A Daily Dose of Diversity Education

March 4, 2007

I grew up on Ridgedale Road in Ithaca, N.Y. The stairs in the house opened up next to the living room. Many mornings, I'd walk down those stairs, wondering what language or accent I would hear from whomever was sleeping on the couch.

My father was involved with the international student and diversity programs at Cornell University, and often students from all over the world and the United States stayed with our family.

Growing up in a home where I spent time with people of various colors, customs and languages, I was given  a first-hand, diversity education. When my first child was born in 1985, I wanted to give her that experience too. Unfortunately, all three of my children spent most of their early years and adolescence in Lexington, Kentucky where lessons of diversity were few and far between.

Because a branch of the Toyota Company is not far from Lexington, we did have a Japanese family living across from us, and my son played with Takaya daily until he moved back to Japan. Every year, we still hang the Christmas tree ornament Takaya gave Daniel right before he left.  The only African American family in our neighborhood stayed only a short time, and we had little chance to get to know them. 

            

My son played in a basketball league that was predominantly African American, and he was the only one of my three children who did not live and play with only white children.  It wasn’t until we moved to Charlotte that my children were able to live and play with a variety of people.

           

In our Highland Creek neighborhood, we live with families from Puerto Rico, Mexico, and Japan and families who are African American and white. There are retired couples, families with little babies, stay-at-home moms and dads, and people working in a variety of professions. Although my children don’t walk down the stairs to a variety of languages and cultural differences, they can go in the cul-de-sac to shoot a basketball or ride their bikes down the street and interact with people of different colors and cultures.

            

It is not until we all have the opportunity to have a meal, ride a bike, laugh at a joke, or share a family story or tragedy with someone who doesn’t speak or look like us that we begin our diversity educations. Until there are more neighborhoods and schools where diversity is common place and natural, there is no hope of filling in the racial, cultural, and ethnic divides that ruin our communities. Hopefully, University City will continue to attract a variety of people, providing neighborhood settings where diversity is a natural part of daily life. Without hearing and listening to the voices of others at the bottom of a staircase or in the streets of our neighborhoods, no true diversity education takes place.