I, along with the rest of LC 5, attended the workshop called “Baruch Debates Diversity,” since Professor Saint made it mandatory. It seemed like it will be an interesting event, because the posters that said something like “Diversity, so what?” caught my attention even as I rushed to class to avoid being late.
However, the discussion did not turn out as I expected. The guest speaker, Professor Olufemi O. Vaughan, delivered a speech that was approximately 45 minutes long, but I couldn’t really relate to most of things he discussed. I tried hard to continue to listen in case anything good came up, but gradually he lost my attention. Many others, including some faculty members, looked noticeably bored. “So what?” – that was my reaction to Professor Vaughan’s speech.
Holdyn Brand, one of the panelists, brought up a good point. He said that there is no diversity outside of classrooms; he only sees groups of people separated by race. What will going to a diverse school like Baruch if we’re only statistically diverse? That is an issue that can definitely use some improvement, but it’s not easy to break out of your circle, to be honest. Let’s drop the different races for just a moment. Even though most of my conversations with friends are in English, it’s a lot more comfortable for me to talk with the “Canto” friends than the “Mando” friends because I can refer to something in Cantonese and they would understand, while the “Mando” friends would be like “huh?” If it’s already this difficult to be diverse within the same ethnicity, then it must be like mission impossible to have diversity with people of different ethnic backgrounds. It’s like how you’re probably going like “wtf is a Canto and a Mando?” as you read the last couple of sentences.
An audience brought up a good question – what about other types of diversity? Why are we always so focused on racial diversity, but not other kinds? I think this question is probably the best thing that I got out of this whole discussion. There’s a lot of thinking to be done to answer this question.