Coexistence Starts With Respect

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Coexistence is a fashion editorial that I shot for the cover of C-Femme Magazine back in 2015. The inspiration behind the shoot came from the question: how can we exist in harmony despite our different ideologies? The fashion story depicts the clash between cultures, in this case, humans vs out of space visitors, trying to find commonalities in spite of their differences. Back in July 2020, Chantal Miller and I discussed the idea of Coexistence and the steps that we need to take in order to live in peace within our communities. You can listen to the conversation on the audio version of this post or in your favourite podcast platform.

Chantal Olivia Miller is the founder of Island Girls Rock, a platform that champions women of Caribbean descent in the UK. She is also a producer/presenter (radio and podcasts), she runs digital storytelling workshops and curates exhibitions and panel discussions exploring Caribbean representation in mainstream media.

I shot this editorial at the end of 2015, a year that felt to me like the beginning of the wave of extremism that we have been living over the past few years. During 2015, Daesh radicalisation cost the lives of so many. Also, the attacks towards Turkish people in Ankara, French people with both Charlie Hebdo and the Paris attacks, and people in the US with the Charleston church and the San Bernardino shootings dominated the media.

Freddie Gray was killed in police custody in Baltimore and the case against his killers concluded with zero convictions against any officers. As if that weren’t enough, Trump entered the race for president of the US. And, to top it all, the refugee crisis of people feeling Syria sparked new waves of xenophobia that resulted in the success of movements in Europe like the Brexit campaign.

At the end of the discussion, Chantal and I agreed that the case for coexistence starts with respect. Equality doesn’t mean sameness. It means respecting our differences. We must acknowledge that we are different, but we must make the effort to find the commonalities that will bring us together as a community.

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Do We Really Want Diversity And Inclusion?

The problem with longing for a truly inclusive and diverse society is that we haven't really sat down to ponder on what that really means. For a society to be truly diverse, it must welcome and include everyone. From the ones who look and think like us, to the ones who don't. It must include what we consider good and what we consider bad and every flavour in between. It must also welcome everything that we think is beautiful and everything that we consider ugly of this world. If that is not the case, then it's not a truly diverse society. What does your version of diversity look like?

We can't fight for inclusion by excluding others. That would make us hypocrites. And, as much as this notion hurts, if when you think of a diverse and inclusive world you eliminate a group that you deem unacceptable then you are just creating another broken version of the world we already live in.

This is not to say that we should condone the behaviour of those who attempt against humanity and human rights. Those should never go unpunished. But, it is the duty of our society to establish mechanisms to guarantee that we can all coinhabit our communities in peace.

What are those mechanisms? I don't have the answer. But we have already seen a version of our society that doesn't work. Our communities have lost respect, empathy and accountability. These three elements that were ingrained in my education while I was growing up don't seem to exist anymore. Our communities are so fractured and divided that at this point we have finally achieved some shape of equality. One in which we all equally hate someone else.

We need a more permanent solution. For decades we championed tolerance and political correctness, and those who didn't agree with us were pushed to the side. Then, we started working towards a more equal and diverse world, and those who wouldn't jump on board were cast out.

Now, those who we tried to keep on the edges of society have grown stronger and they have found the leaders that they needed to reclaim their space. And they have come with a fight. We are fighting back with our flags of inclusivity and sustainability and I'm sure we will push them out again. But, for how long? Until they regroup, find new leaders and recharge their batteries? When will this end? Is there another way?

In every ecosystem, there needs to be a balance for all the species to survive. We must find that balance in our communities. That version of society might differ from the image of an ideal society that we have in our minds, but we must find a way to coexist by respecting our differences and empathising with those who don't think like us.

I'm not pretending that this will be easy nor that the perfect version of society that fits everyone's needs exists. All I know is that, whenever I hear versions of inclusive societies that don't have a space for everyone I wonder if we really want inclusion or if all we want is a version of society where everyone looks like us. That doesn't sound very diverse to me.

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On Identity: Where Am I From?

Benjamin @ 2019 JC Candanedo

Ancestry and identity are two different things. Ancestry speaks of your predecessors, of the people who mixed up to create the gene pool in you. In this sense, we are all mixed, and we are more similar to each other than some are happy to admit. But, identity speaks of your tribe, your community, your cultural heritage, and how you fit in with those you identify with. Some people have very defined identities, but for the rest of us, especially those who come from mixed ethnical backgrounds, trying to fit into one single group can often lead to an identity crisis.

Throughout my life, my identity has often been defined by how others perceived me. Growing up in Panama, most people knew that I was from European descent even if they really didn’t know where in Europe was Catalonia located. When people asked me “where are you from?” and I responded saying “I’m from here, I’m Panamanian”, people would often ask me “yeah, but where is your family really from?”.

This experience repeated itself in other parts of the world where I’ve lived. In Barcelona, I wasn’t Catalan enough. I was always deemed as Latino or sometimes southern Spanish. In New York, I was Latino and, more specifically, Mexican. For the people who I met while living in France, I was Catalan from Barcelona. While in Sydney, I was from London. And now that I live in London, the majority of people see me as Catalan even though I always say that I was born in Panama.

