Lately, I've been questioning what diversity has come to mean to us in the modern world.To me, the picture of diversity is all of the varied forms of humanity, playing together and learning from one another. Cute, huh? Yeah, it'd make a great postcard.
The reality of diversity is a bit harder to accomplish. To make a workplace SEEM diverse, so many conditions must be met! Pictures of the employees must show a variety of skin tones. A person with a disability must be included, a person from a poor family, as well as at least one person from a non-Christian religion. At least one gay or bi-sexual person must be hired, which is made more difficult by the fact that you can't ask about sexuality. An elderly person must be hired as well. (You can't ask about that either, so I guess you just look for wrinkles?)
And when we bring the diversity topic into our own lives? HOLY. FREAKING. CRAP. So complicated!!!!! I want my kids to be raised with diversity, but how the heck do you accomplish that? Everyone at my job is white. 80% of my church is white. All of my neighborhood is white. Do I just randomly make friends with people simply because of their race or religion? Do I actively seek out black friends, simply to say I have a diverse set of friends? What kind of message would that send to any kiddos I have? And what about all of the awesome white folk that I pass up on my quest for black friends?
This can't be how diversity is supposed to work!!
For me, for now, I will be and example of diversity simply by keeping my life and my blog open to everyone. I will seek to be open to friendships with whoever I meet... regardless of race, religion, economic status, and so on and so forth... But I do reserve the right to discriminate against annoying people. Even I have limits!!!!!! LOL
What does "diversity" mean to you?
1 comment:
Honestly, I don't think diversity means much as a word anymore. Everything is about tolerating everyone else because we have to be "diversity minded". But for me, I am kind to everyone, regardless of color and try to look at people the way Jesus does. He doesn't care about all that "stuff". However, that does not mean that I agree with a persons lifestyle or that I would become friends with someone who's lifestyle I could not support. If that makes me racist than so be it but that is how I feel about the issue. There's my two cents.
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