We’re so diverse. Look there’s a dark one!

The Pressure to Assimilate in a White-Dominated World

We live in a world where assimilation is equal to survival. To be someone, you must be like everyone. However, everyone refers to the perceived ‘majority’ group, the white people. How is one to assimilate to the white culture when one is not white. Therefore, you are already at a disadvantage because failure to adopt this white culture results in otherhood and a lifetime of obstacles.

The Problem with Token Diversity Efforts

The white man is held to a certain power, so everything on this earth is tailored to his needs: health, housing, education, clothing. I’ve yet to see brown coloured tights, and even the nude colour we refer to is that of white skin. Clothes are the least of our worries, but if something as trivial as clothing does not represent the diverse nature of the world what else could. 

The baffling part is those who claim to be diverse by putting out one shade of dark skin tights. Do we all look alike to you? Do we all share the same skin tone? How can there be different shades of white but only one shade of dark?

BAME: When Diverse Experiences Are Carelessly Combined

A significant example of this disregard for minorities is the BAME category. Minority groups are so irrelevant you lump all our struggles into one insignificant category. As if we all go through the same issues and problems. Sure, we share oppression but in different ways. The struggle of a Hispanic man is not the same as that of an Asian. Even the struggle of a black British person is not the same as the black African. You may not realize this, but Africans are the most irrelevant on the race scale. When you think African, you think jungles and loincloths and huts. You think uneducated and poverty. You think weird accents and sound effects. In the hierarchy of discrimination, Africans rank lowest. We’re too dirty, too uncultured, too savage. All these differences in peoples are ignored in the race to solve inequality.

Celebrating Difference Rather Than Erasing It

The BAME category was created to show support to minorities. Yet, all it’s succeed in showing is the lack of care and effort to realize all minorities aren’t the same: different cultures, different languages, different struggle. So instead of striving for assimilation and how minorities can fit in, strive for connectivity through acceptance and respect of these differences. You can’t want the best for minorities through ignoring our difference from one another and from white culture.

It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences.

  -Audre Lorde