When I was first tasked with this assignment, I had no idea what I was going to write or what my question would be. So I decided to take a page out of Anne Lamott’s page and procrastinate. I sat there and watched the latest episode of “falcon and the winter soldier.” The episode I watched discussed (spoilers) how there was actually a black super soldier before Steve Rodgers, The fictional character that we would know to be captain America today. The black soldier named Isaiah Bradley fought against nazis during World War Two but instead of getting rewarded for his actions, he was thrown in jail and experimented on. This episode reminded me of what happened to people of color in real life when they returned home from a war. They didn’t get any recognition or medals and people refused to put them on tv or talk about them in a positive way. But since we started protesting and fighting for our rights, more and more people became more open which led to diversity becoming more common. These real life and fictional events inspired my research question, how has diversity changed over the years and how has it impacted minorities? I expect to find examples of the how diversity changed from the past to present and how do people actually feel about seeing someone who shares their same culture and race on tv, or in a book or in person.
Often when talking about diversity, people usually think it’s about adding more blacks to shows and stories. But diversity is a lot of things. One example of diversity is how immigrants of different ethnic backgrounds and race go to different countries and cause a shift in the communities by making them more integrated and changing the percentage of what race lives there. According to the “Population Reference Bureau America’s Diversity and Growth: signposts for the 21st century” https://www.prb.org/americasdiversityandgrowthsignpostsforthe21stcenturypdf503kb/ Americans in the 20th century were worried about how their population would develop if they let immigrants in and how it would affect the ethnic balance of their community. The article also talked about how before immigration became more common, people living in America had a shorter life expectancy and from the 1900s to now America had become significantly more diverse racially and ethnically. After immigration became more and more common the life expectancy increased. Immigrants moving to the country also caused a change in the education system, more specifically what race and what gender was allowed to attend school and college. Although this author is talking about how immigration impacted America in a positive way, there are some people who are against immigration and would say it’s a bad thing. https://apnews.com/press-release/pr-prnewswire/061357913b803d71caec9992ea155798 In this article AP news is quoting Dan Stein, president of FAIR( Federation For American Immigration Reform). Dan explains that “illegal aliens” cost taxpayers about 454 million dollars each year for the provision of education and health care and local schools struggle to provide educators and cover the cost to take care of limited English proficient students, he also states that the growing immigrant population competes with legal residents ability to obtain jobs in economically depressed areas. Here I Don’t like or agree with the way Dan uses the term alien when referring to a human being, I also see no problem with money going towards an actual thing that helps people. They teach us in school that education is the most valuable thing so it would make sense that we put money towards something so important. I also don’t get Dan’s argument about jobs, he claims that immigration brings less skillful workers, but if we keep putting money towards the education of immigrants there shouldn’t be a problem with a skill gap, if he could even prove that exists. He also says they’re stealing jobs from legal residents but I don’t believe that. I believe that immigrants take the j0bs that no one else is willing to take and that they need these jobs more than legal residents because they most likely came to this country with nothing, looking for better living conditions and better opportunities. The purpose for AP news writing this article was to show why immigration was a bad thing and how it impacted America financially. the writing style AP news chose was like a bulleted list with a statement thrown in there from the president of FAIR. I don’t think FAIR is really credible because their whole thing is to just talk to citizens who are concerned about immigrants and anyone can do that. AP news probably chose this style because it was short and to the point and they wanted to highlight what Dan was saying. I think it was a good choice for the intended audience because lots of people who are biased towards immigrants have a hard time reading and breaking down information so AP news helped them. The purpose for the Population Reference Bureau writing the article was to show that immigration has actually helped communities and that diversity is not a bad thing. The author wrote this article like they were a historian. they included no personal information about themself and chose to go straight to the facts. I thought the article was very interesting, specifically the way the author talks about diversity but in the sense of it being about immigration. I agree that immigration helps more than it hurts. I believe the author is credible because the PRB is a non profit organization and its purpose is to just collect and supply data. There seems to be no ill intent. The author chose this genre because they wanted to present the information to us as a history lesson most likely. I think this is a good choice for the intended audience because it doesn’t share any opinions, it’s just all facts and anyone can take this information and use it to justify immigration.
