Matthew Freeman grew up in Richmond’s West End. His family moved to the white flight suburb when his father became pastor of a Henrico church in the early 1980s.
“So I grew up in that kind of suburban environment—very conservative religiously, politically. The people around me, and me myself, went to great public schools but in a very homogeneous environment,” says Freeman.
His environment, however, wasn’t completely homogeneous.
“In third grade, my next door neighbor that moved in—my new neighbors were an African American family—became my best friends growing up. And so my family certainly encouraged that kind of interpersonal, close friendship with somebody who was experiencing the world differently than I was, [and it] opened my eyes in a way that didn’t initially affect my ideology, but told me enough that these kinds of differences matter, that I was paying attention.”
It was paying attention to these differences that took him down an unlikely path.
“And that was from an evangelical fundamentalist Christian who was Republican and wrote a paper in college in my political philosophy class on how Affirmative Action was a problematic response to past discrimination to somebody who now does diversity work and is probably left of the Democratic party in my personal politics and just completely transformed how ideologically I see the world.”
Today Freeman is a diversity and inclusion specialist and cofounder of a Richmond firm called TMI Consulting. They work with employers to address discrimination in the workplace.
“What we are trying to help people see is the diversity that exists is not a problem to be managed—yes it can be challenging, but it’s actually an asset, it’s a good thing.”
The kind of knowledge that he shares with employers is also instructive for everyone. I asked Freeman how I should deal with insensitive posts on Facebook and he suggested that maybe I don’t.
“Having these kinds of dialogs on Facebook is never incredibly productive because most of us are in a defense posture. And I think the trick is: how do you convince people that they need to be in a posture of ‘can I learn from somebody else?’”
It’s a question that Freeman has thought about for a long time, and he thinks that one answer might involve changing the ways that we communicate.
“I think what needs to happen more than anything is that we need to build spaces where people can actually share their experiences rather than their ideologies, and so for me, the question of ‘Why? Why are my circumstances the way they are? Why are somebody else’s different?’ And if we can cultivate a real inquisitiveness in people about their own experiences and the other in a way that tries to get beyond a defensiveness into a real understanding—that is what’s needed.”
