The “D” Word
Diversity. I hope I have not turned you off? Stay a while, I promise it won't be so bad.
I have noticed that this is one of the least popular words in the English language. Some of the words that come to my mind when I think about diversity are difference, variety, wealth, maybe even possibility. But in today's culture, diversity has come to earn a bad rap, inducing palpitations, high blood pressure and even frigidity in some.
A recent experience in an academic institution has given me a lot of perspective on what my place, as a foreign born Indian-American, is in the diversity debate. Ultimately, the most important lesson I have learned from those several months of emotionally charged and intellectually demanding dialogues is that the issue of diversity is really a matter of the heart. And matters of the heart must be tended to delicately and compassionately.
I have positioned myself as a minority in this country based on my many experiences here. In my heart, I belong with people of color. However, our struggles are not the same. I had to learn this from trusted friends. When I was in middle or high school, I was one of few students of color. Minority meant something else. But when I got to graduate school the landscape changed. In a way I was not a minority. I was privileged in a way I had not known before.
My family is considered middle-class and all of us have gone to college. Some of my friends in my department are the first to go to grad school in their families. I have been given a lot in my life and I am grateful but I have also taken it for granted. So my dear friends have been mirrors, reflecting back what I have not been able to see very clearly; class alters the diversity discussion fundamentally.
While all of us held hands and demanded that diversity be more than an afterthought in our departments, I have learned as a privileged immigrant I play a different role in diversity discussions than my friends who are Black, Samoan, Native American and Mexican. While foreign scholars add a unique richness to our academic institutions, it is not enough to count immigrants from countries like China and India and claim that the diversity goal has been accomplished. I see so many academic departments bring in foreign nationals in as a way to address the diversity issue. But what about those scholars in our own backyard?
Yes, regardless of certain privileges, I am still a minority in this country and I face my own struggles. I am frisked at the airports, I have been spit on after 9/11 and I have been called a Gandhi B**** after a piano concert. Immigrants also face a different type of racism--the legal status kind. So in a time when the strategy du jour is divide an conquer how can we of diverse minority statuses come together, honor our differences, and work toward a common dream of creating a world where our children can truly be different and also be okay?