Last month a good friend of mine held a diversity forum for her Honors Colloquium course that focused on race. To my pleasure and the pleasure of my fellow PINK sisters, we were given the opportunity to collaborate with the forum facilitators.
It was clear no one was comfortable enough to just pour their hearts out to one another at the start. Even the prepared questions prompted to dry responses. I even found myself answering questions just to fill the dead air. Despite their good intentions, the forum facilitators didn’t seem to be accomplishing much.
It wasn’t until my friend Abeje, the group facilitator, asked us if we feel we have to change the way we act in order to fit into a society where the standards are based on white ideals. I personally can attest to a number of times when I’ve done things to appease people in my surroundings. Even things as petty as not wearing a shower cap when I walk to the bathroom so my suitemates (who happened to be white) wouldn’t see me.
That is when something started to click into my head. WHY is it that I can’t walk 15 steps to the bathroom in my shower cap? Why can’t my PINK sister walk to class with her hair wrapped? Why do we even buy UGGS? As we continued to share our experiences, the consensus of the ladies seemed to be that we do these things to ‘fit in’.
Sometimes I feel like society has turned its head away from the fact that prejudice still exist. And one of the most commonly used phrases I’ve heard to justify this is, “I don’t see color, I only see people”. As commendable as this may sound, it falls right into the same pool of prejudice along with the inventors of the Grandfather Clause and Jim Crow Laws.
The fact is that WE ARE DIFFERENT. Different in color, culture, experiences, and the list goes on! So to void any acknowledgement of our differences is no less ignorant as exploiting them. The key is to ACCEPT and APPRECIATE the differences we all have as HUMAN BEINGS.
I could honestly go on and on about how moving this forum was for me. But to prevent myself from going on a cyber rant I will the leave you with the moral of my story. We have more in common than we think. And if we could just look past the superficial and appreciate the person’s actual essence, society would be far better off. I truly believe that!
It was clear no one was comfortable enough to just pour their hearts out to one another at the start. Even the prepared questions prompted to dry responses. I even found myself answering questions just to fill the dead air. Despite their good intentions, the forum facilitators didn’t seem to be accomplishing much.
It wasn’t until my friend Abeje, the group facilitator, asked us if we feel we have to change the way we act in order to fit into a society where the standards are based on white ideals. I personally can attest to a number of times when I’ve done things to appease people in my surroundings. Even things as petty as not wearing a shower cap when I walk to the bathroom so my suitemates (who happened to be white) wouldn’t see me.
That is when something started to click into my head. WHY is it that I can’t walk 15 steps to the bathroom in my shower cap? Why can’t my PINK sister walk to class with her hair wrapped? Why do we even buy UGGS? As we continued to share our experiences, the consensus of the ladies seemed to be that we do these things to ‘fit in’.
Sometimes I feel like society has turned its head away from the fact that prejudice still exist. And one of the most commonly used phrases I’ve heard to justify this is, “I don’t see color, I only see people”. As commendable as this may sound, it falls right into the same pool of prejudice along with the inventors of the Grandfather Clause and Jim Crow Laws.
The fact is that WE ARE DIFFERENT. Different in color, culture, experiences, and the list goes on! So to void any acknowledgement of our differences is no less ignorant as exploiting them. The key is to ACCEPT and APPRECIATE the differences we all have as HUMAN BEINGS.
I could honestly go on and on about how moving this forum was for me. But to prevent myself from going on a cyber rant I will the leave you with the moral of my story. We have more in common than we think. And if we could just look past the superficial and appreciate the person’s actual essence, society would be far better off. I truly believe that!
As a multicultural student, I strongly believe it is the small, persistent steps that matter. So break out of your comfort zone! Talk to someone new! Make it a goal to bridge the gap and close these cultural stereotypes we have of one another! You can’t change the mind of the world before you change the mind of your neighbor.
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Tyler Curry, Contributing Writer, is currently an undergraduate student at the University of Rhode Island pursing a study in Journalism.
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