{"id":4666,"date":"2021-09-29T17:18:05","date_gmt":"2021-09-29T21:18:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thediversitymovement.com\/?p=4666"},"modified":"2023-12-12T14:35:17","modified_gmt":"2023-12-12T19:35:17","slug":"3-journey-allyship-overcome-bias-bigotry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thediversitymovement.com\/3-journey-allyship-overcome-bias-bigotry\/","title":{"rendered":"Guest Blog: (Part 3) Journey to Allyship: How Life Experiences Helped Me Overcome Bias and Bigotry"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><button id=\"listenButton1\" class=\"responsivevoice-button\" type=\"button\" value=\"Play\" title=\"ResponsiveVoice Tap to Start\/Stop Speech\"><span>&#128266; Listen to this article<\/span><\/button>\n        <script>\n            listenButton1.onclick = function(){\n                if(responsiveVoice.isPlaying()){\n                    responsiveVoice.cancel();\n                }else{\n                    responsiveVoice.speak(\"This is the third part in a 3-part blog series. Read the first and second part. Fresh from flunking out of college in the summer of 1992, I punched my ticket out of Mississippi as my family relocated to the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina from my hometown of Jackson. The people and places of the Magnolia State had shaped me into the not-quite-yet mature man I had become by age 20. These people and places had brought out some of my worst instincts, but just before I left, they were also giving me hope that we could all be better to each other.\u00a0 I left Mississippi with a lot of guilt over my self-destructive tendencies (see: flunking out of college, losing full academic scholarship). I was finding that I just didn\u2019t like myself very much. This wilderness period I\u2019d entered into was a time to wipe the slate clean: a time to figure out how to be the person that I wanted to be, not someone who conformed to others\u2019 expectations or pre-set narratives for White boys who finished at the top of their high school classes.\u00a0 I needed to figure out what my life would become, on my own terms, without destroying myself. So, I found myself living just south of Asheville, North Carolina, nearly 600 miles from the safety and structure of the only home I\u2019d ever known. Asheville was certainly an anomaly in Southern culture, at that time and still today. Shortly after we arrived, someone shared with me that Asheville, like San Francisco, Atlanta, and other communities around the country, was a haven for the gay community. While I was beginning to unravel my deep-seated racism and arrive at a more compassionate place in that regard, my homophobia was still unabated. Where I came from, and at that time, the closet was a place not just for individuals but for an entire community. I didn\u2019t grow up in a rural nook, by the way, but a capital city with more than 200,000 residents.\u00a0 Yet, the only openly-gay person I knew of was longtime gay rights activist Eddie Sandifer. We all surely had LGBTQ+ people in our lives, but our across-the-street neighbor was referred to as \u201ceffeminate,\u201d while others were simply regarded as something akin to asexual. After all, in order for the \u201ccommunity closet\u201d concept to work, you can\u2019t simply let people live without labels or speculation about their sexual orientation.\u00a0 Asheville was certainly different. Almost immediately upon landing in this foreign place, still tucked into the southeastern United States, I observed, met, and became friends with men and women who were living \u201cout\u201d lives and had come to Asheville to do precisely that.\u00a0 I soon became aware of and frequented many gay-owned businesses. I had gone from a place that, like most, had a closet large enough to fit most of its LGBTQ+ population and landed in a place that was letting its rainbow flag fly. There were gay-owned bars, clubs, coffee shops, restaurants, bookstores, retail boutiques, law firms, art galleries, and more. Turns out, my anecdotal perceptions were real; the next census after my arrival showed that Asheville had 83 percent more LGBT-identified people than the typical American city or town.\u00a0 While I was open-minded enough to enjoy all of the commercial and cultural amenities provided by Asheville\u2019s openly-gay community, I still operated with quite a bit of fear as an individual. But, much as Mary and Paul had started me on a journey of racial awakening, a coworker named Stephen, the first of many LBGTQ+ colleagues I would have in my now-long career, helped me to navigate my homophobia as a 20-year-old. Stephen and I were among the first crew hired to open a brand-new location for one of the South\u2019s top department stores, Dillard\u2019s, at the Biltmore Square Mall location. On a personal level, Stephen was the first friend I\u2019d had who openly spoke about a same-sex relationship. He even referred to Michael as his husband, not the more commonly heard, at the time, \u201croommate\u201d or \u201cpartner.\u201d I was intrigued that, despite all stereotypes I had ascribed to at this point in my life, Stephen lived in a monogamous relationship with his husband in a rural retreat they had purchased on the outskirts of town after arriving from New York City. Stephen wasn\u2019t fabulous by any stretch -- his life was quite boring, and to my understanding at the time, just \u201cnormal.