After the question: “Where are you from?”, there is always an internal dialogue: “Where am I from?”. When my friend Patricia told me about her son’s potential identity crisis, I couldn’t help but feel completely related to his story. Patricia and her husband are first-generation Brazilian immigrants in London, but their son Benjamin was born in the UK.

At home, they speak Portuguese, trying to keep their Brazilian culture and heritage alive. But Benjamin speaks Portuguese with a strong British accent, and when in Brazil, some of his relatives call him the “little Briton”. Patricia worries that Benjamin will never fully feel Brazilian, but, like me, it’s in his hands to define his own identity.

You can learn more about my projects and personal work on the Projects section of my website.

Photo credits: Benjamin © 2019 JC Candanedo

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When The Student Is Ready, The Teacher Will Appear

I first heard this ancient Chinese proverb about a year ago: "When The Student Is Ready, The Teacher Will Appear." I heard it from someone when we met after I offered to help them when they told me that they had been struggling with a personal project for months. That person said to me that the major challenge that they were facing was acknowledging that they needed help to develop the project. It wasn't until they realised that they needed to look for help that I appeared in their life. We now have a mentor/mentee relationship that has lasted for almost a year.

It wasn't by a miracle that we met on that day, nor crazy coincidence nor luck. I'm sure they had met many people before me who would have made excellent mentors. They just weren't ready to be helped and thus missed out on those opportunities. When they finally acknowledged that it is OK to ask for help, they seized the opportunity they saw when I offered it.

Since then, I have started mentoring both students and established professionals to help them develop their projects using my experience of 20 years working as a Project Manager in my previous industry.

At the end of last year, I joined the Beyond Barriers Mentoring Scheme from Kingston University as a student mentor. The programme was developed to achieve equality, diversity and inclusion in graduate employment and improve access and opportunity by offering support to under-represented and disadvantaged students. Who wouldn't want to be part of such a beautiful endeavour?

I've also been helping out students from the University of London who have reached out about learning what it means to have a career as a photographer.

As I've said in previous posts, our biggest challenge as a society for the new decade is bringing people together. What better way of creating connections than sharing my expertise with others. If you find yourself with some spare time in your hands, why not offer advice and support to younger generations or even peers and help them overcome their challenges.

I can assure you that you will not only learn as much from them as they will learn from you, but you will also create new connections, expand your network and contribute to making your industry and your community stronger.

Photo credit: behind the scenes shot by Tori Dance.

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The Day After

I wrote this post a couple of days ago after coming back from having lunch with friends. During the meal, one of them asked us not to talk about politics because they didn’t want to feel sad all the time and politics made them sad. This political climate has caused too much division and too much pain. We need to find a way to fix this.

Adam King, an Artificial Intelligence (AI) software engineer, came up with a tool called Talk To Transformer that generates coherent paragraphs of text one word at a time. The AI software predicts the next word in a text using neural networks to complete the text. I asked Transformer: “How can we bring people together?”, and the software generated an answer that suggested an “interracial alliance”.

We definitely need more allies, and if a piece of software can come up with that conclusion on its own, I don’t see why an intelligent species like the human beings wouldn’t be able to achieve it.

The holidays are over now, and today marks the first day of a new year, a new decade and a new challenge. In the words of Diane from Bojack Horseman: “every happy ending has the day after the happy ending”. Today is the day when we have to start bringing people together.

Photo credit: group shot of the participants of The Trampery’s Pathways Programme.

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An Experiment For The New Decade

In recent posts, I have been advocating for more inclusion and less divide and for finding commonalities with those who are different from us. This includes those with opposing points of views. Before the year ends, I propose an experiment: let's start the new decade by giving inclusion a try. Miranda Dempster, the Editorial Design Director of the New York Magazine, said in a recent interview: "Sometimes you have to try things just to prove why they are not right, but you might discover something else along the way you hadn’t anticipated." Let's keep an open and non-judgemental mind towards other people's opinions, and see where that takes us.

With this, I am not saying that we should condone abuse or hate speech in any way. But it might actually surprise us to learn that, at the core, we all want the same things no matter how different we are.

Someone who does this brilliantly is model Rain Dove. She receives so much abuse online that someone else would have ended up crawling under a rock and disappearing from the face of the planet. However, with kindness and an open mind, she takes the time to listen to her haters and has honest and open conversations with them. Most of the times, she turns haters into allies.

One thing that we must always keep in mind is that others also think that they are right. They also have evidence that we are mistaken. They might be as manipulated as we are. They believe that their point of view is what's best for the world, too. And, you know what? They might be right. Have you ever considered that you might be the one who's wrong?

This is a dilemma that's been on my mind for a few years now. And the election results in many parts of the world over the last few years have made me continuously ask myself that question. How is it possible that over the last decade, people around me are voting for governments with completely opposite views of the world to mine? Am I one of the bad guys?

I think that, just the fact that I am reassessing my views of the world and my stand on the issues that I care for makes me a good human being. A bad person wouldn't even consider that they are wrong. So, my resolution for the next decade is always to try to find common ground with people who have different points of views to mine. As Miranda Dempster said, we might both discover something new.

Happy Holidays 2019 and have a wonderful new decade!

Photo credit: behind the scenes taken by Chloe Rosser.

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