Diversity, the Power of the Collective

I woke up this morning with a thought on my mind, the misunderstood, the misinterpretation and the misuse of the word “diversity.” It appears that many people think of diversity as a threat, a challenge that must be delt with head-on, something that must be overcome, controlled.

I remember, quite painfully, growing up with “standardize” testing as the way teachers measured academic success and ones’ potential. As you can assume, I never performed up to my potential on these forms of assessments. I always panicked about the time constraints, the fact that students who were comfortable in these settings always outperformed me, even intimidated me.

I also vividly remember visiting China on more than one occasion and became emersed into a society where people all appeared to dress the same, seemly act the same as if they were all trying to assimilate into one collective. Being an American, Black, gay, and wanting to share my uniqueness, seemed not appropriate, discouraged, out of place, even feared. This did not appear to be a very open and expressively free environment. In fact, on one of these occasions, I was traveling with the head of the university where I worked and overheard the President of the Chinese institution, we were visiting ask my university President whether she was concerned about the freedom given to her art students, whether she had reviewed and edited the student art we had brought with us to share in a joint exhibition. She responded quickly and said no we encourage different forms of expression, diverse points of view through the arts. That is our strength.

I learned over my years of teaching thousands of students, working with thousands of artists, that “one size” does not fit all. I came to recognize individuality of expression, thought, beliefs, talents, and ideals as a strength, not a weakness. I came to understand that our collective strength in society comes, in large part, from our differences, not just our similarities.  When everyone brings something different to the table, we are all stronger, even unbeatable.

Sure, we can disagree, have difference of opinions, unique voices and grow stronger from those differences, from those individual differences of approaches. It is the diversity of thought, choices and behaviors that make the world exciting, an often unexpectedly enticing place of learning. Each day I arise, I know that throughout those daily experiences I might grow just a little more because of the differences we all share, the diversity I might experience, the new aspects of life and living from which I might learn. This should be our collective objective, embracing diversity and growing from our differences. I encourage everyone to think of diversity as a positive aspect of our lives, respect it, and learn from it. This approach will make our world a wonderful place to learn from each other, grow stronger because of our collective wisdom, and  experience limitless enjoyment.