Why Diversity Matters
In a room full of people, I don't count how many are such and such a race. I don't really care. I do care, though, when people come up to me and confuse me with the only other Asian girl in class, one who happens to be an international student with very little English. I don't understand. I went to a high school full of diverse students. Socioeconomically, politically, and racially. We had kids who were very well-off and we had kids who lived in houses that were falling apart. There were many second and third generation immigrants from all sorts of countries. Some spoke their home language at home and English at school, some people didn't. Their names were varied too, though I wasn't aware that some last names were connected with certain demographics until I was older. For me, this was just how the world was. I never thought much about it at the time, but many of my teachers were Caucasian males and females. Most of the kids in my classes though, were Asian, and our teachers never ever got any of us confused. Neither did they frown or make fun of our names. The school was not majority Chinese or anything, but I was in honors and AP classes, so these were the kids I mostly saw. If a Caucasian student were in our class, they were pretty damn smart to run with the wolves, but they were definitely the minority in my view. Being in a diverse setting meant that teachers could not take short-cuts and think "this is her name because she's the only black-haired kid in class." Teachers and students alike were forced to dive deeper than this low-hanging fruit.
Because the pubic school was so diverse, we were able to call bullshit on a lot of things. Take for instance some well-intentioned initiative some idiot cooked up one day to teach students of all colors that ALL Asian students had "secret" Asian names and were FORCEFULLY made to change them into western names to assimilate. Thus, as students of an enlightened generation, it was our duty to ask each Asian person we saw for their "real" name and remember to use it.
Our students called BULLSHIT. Our school was so diverse that Jane, Mary, Susan, Leah, Angela, Faith, and Rachel could all say, "Wait a minute, this is my name. Seriously, this is my name! What? You think I should be named Xing to fulfill your expectations on what constitutes a REAL Asian?" And Li, Sung, and Jumin could all say, "What do you mean our names are weird or sacred? Everyone calls me by my name and no one has a problem with it."
It is cringe worthy to imagine a person seeing someone Asian from across the room, approaching them with an air of enlightened superiority, and asking them with a compellingly compassionate face, "I shall set you free, oh non-white one, what is your REAL name?"
This is the danger of a single story. Someone made a TED talk entitled much the same thing, and they were right. A single story is dangerous. You can't assume all Asian students are smart. When I meet someone who says, "Oh, you're smart because you're Asian," I tell them "You only think Asians are smart because you never met a dumb one. Well, let me tell you, I've met some really dumb Asians. I'll introduce you sometime." This applies to all all categories of people! If you've only met one person from a certain category you keep in your mind, you're likely to believe in stereotypes or judge everyone thereafter of the same sort in much the same way. It's true of all of us. In a more diverse setting, though, this doesn't happen. In a more diverse setting, it was obvious that not all one hundred Asian students were smart, that not all black people were poor, that all white students were rich. Not just because we saw one or two counter examples, but because we were saturated in so many different existences that did not follow one pattern.
Colleges make the mistake that they can cook up diversity in some cauldron. A pinch of one race and a pinch of the other should satisfy this community! But it isn't so much the lack of diversity at my college that bothers me, so much as it is the collectivist tendencies. Almost every group is militarized in such a way as to suppress diversity of thought. Whole groups of people who look alike are encouraged to act alike least this jeopardizes their membership in that social group. Sure, our pie chart of races is somewhat lacking, but there is no denying we have a minimally decent pie. But it doesn't help. Students still confuse me with MingMing. People still think all X people are Y.
The most infuriating thing about this is that it gets covered in an avalanche of denial. Some of the most so-called "woke" classes here are some of the most racist classes I have ever attended. The kicker is that they think they are woke. We have teachers here who bitch about white males all fucking day...but have they taken a good look in the mirror lately? They make broad and lofty comments on how people should act and think, yet they are often the very ones who don't follow their own rules. I think having a Caucasian person speak down to me and ask me "How does it feel to be a minority?" with big puppy-dog eyes, trying to convey how sorry they are for my state of affairs is extremely offensive. Yet here, it is the epitome of social awareness. F youl! At my high school, you'd be the minority!
