Growing up in Northern Virginia, I enjoyed a comfortable, happy upbringing. I can’t say that it gave me a true understanding of or active appreciation for those who didn’t look, worship or live the way we did. The discussion simply wasn’t had.
I was an adult before I fully understood the systemic illness inflicted upon a community when hatred is, in fact, taught and practiced straight out. I grew to understand that no matter how I was raised, it did not represent the full richness and more practical benefits of seeking a diverse circle in which to live my life.
I was enjoying success in my career when, for the first time, I became aware that most of the people around me looked like me and came from similar backgrounds. Yes, I understood that just a short time before then, our country had survived some serious growing pains during the Civil Rights movement. While I felt it made our country truer to its goals, I knew there were plenty of people who didn’t understand it that way. I also knew enough to know that my northern Virginia upbringing, near Quantico in a military town, was not a southern Virginia upbringing. But knowing and caring are two distinctly different human abilities. It now mattered to me and I realized I could do something about it in the way I did business and conducted my personal life.
When I arrived in Atlanta six years ago to lead Wells Fargo’s business here, there was nothing new or radical about that kind of caring. We understand that inclusion must be deliberate, executed on over time. Diversity is no more than a theory until you weave it into the fabric of decisions made at every level. It is a muscle that we strengthen on purpose, not for the sake of theory but because better results happen when more people are prepared to be good stewards of their financial futures, and more people work for us who express every aspect of this beautiful city we call home.
There’s nothing wrong with the childhood I had or the fact that I am a white man. Every experience is valid and valuable. That’s not the point of a discussion about prejudice, exclusion, and the learned behavior of hatred. The National Center for Civil Rights is getting to the point in a most profound way by teaching every day the lesson I didn’t learn until I was already an adult. Can you imagine the world we will live in when every child, from every walk of life, grows up already knowing – really knowing – that the human rights of every individual person matter equally? I am so proud to support the Center’s work to teach us all, if only we would learn, that exclusion and divisiveness are impulses we must fight, on purpose.
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