You are allowed to have feelings.
No one likes to be wrong, it doesn’t feel good. Knowing that you hurt someone else doesn’t feel good. Knowing that you’ve contributed to the inequality of other people doesn’t feel good. And it definitely doesn’t feel good knowing that once we’ve made a mistake, other people will view us differently. In the moment in which we are given the opportunity to notice a mistake, however, it’s best that your attention is focused on understanding the mistake rather than on expressing your feelings about having made the mistake. You can do that at another time, preferably with someone that wasn’t on the receiving end of your mistake.
Intentions matter.
Understanding someone’s intentions can help us to be more empathetic and understanding in situations where we are the aggrieved party. This is important because if we understand that knowledge gaps and lack of awareness are an inherent part of the ways we are socialized, then we understand that granting one another grace as we learn and grow is an important way to challenge it. However, good intentions do not offset nor take precedence over the impact of your actions.
Our mistakes do not occur in a vacuum.
There are real-world ramifications in ways that we don’t always predict or understand. And, if someone is the target of a system of inequality, it means that they are exposed to other people’s mistakes (on top of other people’s ill intentions) all day, every day. In situations where you make mistakes, please understand that your learning comes at someone else’s expense. Remembering this can help us to remain humble in the face of our mistakes. It can also help us to extend grace to others when they do the same.
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