\u201d After the blur of the grand opening, the first days of working in a brand-new department store are long and tedious. Stephen and I kept busy and passed the time more quickly by attending to the merchandising of apparel and shoes in the men\u2019s department, rather than leaning against the clothing racks and shooting the breeze all day. As we went about our work, we\u2019d talk about our aspirations, as no one actually liked working at the store. I had very few aspirations of my own, but Stephen aspired to commercial success as an artist. He shared with me many times about his fascination with light, and how his current work focused on creating ceramic lamps that projected light in many different patterns. He called them egg lamps, and he crafted these oval lights in sizes ranging from several inches to several feet tall. His home, he said, was covered in them, often to Michael\u2019s displeasure. One day, as we were having the latest iteration of this conversation, he insisted that I come to their home and see the lamps for myself.\u00a0 My thoughts immediately went from lamps to a jumble of notions and emotions. Could I really do that? Just go to a gay couple\u2019s home? Would they try to kiss me or have sex with me? The mind moves to some pretty irrational spaces when confronted with new information sometimes, and mine is no exception, it seems. Yet, I agreed to head over to Stephen and Michael\u2019s getaway in rural Bat Cave, North Carolina to check out Stephen\u2019s egg lamps on a Sunday afternoon when we were both off work. I drove very slowly to their house, and about every 45 seconds,\u00a0 I thought about turning around and making up an excuse for why I never arrived. Eventually, I pulled in their driveway though hoping that I wasn\u2019t visibly shaking as I walked in. Within a minute or two, I felt silly and embarrassed of those feelings. Stephen and Michael welcomed me as anyone else would welcome a friend into their home, and to this day, it\u2019s one of the more visually-interesting homes I\u2019ve ever seen.\u00a0 Stephen had undersold how imaginative his lamps were. Perhaps he was being humble, or perhaps he didn\u2019t understand how special his understanding of light really was. Regardless, he was gone a month later, hired away by a home decor company in New York. He\u2019d punched a ticket of his own, from the doldrums of retail to the life of a Big Apple designer.\u00a0 All told, Stephen was in my life for about two months in total. Looking back, it\u2019s amazing the impact he had on me, first in the friendship we formed, and of course through the simple invitation to share a Sunday afternoon at his home.\u00a0\u00a0 Awakening is often about exposure to light, both in the figurative and literal sense. In this more figurative sense, Stephen shed light first on my heart, newly-opened to different experiences, and then on my fears, still very deep-seated and real. This wouldn\u2019t be the last time I had to face up to fear and welcome new people into my life, but it got easier from here on out.\u00a0 Thank you, Stephen. And Michael, too. I hope you\u2019re somewhere, alive and well, being boring and \u201cnormal,\u201d now that I understand how virtually none of us qualify with regard to that second adjective.\u00a0 Brian Castle is the Founder & CEO of Parklife Communications, a full-service content shop serving small and mid-sized companies and larger agencies with a digital marketing focus. Brian is passionate about collaborating with executives and entrepreneurs to help tell their stories to effect positive change.\", \"US English Male\");\n                }\n            };\n        <\/script>\n     <\/br><br \/>\n<em>This is the third part in a 3-part blog series. Read the <a href=\"https:\/\/thediversitymovement.com\/journey-to-allyship-part-1\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">first<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/thediversitymovement.com\/journey-to-allyship-overcome-bias-bigotry\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">second<\/a> part.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Fresh from flunking out of college in the summer of 1992, I punched my ticket out of Mississippi as my family relocated to the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina from my hometown of Jackson. The people and places of the Magnolia State had shaped me into the not-quite-yet mature man I had become by age 20. These people and places had brought out some of my worst instincts, but just before I left, they were also giving me hope that we could all be better to each other.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I left Mississippi with a lot of guilt over my self-destructive tendencies (see: flunking out of college, losing full academic scholarship). I was finding that I just didn\u2019t like myself very much. This wilderness period I\u2019d entered into was a time to wipe the slate clean: a time to figure out how to be the person that I wanted to be, not someone who conformed to others\u2019 expectations or pre-set narratives for White boys who finished at the top of their high school classes.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/thediversitymovement.com\/library\/%20\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-8878 size-large lazyload\" data-src=\"https:\/\/thediversitymovement.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/NEW-TDM-Library-Display-Ad_Large-C-1024x341.png\" alt=\"TDM Library: your one-stop-shop for update, expert DEI Resources. Explore the platform with a free trial. Click here to learn more.\" width=\"1024\" height=\"341\" data-srcset=\"https:\/\/thediversitymovement.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/NEW-TDM-Library-Display-Ad_Large-C-1024x341.png 1024w, https:\/\/thediversitymovement.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/NEW-TDM-Library-Display-Ad_Large-C-600x200.png 600w, https:\/\/thediversitymovement.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/NEW-TDM-Library-Display-Ad_Large-C-300x100.png 300w, https:\/\/thediversitymovement.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/NEW-TDM-Library-Display-Ad_Large-C-768x256.png 768w, https:\/\/thediversitymovement.