For your professional ethics edification in January

Once a month the ACPE Professional Ethics Commission (PEC) posts a couple of statements from our Code of Professional Ethics for ACPE Members. Each posting is accompanied by a brief personal reflection from a member of the PEC discussing some ways this person lives these commitments.*

Code of Professional Ethics for ACPE Members

1. In relationship to those served, ACPE members:
   a.  Affirm and respect the human dignity and individual worth of each person.
   b. Do not discriminate against anyone because of race, gender, gender identity, gender expression, age, religious/spiritual tradition, national origin, sexual orientation, or disability.
   

Rabbi Michael Tevya Cohen, ACPE Educator with Legacy Senior Communities in Dallas, TX, comments:

Section one of the ACPE Code of Ethics issues a pivotal challenge to each Educator and Member of our association to deepen our understanding and efforts to affirm and respect each other, and to “not discriminate against anyone”. There was a time not long ago that we could read the language “not discriminate” and tell ourselves that by avoiding explicit or implicit differences in the way we respond to and treat each other, we were living up to this standard. But in our current age of growing awareness, many of us have begun to realize that the ingrained assumptions by which we operate may keep us from recognizing the many ways in which we may still harbor and operate from implicit bias. Our recognition may come slowly, but those on the receiving end of our behaviors often have some important feedback to us that we need to digest.

One example in our choice of speech can be to realize that the other to whom we speak may infer meaning that is not in our conscious mind at all, when we speak not simply racially charged words, but offer words that could possibly suggest an association or image that our interlocuter may hear as a trope or stereotype against their demographic identity. For instance, does my suggestion that “you don’t understand me” bring up the idea that I’m talking down to you - not just as a human being, but as someone who is not a White male ? We can at least realize and own that someone may hear us that way, even if we didn’t mean it that way.

Another example of a different sort is that someone who is not of the majority faith may wish an opportunity to share and teach among faculty something from their own tradition. Sometimes this offer is not received - on account that ‘then this will require equal time for the majority faith tradition(s) to share’.  That response can be true, but can simultaneously function to marginalize the minority’s opportunity to share. Respect means more than tolerance.  Equal participation that is not minimized or discriminated against, means giving access to not only hear, but be a voice shared at the table whose riches from his or her tradition are welcomed and considered.

These two examples are needles in the proverbial haystack of unconscious discrimination with which we human beings must wrestle to begin to live up to the challenge of section one.

*Every situation is unique, and any member should not act based solely on the comments in the article but to base action on an independent review of the ethical standards applicable to his/her situation.