When I was little, me and the other kids used to pretend to be characters from shows and movies. One day we were pretending to be super heroes and I recall saying to my friend, I want to be “Spider-Man”. He replied (in a high pitch voice) saying “you can’t be Spider-Man, he’s not black”. Hearing those words made me pretty upset, not because he said I couldn’t be Spider-Man because I was black but because there really weren’t any black heroes or popular black people that I knew. Years later they did create a new Spider-Man who was black and latino named Miles Morales, and there were other black heroes like Static Shock and War Machine and Blade. Seeing people who looked like me, Who talked like me, Who lived like me really did make a difference to me. I thought being black was cool, I learned more about my culture by seeing more shows with black people. “Everybody hates Chris was a very relatable show.” Diversity not only had a positive impact on me but also a positive impact on this author named Juan Del Toro. https://socialsciences.nature.com/posts/45551-diversity-and-inclusion-how-both-changed-my-life Author Juan Del Toro tells us about his story and how he felt like he was being discriminated against because he was the only Spanish speaking student in his professor’s class. His unnamed professor learned that Spanish was his native language and advised him to drop his classes ( which he did) because he believed that Juan would struggle in classes. When Juan met other people who looked like him and sounded like him, he began to study again and succeeded this time. Juan came to the realization that diversity and inclusion had a positive impact on him and changed his life because he felt more comfortable with people who looked like him and felt that his Spanish wasn’t handicapping him. Although me and Juan both experienced microagressions, I believe Juan had it way worse because his teacher encouraged him to drop out while I just couldn’t be the hero I wanted to be. Juan chose to write in first person and tell a personal statement about something that he experienced. Juan chose to tell this story to show the discrimination that people face when it comes to sharing a space with people who don’t look like you but to also show that you shouldn’t give up and that you’re not alone. I think Juan is credible because this is him just telling his truth, he’s not trying to convince us of anything. He just wants to tell us his story and also he gives us the name of his teachers and of the people who still help him to this day but not the name of the professor who wanted him to drop classes. This shows me that he doesn’t want to highlight the negative but focus on the positive. He also leaves us with a little update that he is currently a post doctoral research fellow at the university of Pittsburgh. He also has a dissertation on racial discrimination. This tells me that he’s serious about helping people and letting people know about discrimination and his story most likely motivated him to to write that dissertation. I think it was a good choice for the intended audience because he’s trying to let minorities know that they are not alone and that there are people that look just like you who will help. Some people do say that diversity is bad when it comes to certain environments, for example when it comes to managing a company or workplace. Glenn Llopis states that diversity and inclusion fails when it comes to managing companies. Forbes- https://www.forbes.com/sites/glennllopis/2017/01/16/5-reasons-diversity-and-inclusion-fails/?sh=4c5524d850df in this article Glenn gives 5 reasons as to why diversity and inclusion fails in a workplace environment. those reasons are that diversity and inclusion initiatives only focus on recruitment and reputation management which limits them and leaves them disconnected from enterprise wide growth opportunities. companies actually end up solving for the wrong thing when trying to solve for diversity and inclusion, diversity and inclusion should make the company better on the inside and more competitive on the outside. the third reason is that diversity solves for recognition instead of respect and it should be the opposite, we should be trying to earn respect from people in our workplace. the 4th reason is that we keep looking at diversity as a melting pot but we should be looking at it as a mosaic and we should take advantages of our differences. His final reason is that when diversity and inclusion initiatives are weak, it causes regression in the success of a business. I disagree with Glenn mostly because of the way he’s looking at diversity, he’s looking at diversity as if it’s suppose to be profited off of. Diversity is meant to help the workers feel more comfortable, not so the company could gain more money. Diversity isn’t a business. I also don’t like the way that he started off by using a quote from Martin Luther king Jr. He tries to use Martin Luther king’s words to disrespect diversity and inclusion initiatives even though Martin Luther king Jr would most definitely be pro diversity plans. Also I think he brought up that quote from Martin Luther King Jr to make it seem like he isn’t biased towards people of color and to make it seem like he actually cares about them. I also don’t agree with him saying that we should earn respect from people, I don’t want to have to earn respect from a racist or someone who’s discriminatory. that’s just completely ridiculous, I’m not going out of my way to try to earn respect from a disgusting person. The author Glenn chose to write the article like a list and like a caution to companies who do things to be inclusive and diverse. He starts off by quoting MLK jr and explains the problem with diversity and inclusion then proceeds to list his reasons. The purpose of the author writing this article was to show that diversity doesn’t always work in companies and that there are better ways to go about diversity and inclusion. I don’t think the author is credible because I never really heard of this guy but he’s supposed to be really good at business and apparently knows that diversity is what’s causing businesses to fail. He also starts using tweets from twitter and that’s not a very reliable source. I believe the author chose this genre because he just wanted to tell a precautionary tale to companies who are using diversity and inclusion. This is a good choice for his intended audience because it’s not too complicated, he gets to the point.
