Diversity?

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?

Kidz and Racism

So I went on a quest for info online about how to teach children about race. I probably should have searched differently, but I did find three really good sites. (along with more not-so-good sites)

Talking to Your Kids About Racism - Advice for all ages but mainly middle school and high school ages.

A Lesson In Color - What to do when your child announces "I don't like black people."

Raising Kids without Bias - I really like this one... it has good practical advice.

So what did I learn from all of these? Each approach was different... some parents made "diversity" a very high priority, making sure they had plenty of friends of other races around, putting their kids in "diverse" preschools, and teaching them at insanely young ages about slavery and such. Others lived their normal lives, and crossed the "race" bridge when they got to it, with love and respect for all cultures.

I learned that all kids, at some point, notice race and comment on it. That does not make you a racist, it just means your kids are observant.

I also learned that each family's approach to the issue of race will be different. As long as you are open to talking to your kids about it, and non-judgemental about the things they say, (not flipping out because they say "I don't like brown people", but instead discussing it to find out why and address it, etc.), and such... life will be good. Your kids won't require gnormous amount of therapy, (from that, at least lol) and will grow up to be happy healthy tolerant kiddos.

What do YOU think? If you have kids, how did you teach them about race? If you don't, how would you teach them?