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/NEW-TDM-Library-Display-Ad_Large-C.png 1200w\" data-sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" src=\"data:image\/svg+xml;base64,PHN2ZyB3aWR0aD0iMSIgaGVpZ2h0PSIxIiB4bWxucz0iaHR0cDovL3d3dy53My5vcmcvMjAwMC9zdmciPjwvc3ZnPg==\" style=\"--smush-placeholder-width: 1024px; --smush-placeholder-aspect-ratio: 1024\/341;\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I needed to figure out what my life would become, on my own terms, without destroying myself.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So, I found myself living just south of Asheville, North Carolina, nearly 600 miles from the safety and structure of the only home I\u2019d ever known. Asheville was certainly an anomaly in Southern culture, at that time and still today. Shortly after we arrived, someone shared with me that Asheville, like San Francisco, Atlanta, and other communities around the country, was a haven for the gay community.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">While I was beginning to unravel my deep-seated racism and arrive at a more compassionate place in that regard, my homophobia was still unabated. Where I came from, and at that time, the closet was a place not just for individuals but for an entire community. I didn\u2019t grow up in a rural nook, by the way, but a capital city with more than 200,000 residents.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yet, the only openly-gay person I knew of was longtime <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.jacksonfreepress.com\/news\/2009\/jan\/07\/eddie-sandifer\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">gay rights activist Eddie Sandifer<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. We all surely had LGBTQ+ people in our lives, but our across-the-street neighbor was referred to as \u201ceffeminate,\u201d while others were simply regarded as something akin to asexual. After all, in order for the \u201ccommunity closet\u201d concept to work, you can\u2019t simply let people live without labels or speculation about their sexual orientation.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Asheville was certainly different. Almost immediately upon landing in this foreign place, still tucked into the southeastern United States, I observed, met, and became friends with men and women who were living \u201cout\u201d lives and had come to Asheville to do precisely that.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I soon became aware of and frequented many gay-owned businesses. I had gone from a place that, like most, had a closet large enough to fit most of its LGBTQ+ population and landed in a place that was letting its rainbow flag fly. There were gay-owned bars, clubs, coffee shops, restaurants, bookstores, retail boutiques, law firms, art galleries, and more. Turns out, my anecdotal perceptions were real; the next census after my arrival showed that Asheville had <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazingasheville.net\/lgbt-asheville.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">83 percent more LGBT-identified people than the typical American city or town<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">While I was open-minded enough to enjoy all of the commercial and cultural amenities provided by Asheville\u2019s openly-gay community, I still operated with quite a bit of fear as an individual. But, much as Mary and Paul had started me on a journey of racial awakening, a coworker named Stephen, the first of many LBGTQ+ colleagues I would have in my now-long career, helped me to navigate my homophobia as a 20-year-old.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Stephen and I were among the first crew hired to open a brand-new location for one of the South\u2019s top department stores, Dillard\u2019s, at the Biltmore Square Mall location. On a personal level, Stephen was the first friend I\u2019d had who openly spoke about a same-sex relationship. He even referred to Michael as his husband, not the more commonly heard, at the time, \u201croommate\u201d or \u201cpartner.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I was intrigued that, despite all stereotypes I had ascribed to at this point in my life, Stephen lived in a monogamous relationship with his husband in a rural retreat they had purchased on the outskirts of town after arriving from New York City. Stephen wasn\u2019t fabulous by any stretch &#8212; his life was quite boring, and to my understanding at the time, just \u201cnormal.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">After the blur of the grand opening, the first days of working in a brand-new department store are long and tedious. Stephen and I kept busy and passed the time more quickly by attending to the merchandising of apparel and shoes in the men\u2019s department, rather than leaning against the clothing racks and shooting the breeze all day. As we went about our work, we\u2019d talk about our aspirations, as no one actually liked working at the store. I had very few aspirations of my own, but Stephen aspired to commercial success as an artist.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">He shared with me many times about his fascination with light, and how his current work focused on creating ceramic lamps that projected light in many different patterns. He called them egg lamps, and he crafted these oval lights in sizes ranging from several inches to several feet tall. His home, he said, was covered in them, often to Michael\u2019s displeasure.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">One day, as we were having the latest iteration of this conversation, he insisted that I come to their home and see the lamps for myself.\u00a0 My thoughts immediately went from lamps to a jumble of notions and emotions. Could I really do that? Just go to a gay couple\u2019s home? Would they try to kiss me or have sex with me? The mind moves to some pretty irrational spaces when confronted with new information sometimes, and mine is no exception, it seems.