The professional and social world around diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) is becoming more challenging to navigate but local leaders encourage perseverance in the face of adversity.
The 2025 MACo Summer Conference session, “The DEI Divide: Navigating Public Service in an Increasingly Divisive World,” brought together leaders in the equity field to discuss some of the difficulties they are facing as the most recent backlash against DEI initiatives continues. This adversity is coming at a time when local governments need to be able to rely on the work of these professionals more than ever as threats on government officials and the broader community have increased.
Sheriff Everett Sesker from Anne Arundel County began this session by touching on these exact points. He shared that the prevalence of threats and hate crimes more broadly in Maryland have gone up. He said this is particularly the case for aggression focused on Latino communities, sharing that increased immigration enforcement has coincided with increases in aggression by community members. To this point, Sheriff Sesker reiterated that all individuals present in the country are afforded due process rights by the US Constitution and the activities of the Office of the Sheriff in Anne Arundel will abide by that principle in all of their actions and advocacy.
Tiffani Kenney, Chief Equity and Inclusion Officer for Frederick County walked audience members through her approach to calming tensions amongst coworkers to try and bridge ideological gaps within the county workforce. Some of the highlights of their strategies focus heavily on giving people the benefit of the doubt, particularly if an individual’s actions harmed someone but that was not the intent. The process of starting from an optimistic perspective invites the individual responsible for the harmful actions, into the conversation in a more accessible way. From this ground, Officer Kenney said growth can begin, along with learning and trust.
Another local representative spoke about their experience working with the county government to proactively assess the climate of diversity and inclusion in the wider community. Former President of Garrett County Community Action, Duane Yoder, shared his feedback from his time as the Chair of the Diversity and Inclusion Advisory Committee on behalf of the county commissioners. In this role he was tasked with conducting a survey to get a sense of how inclusive residents believe the community in Garrett County to be. The commission then made recommendations to the county commissioners based on the feedback. After an overwhelming community response to the survey the process lead to the adoption of five of the seven suggestions by the committee to make the community more inclusive.
Lastly, the session closed out with remarks from Cleveland Horton, the Executive Director of the Maryland Civil Rights Commission, noting a number of areas where civil and human rights are still being challenged in everyday circumstances. Housing, employment, and education are three primary areas still seeing discriminatory practices. In housing in particular he cited source of income discrimination rising sharply in housing as well as racial bias in housing appraisals and lending. The focus of the commission in addressing these challenges is collaboration and leveraging technology in order to expand oversight.
Speakers:
- Everett Sesker, Sheriff, Anne Arundel County, Member of Maryland Commission on Hate Crime Response and Prevention
- Tiffani Kenney, Chief Equity and Inclusion Officer, Frederick County
- Duane Yoder, Former President, Garrett County Community Action
- Cleveland L Horton II – Executive Director, Maryland Commission on Civil Rights
Moderator: The Honorable Sheree Sample-Hughes, MD House of Delegates
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