“¡This is not normal!”, a friend of mine told me once. This apparently innocent and very common phrase in everyday conversations, has much deeper connotations than we can even imagine. Was my friend telling me that I was “abnormal” for not behaving according to what he considered to be “normal”? I guess that nobody likes to be qualified as someone who is “abnormal”. After years of reading about inclusion and equity, I got to understand all the ramifications of the concept of normality, and how it is associated with “privilege”. After all, what is normal in this life? Who defines what is normal? What happens to those people who don’t fit the concept of what is normal?
The “normal” itself does not exist. It is more of a construction based on dominant beliefs that fight each other in every society, and that vary over time. 80 years ago it was not “normal” for women to vote, for example. The normal is usually aligned withwhat is more usual or conventional, the average or the majority. However, its application is way more related to power than to the number of people who are included in this “normal”. Nowadays, for instance, it is not normal to see a mestizo on the fashion billboards that fills the roads of Peru. However, mestizos and indigenous people represent the vast majority of the country’s population.
Now, which ones are the groups aligned to the dominant norm that are benefited from unearned advantages, meaning, privileges today? The current paradigm of normality supports and privileges white, adult, with formal education and economic resources, catholic, heterosexual and without any obvious disability men. Let’s check out this example: in terms of sexual orientation, what is considered to be “normal” today, is being heterosexual. Those people who fit this norm have the privilege, for instance, to publicly demonstrate their love freely without any fear of being persecuted, punished or imprisoned. On the other hand, in many companies the implicit norm is that leadership is a men job. A woman as CEO of a company is something rare, infrequent, “abnormal”.
Related article: The biggest taboo: Privilege
Those people and groups that don’t “fit” within the concept of normal, are victims of discrimination and inequality in society. Normality generates a covert effect of assimilation, such as homosexuals hiding their sexual orientation to appear more “normal”, black people using skin lotions to whiten them, etc. Everything that is not aligned with what is considered “normal”, by contrast, is “abnormal”, or in other words, “rare”, “inferior”, “dangerous”, and therefore wrong. And if it resists to align with the prevailing norm, then it is a reason for discrimination.
A key action in favor of equity is to question the dominant definitions of normality, that is to say, “normalize” what is different. When difference is accepted as something normal, the privileges of some groups begin to disappear, contributing to generate a more equitable society. The same thing happens at the organizational level. When a company begins to promote greater inclusion of difference, people begin to feel freer, more engaged and more productive.
How can you contribute to normalizing difference in your personal and professional context?
By Marcelo Baudino
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Expert
Linkedin: https://ar.linkedin.com/in/marcelobaudino
