Damn, You Gonna Go Out Like That? Or Why We Cannot and Therefore We Will Not Comply with Lethal Nonsense

To Leaders of Communities Committed to Justice and Inclusion,

I came of age as a black-racialized male immigrant in Dorchester, a neighborhood in Boston, Massachusetts in the 1970’s.

Back then, as now and always, there were ways to say things that felt right to a teenage mind. One of the most powerful and oft invoked exhortations in my teen peer group was: “Damn, you gonna go out like that?” It was a perfect mix of an expression of concern, a challenge,  a reminder about the importance of standing one’s ground, and a call to action.

It usually came from friends and bystanders in reaction to an insult (likely in the context of a bout of “capping,” as we called it, a game of verbal one-upmanship using brags and putdowns) that went beyond a biting but funny tease to something about someone’s momma or a direct threat of physical harm. “Damn, he just called your mom an astronaut! You gonna go out like that?” “Damn, he said he’s gonna slap you silly! You gonna go out like that?”

I’m very far from the years of my unrefined youth and I have put away those ways (for the most part), and yet I find myself saying over and over again as I hear about another and yet another leader of a school, corporation, community center, you name it, frantically hustling to find ways to end or camouflage their commitment to DEI work. I mean, Damn, he just said he’s gonna take your money and kick you to the curb if you keep doing the right thing. You gonna go out like that?

Please don’t go out like that.

I’m an on-the-ground, in-the-trenches facilitator of DEI. I have the honor of working with all kinds of people and places trying to maximize inclusivity. I know these are challenging times. I know that as leaders of educational, corporate, faith-based, or other communities, you may be feeling the mounting pressure to comply with executive orders and mandates from Washington that are nonsensical, coercive, and severely harmful. These policies threaten to erase progress achieved by expansive diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI for ALL) while imposing restrictive narrow, exclusionary policies and practices (DEI just for Us). They threaten to erase whole swaths of the diverse human family.

I understand the stakes. Federal funding—often critical to your organization’s mission—is being used to painfully twist your arm and extort your compliance. I understand, and that’s why I’m imploring you not to comply, not to go out like that, and instead realize and assert that We cannot comply, and therefore we will not comply with lethal nonsense. It’s practically impossible and literally destructive.

Here’s the thing about the withholding of federal funds threat: compliance under these circumstances in order to hold on to your federal funding would be more than compromising, it would be complicity with oppression. The funding tied to mandates to restrict inclusivity amounts to blood money: financial support contingent on our willingness to harm those we serve.

Are you gonna teach exclusionary ideologies that deny the dignity of individuals based on their identity - and deny basic facts of history? Are you gonna abandon your responsibility to create environments where every person feels safe, valued, and included? Are you gonna allow federal funding to co-opt your values or compromise your integrity? Are you gonna start scurrying around like a little mouse hiding who you are and what you do, hoping to avoid being detected and trampled by the hooves of dogma? 

Please, don’t go out like that.

Instead, stand up, gear up, team up, lawyer up but don’t make the mistake of thinking you can run or hide. This is a take-a-deep-breath-remember who you are-turn-and-face-the-bully-and-let-the-chips-fall-where-they-may moment. I’m sorry to put it so bluntly but as I used to say to my own two kids (poor kids), we don’t fight only when we are guaranteed a win, we fight because we have to.

You do what you do because you are who you are. You need to see that they’re comin’ at your identity and your calling with serious sound, fury, insults, and threats. I know it’s enough to make your heart race, make it hard to take in full breaths, cause headaches and sleepless nights, and make you wonder how you can get out of this vise. 

Back in those early teen years of mine, there was a day when my dad noticed I was moping around in the house instead of being outside playing as usual until someone insisted that I come in. He asked what was going on. I told him Peewee said he was going to beat me up. Peewee was called Peewee because he was not a peewee. “Well,” my dad said, with his always calm and compelling delivery, “hiding in the house all day probably isn’t going to make the problem go away.” With my heart in my throat, I went outside to face whatever might be waiting there for me. As you can see, I lived to write about it.

I know most people do not like confrontation and conflict and will go out of their way to avoid it (full disclosure, I’m also a psychotherapist). It feels like the safe thing to do. And in many cases it may be. I had the privilege of working for decades with kids who had to adapt to chronically dangerous circumstances by becoming so ready for conflict and confrontation that they would be ready to fight and start fighting even in the absence of a real threat. The goal with those kids was to help them understand that what was adaptive then and there might be maladaptive here and now.

Maybe it’s been adaptive for you, maybe all your life, to avoid conflict, yield, defer, genuflect a little here and there to get by. I’m trying to tell you that in this circumstance, what was adaptive then and there will lead to the destruction of who you are and what you do here and now.

Please, please don’t go out like that.