Culture Fair. Multicultural Night. Diversity Celebration. Every school has one, I'm sure. It's a night that is put together by the PTA, when the community gets together, everyone brings food from their own ethnicity, and kids sing songs of peace or sing songs in other languages. Kumbaya, right? Hmmm....
This year, our school's "Diversity Celebration" was cancelled due to the snow. As we are looking to reschedule, one of my colleagues sent an email out to the staff addressing this celebration. This colleague is also Filipino, and she asked the question, "What is a Diversity Celebration?" I'm usually not one to chime in on race/ethnic/cultural sensitivity talk, but just that single question really got me thinking. And throughout my thought process, I've realized that 1) it's actually more important to me than I thought, and 2) it's a much deeper issue than we make it out to be.
At surface level, some sort of cultural celebration seems great. We all think that a diversity celebration is a great way to get to know the different cultures in our community. We all think the kids are learning about how important it is to accept each other's differences. We all think we are learning about each other. But are we really? Let's get past the surface. Here's what I find as I dig a little deeper.
These days, diversity and inclusion in a school is an expectation, just like homework and attendance are expectations. Just like how at home, keeping the dishes clean is an expectation. Are you going to invite people over and have a couple of drinks because somebody at home washed the dishes? Everyone else who lives at home acknowledges and appreciates that the dishes are clean, but a whole celebration is unnecessary. Now, say you didn't wash the dishes for a whole year, and finally you washed the dishes, so you had a big celebration for it. What would your friends and family think? Weird, right? Why? Because common knowledge assumes that washing dishes is expected and to have a celebration for it is just kind of bizarre. So, let's apply that same concept to diversity as an expectation. If we are teaching each other about the value of diversity in little ways each day, the children and community can acknowledge and appreciate it, and having a whole night dedicated to celebrating it is unnecessary. If we don't teach about diversity every day and then finally have some sort of celebration, we are doing ourselves a huge disservice and giving ourselves a false sense of celebration.
Furthermore, what message does a diversity celebration send? Is it like a "Yay! We have people of color at our school!"? or "Let's try this food. It's different." As a person of color myself, these messages feel more isolating than inclusive. It's sending an "us vs. them" message. Frankly, we cannot learn about each other as people through food and song. It's just too superficial. Also, past attendance has shown that during the night celebrations, there is less diversity as many families cannot attend. So, these lead to my essential questions:
1. What is diversity?
2. What are we celebrating? Why?
3. Who is it for?
Question 3 is interesting. As I was having this diversity conversation with another colleague, a white man, he said, "Well, Cat... Have you ever read
Sh*t That White People Like? It's just a list of what white people like, and diversity is one of them. It makes us feel good." This is a guy who keeps it real. He has lived in different parts of the world, married a Japanese-American, and I feel good about going to him about this stuff because he keeps it real. I approached another colleague, a black man who also keeps it real, married to a bi-racial woman, and he shared that he has always felt kind of uneasy about a diversity night. "Notice how I've never gone?" he asked. He went on to say, "I'm not going to tell them to not have it." Alright, fair.
So, is the idea of a diversity night backfiring? Assuming that diversity night is to celebrate the diverse group of people in our community, but is not reaching out to everyone, is it truly diverse?
Really, I could continue on, but don't want to be overbearing. Like I said, I didn't realize it was this important to me. Maybe it's because I'm meeting the expectation everyday, so a celebration seems unnecessary. Maybe it's time to look at our curriculum and classroom structures and ask ourselves "How am I reaching the diversity expectation every day?"
