Where Do I Find Diversity?

Diversity, of course, starts right in your own family. You probably share things like the shape of your nose or texture of your hair, but each person is still different. Even identical twins are unique!

But to really check out diversity, look around your town or city and around your school. How many shades of skin color do you see? How many hair and eye colors? How many body shapes?

Then think about the different ways people in your community worship, work, and play. Where do their families come from? What languages do they speak to communicate? How do they study and learn at school? It's not the same for everyone - that's for sure.

All of this incredible diversity is why the United States is sometimes called a melting pot. This means that people of different races, religions, and ethnic backgrounds have all come together to share their lives. Americans share a number of very important beliefs; in democracy, in freedom of speech, and in the right for a person to worship as he or she chooses. These common beliefs give an important foundation on which to build a nation. Americans stand for these beliefs and defend them.

Americans also celebrate their different cultures, differing political viewpoints, and differing tastes in food, art, music, and just about everything you can think of. From the birth of the nation, these differences have strengthened and enriched the country. The diversity that Americans have valued throughout history has a lot to do with making this world an exciting and interesting place to live!

What Is Prejudice?

Unfortunately, not everyone sees diversity as such a positive thing. With diversity can come prejudice (say: preh-juh-dus).

People show prejudice when they form a negative opinion without knowing all the facts. (That's not fair!) These opinions might be based on someone else's race, religion, or ethnic background. They might be based on a person's gender (whether the person is a girl or boy), age, disability, or even income or education level. Then prejudice can turn into hatred or unfair treatment of a person belonging to a particular group.

Do you recognize prejudice when you hear it? As soon as people are lumped together in a group, unfair opinions are probably being expressed. Consider the beginnings of these statements, for example: "All African-Americans are . . ."; "Every white person is . . ."; "Catholics always . . ."; "All Italian people . . ."; "Everybody in a wheelchair . . ."; "Poor people are . . ."; "Girls are always . . ."; or "Old people are . . .".

Comments like these don't have anything to do with looking at a person as an individual, do they? Instead, prejudice divides people into groups and says who's in and who's out. Rather than building bridges between people, prejudice puts up walls. People who show prejudice often fear diversity for some reason. Instead of welcoming diversity, they're afraid of or uncomfortable with people who are somehow different than they are. This kind of thinking can lead to hatred and even violence.