Earlier I mentioned that when talking about diversity we usually talk about black people and race but diversity can go beyond that. It can be about different cultures or religions. I talked about the impact of diversity and how it changed over the years but I didn’t talk about why we needed diversity. From what I learned, diversity is needed because it helps us create a better understanding of each other, it helps put an end to stereotypes, it gives other people a chance to shine in the light and people grow more accepting of each other. Elizabeth A. Segal Ph.D https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/social-empathy/201907/why-we-need-diversity uses examples of different types of diversity. She talks about why diversity is important when it comes to plants, she explains that if you plant the same type of tree in a park and it gets a disease, the rest will get the same disease, but putting different varieties of trees will ensure that some will thrive and some can fight off pest. Elizabeth also talks about how people were so afraid of diversity, that it led to inbreeding which led to higher mortality rates and genetic disorders. She also gives us examples of how diversity can lead to better health in terms of the different types of food we eat. She then uses an example of financial diversification about how if we put all of our money in one stock and that stock fails then we lose all our money. Elizabeth talks about the positives of workplace diversity, about how it produces cognitive processing and the exchange of more information. Finally Elizabeth talks about the diversity of culture. Having different cultures creates new ideas and questions and it breaks us away from “groupthink”. Groupthink is when a group of well-intentioned people make irrational decisions spurred by the urge to conform. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/groupthink My opinion on Elizabeth’s work is that I think Elizabeth should focus on just 1 type of diversity because I’m confused as to what audience she’s trying to pull in. The type of writing style she uses it sort of like a blog, there’s a positive tone to everything she is saying. She has a certified Ph.D which makes me believe she knows what she’s talking about. The purpose of writing this was just to show that diversity is good. I think the author is credible because all of the thing’s she’s mentioned are facts. I believe the author chose this genre because she probably thought the blog style would attract older people or people who love to read blogs and interact with blogs. I don’t think this was a good choice for her intended audience because first off I don’t even know who she’s trying to reach out to, she goes from talking about plants, to food, to inbreeding, to work, to culture. and it’s in blog style so it seems kind of random. I think her main message was to just show different examples of diversity and how in every circumstance, It’s always a good thing.
While looking for answers to answer my research question, how has diversity changed over the years and what impact did it have on minorities? I Found that even in the past century there have been significant changes, I learned that people feared that their communities would more ethnically diverse if they let immigrants in and they also were scared that the population would change, but when America started letting more immigrants in, there were positive changes such as life expectancy increasing, communities became more integrated, Minorities being allowed to attend school. Then I read the story of a guy who was discriminated against because his native language was Spanish, and he dropped his class because his college professor encouraged him to. He then met other people that he could relate to and started to feel more comfortable which led to him succeeding in school. This taught me that diversity has a positive effect on minorities. Next I looked into why diversity was important. The author named Elizabeth gave examples of not only why diversity is important but also the different kinds of diversity. She mentions biodiversity which talks about how you have to plant different types of plants to ensure they survive. She talks about financial diversity which explains that you should put your money in different stocks because it’s less risky, she mentions how workplace diversity helps cognitive thinking and how cultural diversity encourages new ideas and questions. The thing that surprised me was how there were so many different types of diversity. I didn’t think about non-human diversity at all. When I first created my question, I was only thinking about discrimination only against people of color and the impact it had on them but I realized diversity has an everyone. I think what I learned is important because it opens my eyes to more areas of diversity, I also learned that it’s not ridiculous to be happy because you see someone that looks like you. I think anyone should hear about this, minorities, people who are LGBTQ, anyone who has faced discrimination, anyone who has faced microagressions. Diversity gives people a chance to fit in and a chance to meet other people.
