Value of Diversity

I was reading a post on Anti-Racist Parent written by an adoptive parent who needed advice about choosing the right school for her Ethiopian-born daughter. Her dilemma was whether or not to put her 4 year-old in a school where more people looked like her or to seek out a more diverse environment.

I have to admit that a school’s diversity has always been in afterthought in where I choose to put my children. I first want to make sure that they are in an environment where they can thrive socially, emotionally and cognitively because I think at that age culture is very abstract and therefore not a priority. After reading how much thought this parent was putting into this, as well as some of the answers, I started to think maybe I was overlooking something.

In the book Inheriting the City, the author mentions that immigrants have the tendency to want cultural awareness for their children, but will place them in culturally non-diverse school because they are often seen as “the best”. While this can sound elitist, I can’t blame parents for trying to offer their children the best chances to succeed academically.

For me, by virtue of looking for the qualities above, I found that schools became less and less diverse – this may only happen in urban areas. Now, was I supposed to forego quality programs and look for others that had more of a mix? That sounds wrong to me, but let me know your thoughts.

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Beauty in Our Eyes

Although I am known to point out the many differences between immigrants of African descent and African-Americans, I know that there are also many similarities that link the two groups; most good and some not so good.

One of which is the prejudice between light and darker blacks that has created distorted image perceptions and class divisions among black people around the world. Recently, I was reading about Chris Rock’s new documentary Good Hair that premiered at the Sundance Festival this month. The title alone made me cringe. I immediately thought of using that phrase as a child, both in English and Haitian Creole, to describe hair on a black person that more closely resembled that of a Caucasian.

Somehow, somewhere along the way (I say that facetiously), we adopted that notion that anything resembling Caucasians was good and passed on this incorrect notion from generation to generation. I wrote a paper about this in college and was actually surprised to learn that it wasn’t restricted to black cultures; Asians and Latin Americans share this distortion of self-image, as well.

In any case, it is very difficult in this society to teach minority children about positive self-image, but I think it’s crucial in order to change what I think is culturally destructive. I had to consciously work to change my knee-jerk reactions to seeing people like Alek Wek or Susan Taylor and start seeing beauty differently.

What are your thoughts about this issue? How would you start changing the perception of beauty for the younger generations? 

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Things I wish I’d known…

I am an avid reader of a website called Anti-Racist Parent and a while ago there was an article published providing tips for a student of color while attending a university that is not ethnically diverse. There a many great tips and I’ll let you read the article for yourself, but I wanted to talk about two of them which I wish I was given as far back as high school.

 

You can speak any language you damn well please, any time you please.

 

Wow! This statement is powerful in many ways. Simple and straightforward. Growing up, I was actually ashamed that I spoke another language. For the longest time, I would only answer my family members in English, just in case a friend heard. At that time, it was very uncool to be bilingual. I think many immigrants still hesitate to speak their native tongue when they think someone who cannot understand is in earshot. I have come across many Haitians who simply refuse to speak Haitian Creole; even when they know the Haitian they are speaking to cannot understand English.

 

You are not the spokesperson for your ethnicity.

This one I am ambivalent about. I agree that no one person can fully represent an entire culture and this is simply leads to stereotypes. But, I have heard (more times than I care to count) that I don’t look, talk, or seem like a Haitian. This leads me to believe that there is a misconception that Haitians look, talk or seem a certain way – all of them. So, I don’t know if it’s good that I sometimes felt that I could help eliminate those stereotypes by representing all Haitians, or if those people were going to stay ignorant regardless. In any case, I think it pushed me to set my goals and standards a little higher, which can’t hurt, right?

 

So, please share your thoughts on this article. Do they make you wish there was a handbook for minority students or do you think these issues are non-existent?

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