The same white teachers that complain about white people always being in charge are ironically in charge. The same white teachers who complain about white people being racist by default somehow think they are exempt from this assessment. The same white teachers who complain about white people making racial faux-pas get me confused with the only other Asian girl in class. We don't even look alike! Look, I don't really give a shit if you can't tell us apart. I do, of course, but I am much more pissed off about the hypocrisy! If I can be accused of being racist because my adoptive parents are white, then you sir, a white man, should certainly not be immune to being called racist when you literally can't tell the only two non-white students in class apart! I don't care about all this white people this and white people that nonsense. I do care about white people saying this nonsense in one breath and doing it in the next. It is the hypocrisy I don't like. That's all. If you didn't spend so much time pounding into our student brains how you're the only white person walking on water, I would have even forgiven you this. But after hours of lectures? Not a chance.
Diversity matters because being nice to non-Caucasian students would not be considered an overly generous deed. It matters because you don't have people asking stupid questions, like "Can you read this?" and the characters are Korean and I'm a Chinese adoptee and they know this but somehow can't put two and two together. It matters because people don't treat you like a tour guide for all Asian-related culture or throw anime-centric phrases at you like you're supposed to know what it means or even care. It matters because boys don't salivate over your black hair like they have a real-life Japanese sex pillow they've been dreaming about ever since watching Naruto. It matters because people don't assume my parents own EVERY Chinese, Japanese, and Korean restaurant within a block of the school! Yes, stupid people exist everywhere. I get that. But I have never experienced, in my admittedly short life, this level of ignorance and stupidity as I have now, in ironically the only place that has ever professed to being a utopia of social equality, whatever that means anymore.
Having diversity means the level of discourse is increased. People stop speaking of such and such a race as an unreachable case study, where their way of life is foreign and fascinating. How can you say with a straight face how mystical and exotic Asia is when you have a row of second-generation or higher Asian Americans sitting in the classroom? You would look like an idiot. Mystical and exotic, my ass. It cuts down on bullshit diversity initiatives that try to lump races in a box and present a single-story of a single person's feelings. Imagine being given a story about how Lingling went to school with traditional Asian food that his classmates made fun of and being told that you now must learn the names of these top Asian dishes so you can bridge the culture gap between you and your Asian fellow students. I smell bullshit. If you were in a diverse school, you'd think, uh, Jessica eats American food like everyone else, and I don't think her traditional food is weird at all. If you were in a nondiverse school with few to no Asians, the popular opinion seems to be, "Oh, those poor minorities! Hey Mingming, I would looove to try your homemade traditional food!" Bitch, my name is Jessica and I'm fucking adopted. Not my name, but you get the point. It's easy to extrapolate and romanticize what you do not know. Trying to be more "woke" not for the purposes of being more aware, but to learn the so called rules so you can terrorize others or prove your moral worth, is quite frankly disgusting and more offensive than if you were just a normal ignorant bystander. Diversity of thought would have prevented this cult of moral superiority from spreading. Diversity of the mind would have allowed people like me to escape from the rigid and all-encompassing boxes that doctrines like these are built upon.
My title might have been misleading. It may have led some to think I want more racial diversity and thus more diversity initiatives. On the contrary, I think we should leave people alone. Everyone is entitled to their own thoughts and opinions. Nothing ever justifies bullying, which is what happens nowadays in the name of justice. The hierarchies of race and gender and the whole shebang are still in place, just the narrative has changed. the words spewing from their mouths are different, but the message is the same. It is about power. In a place with more diversity, race would and could not be used as a scapegoat to justify the eradication of individual thought. Race could not be used so cheaply as a political chip to bolster people's social standing and personal egos. In a place with more diversity, in every sense of the word, people would stop trying to fix each other and instead try to fix themselves.
"Think of myself? How selfish! I'd much rather control the thoughts and actions of everyone around me!"
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