"Dynamic Diversity Night" Reflections

January 2012 - Dynamic Diversity Night

Last week, I helped host a “Dynamic Diversity Night” at my daughters’ elementary school as part of the Respect for Human Differences committee I co-chair. For a long time, I’ve wanted to create a night of conversations about diversity in my own neighborhood to help develop stronger bonds of friendship and community among people I know and don’t yet know. Ten years ago, I taught a course on Anti-Racism for teachers through an organization called EMI (Empowering Multicultural Initiatives), and I miss those conversations and the level of awareness of race and privilege I had at that time.  We had a group of 36 kids and adults show up for this evening, and I felt excited to see how many other people are also interested in having such conversations with each other.

We started the evening with free pizza and drinks, provided by the school, which allowed people to have casual conversations with each other and to get settled in the room. Then we moved into our first activity, which was called “Starburst Truths.” My co-chair and I thought up a sentence starter that went with each color of Starburst candy and had each person select 2 colors before going to his or her group of 5-6 other people. Sentence starters ranged from, “I felt left out or discriminated against when…” to “I was an ally or friend to someone feeling left out or hurt when I…” It took a little while for people to warm up to sharing some of their stories, and I imagine many did not share deep hurts because they were not yet feeling fully safe, but I think the participants enjoyed hearing each other’s stories and having an opportunity to share their own stories.  I enjoyed getting to know the kids and adults in my group and have found myself thinking about their stories since then. If I were to do the activity again, I might group people into clusters of 2-3 families instead of individuals to increase the level of safety and comfort in sharing. However, some kids feel more free to share when they are on their own.

We then moved into 3 groups of 12 for an activity called “Pipe Cleaners,” in which participants are asked to choose 4 colors of pipe cleaners and make conjoining mini-sculptures with them that showed different aspects of their own identity or their family identities. I made my own earlier that day to use as a model and was interested to see how it had evolved since the first pipe cleaner structure I made when I was teaching EMI. Here it is: 

I started with a red pipe cleaner and made a small flower with 5 petals to symbolize my family of five and then crafted a heart shape around it to show that love and a focus on family and motherhood are primary parts of my identity. Then I added a brown pipe cleaner shaped into a gingerbreadesque person shape with a winding path to show that I love connecting people to each other and helping them along their individual journeys. To that I added a white pipe cleaner that I made into a 9-pointed star to symbolize the Bahá’í Faith with a small female symbol coming out of it to show my religious and cultural identity as a white woman who is working against prejudice, and to help the world realize that, “The earth is but one country and mankind its citizens” and that we are one human race. Lastly, I added a green pipe cleaner circle that went around the other 3 symbols in a circle to show that I love nature and traveling the earth and see unity in all things. In typical fashion, I tried to weave several aspects of my identity into each of the allowed 4 pipe cleaners since I find it hard to confine myself to only 4 major aspects of my identity. I hoped that it would help the workshop participants to be able to do the same in thinking about how to choose symbolic colors and shapes that allowed them to capture more than 4 of their identities. In making my sculpture, I was struck by how this evening was an example of my sculpture in action – I was with my family, connecting people to each other in a way that I hoped would reveal “windows and mirrors” for everyone to see ways that they were connected to each other and different from each other as they appreciated the “dynamic diversity” among us. I feel very fortunate to have the time and opportunity to create workshops that feel so right and good to me at this moment in my life.

I felt gratified that some of my major goals for the evening were being met as I listened to people share their sculptures with each other and then listened to everyone share one thing that they had learned during the workshop. Several people commented on the pleasure of discovering that they had something in common with other people in the room, on their realization of how they had similarities and differences with almost everyone they had met, and on how they were reminded of how much insight and wisdom children have to share with all of us. My oldest daughter told me as we left the school to walk home in the cold night that she had loved the evening and that she thought it was fascinating to see how different some of her fellow students were in this context – engaged, interested, and interesting in ways she had never imagined. She was on a high for at least an hour before she fell asleep, having been deeply interested in learning about other people and their experiences. I was thrilled to hear her making such reflections, and hope that she will remember this experience when she meets someone and finds herself passing judgment based on his or her appearance or behavior. While first impressions are part of being human, everyone has interesting stories to tell and it is exciting to realize how much you find yourself liking people you might never have talked with on a regular school day when you hear some of their stories.