Posted on 03/01/2004 9:08:57 AM PST by zook
Everything I Need to Know about Diversity I Learned in Sunday School
Last Friday, partly out of curiosity, partly as a favor to my department head, I attended a College of Education “Diversity Workshop.” About 75 faculty, students, and staff crowded into a conference room to watch brief theatrical vignettes illustrating various common campus interactions involving race. The actors were entertaining, the skits (though cartoonishly exaggerated) were provocative, and the whole thing at least began with a good sense of open discussion.
Gradually, however, I began to suspect that the “facilitator” had an axe to grind. They say that to a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail. I guess it’s also true that to a man with a diversity workshop, everything looks like racial hate. We were told that the outlandishly rude and obnoxious behaviors portrayed in the vignettes were “typical” of people here at Penn State. We were told that if we had any doubt, we could simply read the local papers; or, more pointedly, we could simply tune in the student radio station any weekday from five to six PM to hear this kind of attitude expressed on a show called “Radio Free Penn State.”
That was more than I could swallow. I hear that show not frequently, but regularly, about once a week as I drive to my evening class. I interrupted the “facilitator.”
“I listen to that show and in my opinion it’s not at all the way you describe it,” I said. This was followed by a moment of silence after which the “facilitator” moved on.
I stayed fairly silent after that, listening to other people’s responses. Some were in the same vein as my remark, for example, one woman remarked that in 15 years of teaching she had never seen the kind of behavior depicted in one of the skits. Others, however, found dark “hidden meanings” behind the actors’ words and movements. In one skit, a woman character who clearly seemed to shift from “being comfortable with” to “openly challenging” the racial prejudice of a fellow student was described by one audience member as being “the most despicable of all.” It was the kind of hair splitting intellectual paranoia of which, perhaps, only a postmodernist or critical theorist is capable (I’m half kidding). A few minutes later, at the time the workshop was supposed to end, and despite the fact that the “facilitator” was still talking about our need to “come to closure over this last vignette” (that’s professor speak for “we won’t be done for at least ten more minutes”), I gathered my things and left.
Some may find this kind of activity useful, perhaps cathartic. I find it to be an utter waste of time and I shall not attend another. This isn’t because I see no problems in terms of racial tension here at PSU, but, rather, because I believe that the best way to address the tension is “one person at a time, and from the inside out” using a few very simple messages, the likes of which most of us either learned in Sunday school, elementary school, or at home. The messages I’m talking about are as follows:
1. Treat people the way you, yourself, would like to be treated by others. (Formerly known as “The Golden Rule back in the days when teachers were allowed to speak of “The Golden Rule” in public.)
2. Treat people with kindness and respect until such time you have strong evidence that they don’t deserve these.
3. Forgive.
4. If your words or actions are aimed at hurting or offending someone, knock it off.
5. If you are often feeling offended by the words or actions of others, knock that off, too.
6. Be honest.
Perhaps there are other things that should be on this list. But probably not many, and certainly none having to do with diversity workshops or mandatory coursework in diversity education.
Bye for now.
Me, too.
Jesus loves the little children.
All the children of the world.
Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in His sight
Jesus loves the little children of the world.
If one of the easly offended victims decides to sue, they can point out their committment to diversity because they sent employees to a training seminar.
The left is not diverse. They want everyone to think the same way they do.
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