Welcome to Lansdale. (Credit: Wikimedia Commons)
As a diverse community, Lansdale has thrived through our ability to discover the value in our differences.
I have spent most of this week trying to find the proper words for this article and trying to decide how to best address the reality of a week where diversity, and the value it brings to our companies, organizations, and communities, has been routinely pointed to as reason we are, somehow, not as great as we used to be.
A plane and helicopter collide in the sky, diverse initiatives are to blame. Schools are not performing the way we want them to, it must be related to diverse curriculum. Federal offices aren’t doing what we want, it must be due to DEI efforts, and we should limit federal funds and contracts to anyone who continues to have DEI policies. Meanwhile, locally, we have an elected official mimicking a questionable hand gesture, one that, historically, has been used to suppress people of diverse backgrounds, because she “thought it would be funny”.
These initiatives, ideas, and responses are unhinged from reality. Full stop.
There are real challenges in our community and in our nation and none of them have anything to do with diversity. We have roads that really need to be paved, an electrical grid that really needs improvement and redevelopment, energy needs that must be met by cleaner, local sources of fuel, downtown areas that need to be redeveloped and reinvested, and school systems that need better funding to ensure our kids have a better future than we have today.
All critical to our improvement and long-term success as a community; none of which has anything to do with our diversity or any DEI policy.
This is not to say that DEI policies do not have limitations and failings. They do. All policies do. Ask any person who has worked in a corporate setting, and they will be able to identify at least one instance of a DEI policy going too far or being applied inappropriately. It does happen. But these instances are not keeping us from fixing roads or causing planes to collide with helicopters. They are errors in need of correction, not the root of all evil.
As a diverse community, Lansdale has thrived through our ability to discover the value in our differences. We understand that our ability to see things from varying perspectives, ones that you may not have considered or even thought of because you simply didn’t have that experience, makes our decisions better and, over time, more impactful.
As your Mayor I am going to continue to fight for the things that will make Lansdale a better place to live, work, and play. I am going to be focused on paving our roadways, rebuilding our electrical infrastructure, investing in our police, and implementing policies that truly improve our downtown areas. All the while, I will continue to believe that our diversity makes us great and that we don’t need to look to the past to find our greatness. Our greatness exists within all of us and is expressed through the impact we can have on our community when we work together.
Lansdale proves, every day, that a place can be proud of its diversity and be great. They are not exclusive to one another. Embracing diversity, lifting it up, and finding value in our differences is how you discover, and maintain, greatness. We will continue to show that no one has to be pushed down, left behind, or forgotten, for anyone to be lifted up. We pull together so we can move forward together.
(Mayoral Musings is a weekly op-ed column submitted to North Penn Now, courtesy of Lansdale Borough Mayor Garry Herbert. The views expressed are his own and are not representative of North Penn Now or Lansdale Borough.)