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yet, I agreed to head over to Stephen and Michael\u2019s getaway in rural Bat Cave, North Carolina to check out Stephen\u2019s egg lamps on a Sunday afternoon when we were both off work. I drove very slowly to their house, and about every 45 seconds,\u00a0 I thought about turning around and making up an excuse for why I never arrived. Eventually, I pulled in their driveway though hoping that I wasn\u2019t visibly shaking as I walked in.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Within a minute or two, I felt silly and embarrassed of those feelings. Stephen and Michael welcomed me as anyone else would welcome a friend into their home, and to this day, it\u2019s one of the more visually-interesting homes I\u2019ve ever seen.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Stephen had undersold how imaginative his lamps were. Perhaps he was being humble, or perhaps he didn\u2019t understand how special his understanding of light really was. Regardless, he was gone a month later, hired away by a home decor company in New York. He\u2019d punched a ticket of his own, from the doldrums of retail to the life of a Big Apple designer.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">All told, Stephen was in my life for about two months in total. Looking back, it\u2019s amazing the impact he had on me, first in the friendship we formed, and of course through the simple invitation to share a Sunday afternoon at his home.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Awakening is often about exposure to light, both in the figurative and literal sense. In this more figurative sense, Stephen shed light first on my heart, newly-opened to different experiences, and then on my fears, still very deep-seated and real. This wouldn\u2019t be the last time I had to face up to fear and welcome new people into my life, but it got easier from here on out.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Thank you, Stephen. And Michael, too. I hope you\u2019re somewhere, alive and well, being boring and \u201cnormal,\u201d now that I understand how virtually none of us qualify with regard to that second adjective.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/thediversitymovement.com\/library\/%20\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-8045 lazyload\" data-src=\"https:\/\/thediversitymovement.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/TDM-Library-Footer-Ad-C-1024x85.png\" alt=\"Display ad for TDM Library. Text says &quot;Find more content like this in TDM Library. Start my free trial&quot;\" width=\"1024\" height=\"85\" data-srcset=\"https:\/\/thediversitymovement.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/TDM-Library-Footer-Ad-C-1024x85.png 1024w, https:\/\/thediversitymovement.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/TDM-Library-Footer-Ad-C-600x50.png 600w, https:\/\/thediversitymovement.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/TDM-Library-Footer-Ad-C-300x25.png 300w, https:\/\/thediversitymovement.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/TDM-Library-Footer-Ad-C-768x64.png 768w, https:\/\/thediversitymovement.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/TDM-Library-Footer-Ad-C.png 1200w\" data-sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" src=\"data:image\/svg+xml;base64,PHN2ZyB3aWR0aD0iMSIgaGVpZ2h0PSIxIiB4bWxucz0iaHR0cDovL3d3dy53My5vcmcvMjAwMC9zdmciPjwvc3ZnPg==\" style=\"--smush-placeholder-width: 1024px; --smush-placeholder-aspect-ratio: 1024\/85;\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<div class=\"panel panel-basic-text\">\n<div class=\"container container--xs\">\n<div class=\"panel panel-basic-text\">\n<div class=\"container container--xs\">\n<p><em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/brianrcastle\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Brian Castle<\/a> is the Founder &amp; CEO of Parklife Communications, a full-service content shop serving small and mid-sized companies and larger agencies with a digital marketing focus. Brian is passionate about collaborating with executives and entrepreneurs to help tell their stories to effect positive change.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is the third part in a 3-part blog series. Read the first and second part. Fresh from flunking out of college in the summer of 1992, I punched my15<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4672,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[73,69,79],"tdm_type":[92],"class_list":["post-4666","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blogs","tag-allyship","tag-bias","tag-personal-stories","tdm_type-articles"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v25.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Guest Blog: (Part 3) Journey to Allyship: How Life Experiences Helped Me Overcome Bias and Bigotry - The Diversity Movement<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In the third part of this 3-part blog series, Brian Castle shares personal stories that contributed to his diversity education, helping him become an ally.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/live-diversitymovement.pantheonsite.io\/3-journey-allyship-overcome-bias-bigotry\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Guest Blog: (Part 3) Journey to Allyship: How Life Experiences Helped Me Overcome Bias and Bigotry - The Diversity Movement\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In the third part of this 3-part blog series, Brian Castle shares personal stories that contributed to his diversity education, helping him become an ally.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"http:\/\/live-diversitymovement.pantheonsite.io\/3-journey-allyship-overcome-bias-bigotry\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Diversity Movement\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" 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