SMITHSONIANMAG.COM JULY 21, 2021
“The security officers are guarding the art, interacting with the public and seeing reactions from visitors that most museum staff don’t have access to from our offices,” Stokes Sims tells the Art Newspaper. “I was struck and moved by the extraordinarily personal, cogent arguments that each officer made for their selection, which was so different from the intellectual and filtered approach that a trained curator would take.”
From Carlos:
Social Status is one of the nine key identity strands in the Social Identity Prism. What should and what does determine who gets to be in the room where important decisions are made? Who gets to sit at the table in the room where important decisions are made? Who gets to speak at the table in the room where important decisions are made? Who gets to speak with a realistic expectation that they will be heard and that their counsel will be heeded at the table in the room where important decisions are made? Who gets to curate society?
The inertia of social status being conferred on the basis on wealth and degrees and connections and social identity is so powerful it feels like gravity.
When those with the super power of unearned advantage are brave enough and empathic enough and wise enough to simply open the door, add a seat at the table, listen, and heed the voices of those "traditionally" excluded but no less able and no less worthy, the inertia of customs propelled by social bias can be resisted and counteracted.
What are you doing to leverage your status to counteract the inertia of social bias in your communities and systems? How might you make room next to you at your tables of power for someone unseen and unheard to contribute their unique and valuable gifts?
This story delights and inspires me. I hope you'll feel the same - and go open some doors and add some chairs to some tables.