Dont Talk to the Chinese Kids My Journey with Diversity. and Inclusion
[Applause]
by the summer of 2014 i had just
finished middle school in china and my
parents were deciding
to send me over to america to continue
my education
they wanted me to get into an elite
american university and the best way to
do that
was by attending an american high school
before i boarded a plane in a small
western airport in china my mom
grabbed my shoulders and she said
remember
don’t talk to the chinese kids
i’m joking of course she said it in
chinese she didn’t speak english
but she meant what she said to my mom
the best way to immerse myself
into the american culture the best way
to get the most
out of an authentic american education
was by minimizing contact
with my compatriots and so i heeded her
advice
for the next four years i didn’t talk to
any chinese kids
literally i also pretended that i loved
country music
i also pretended that i didn’t want to
eat dumplings for every meal of the day
but i got tired of all that pretending
of faking to be someone that i was not
my english got really good but i was
tired after all
luckily i had a break from all that
pretending when i came to emory
when i realized my uniqueness and
differences was actually appreciated
and valued i mean here are two of my
best friends
since the first day of college
the three of us would walk around campus
and we would routinely get stopped
by camera crews they would come up to us
and they say things like how do you guys
like emory so far
and they would say also things like
where are you guys from
but it doesn’t matter what the first two
questions are the third question was
always can we take a picture of you
three
the first time we got stopped i was like
wow emory is really nice they really
care about how we feel
so i let them take our pictures the
second time we got stopped i was like
again you guys are really nice but sure
take your picture whatever
the third time we got stop is when i
realized they probably just wanted to
take pictures of us so they could put
that
on the admission brochures but i let
them anyways because they gave us free
cookies
point is universities around america are
now
increasingly realizing the importance of
having students from different
backgrounds on campuses
sure researchers for decades have
highlighted
the value of having different students
on campuses
and in workplaces but our pursuit of
diversity
is often twisted and incomplete
from faking diversity to wasting this
potential and to finally
misunderstanding the idea completely we
have strayed
far away from what it actually means to
incorporate diversity in our lives
what happens when institutions stop
organically
nurturing an environment of diversity
but instead
artificially implant the idea
well this is what happens
the year is 2001. the university of
wisconsin-madison had just published
their undergraduate application
for the year and now right there is the
front cover
of that application it’s a nice picture
right we got a white guy
we got another white guy we got two
white girls
and we have a black guy yes
diversity right
well not quite because here is
the actual picture that was taken
senior dialo shabazz was photoshopped
into the cover of that application
because
wisconsin madison didn’t have a diverse
enough student population
but instead of admitting to that fact
they decided to fake it
and it’s not just universities that do
this
businesses and political coalitions do
the exact same thing
here is an actual picture of the asian
republican coalition
i just i love seeing that hatred when
asked about this clear irony
the spokesperson said well the
coalition’s also for those who
appreciate asian culture
you guys i love golf
i love hockey i go to whole foods like
17 times per semester
but i have never had the audacity
to clean them white come on you guys can
do better than that
the point is when we fake diversity
we put a cover on the important issue of
under representation it’s like clicking
the remind me tomorrow button on a
critical system update
but accept that update is essential to
the well-being
of our institutions and when we do have
diversity we tend to
waste its potential we all have seen
colorful stats
that look like this of how many
demographics we represent how many
different languages the students speak
but our pursuit of diversity usually
stops right there
on those code numbers and statistics
diversity looked like an iceberg we
really only care about the very tip of
it
in 2003 researchers at the university of
connecticut conducted
a research looking for relationships
between perceived level of diversity
and actual cross-cultural dialogue that
goes on between these supposedly diverse
groups
and what they found was that students
don’t really venture out of their
demographic groups
when asked 76 of white students said
they
only have white friends whereas 56
of black students said they only have
black friends
the takeaway from that study is that as
students at least we don’t really talk
to each other
those supposedly diverse groups are
essentially
stratified groups of self-segregated
communities that never
really interact with each other
and that makes me sad i mean what’s the
point of
having diversity if we’re just going to
let us sit there and not do anything
about it
the third and final problem with our
version of diversity is
exactly about the understanding part we
don’t really know what it is
in a hyper-racialized context of america
we think of diversity as only having the
ethnic or racial dimensions
but it’s much more than that
it’s about recognizing and understanding
that each individual is unique
but the important part here or rather
the operating word here is
understanding we can all do the
recognizing part we all realize that
each and every one of us
is different from each other but
understanding those differences
requires an earnest effort to bring
those stratified groups together
to actually communicate but
unfortunately as a society
we are too lazy and too scared to do
that
when all those three problems compound
when we have fake diversity
when we undermine its value and we
finally misunderstand its meaning
completely
diversity goes from one that is pure and
vanilla to one that looks like this
one with a fine print version of it
so why do we have this cheap version of
diversity why do we have
a fine print version of this idea that
we
hold so dear supposedly also because
the mere appearance of diversity
generates revenue
and benefits so to look to the
answer to those questions we need to go
to the causes
of our problems first why do we
fake diversity in the first place or
it’s because the mere
appearance of it generates revenue
nancy leon from the denver university
university school of law
teaches us displaying racial diversity
allows schools and companies to present
themselves as inclusive
and modern and that’s a trendy thing to
do nowadays
for four years i attended a
predominantly white high school in
suburban tennessee
because my parents didn’t know better
and as you can imagine tennessee is not
the most
ethnically racially or politically
diverse place on earth
but my high school principal loved using
that magical word
diversity whenever he spoke during
assembly
he would say things like our school is
constantly striving for diversity and
inclusion as their principles
and then whenever he said that i would
look around me and i would see
92 other white kids nodding their heads
it was really funny but my principal
loved saying that because it brought him
money it
attracted international students and
minority students to give him tuition
it brought him money and it’s not just
schools that do this
companies do the exact same thing in
2003 walmart started a diversity
initiative
to hire more underrepresented
demographics
to include them in a workplace which
sounds awesome on paper until you
realize
they started doing that only after a
series of class action lawsuits
against their discriminatory hiring
practices
i mean they were literally putting up
shields
of minorities to defend
against potential financial losses
next we undermine the power of diversity
and we also don’t understand its true
meaning
because we are used to a by-standard
mentality
americans love driving more than any
other nation in the world
and your teenagers love riding shotgun
more than any other nation in the world
but on the issue of diversity and
inclusion
we take the back seat a 2019 study
revealed that
americans only encounter diversity
mostly in their workplace
and in schools once they enter their
personal lives however
the diversity score drops down
significantly
we don’t mind diversity or just around
us we don’t mind it when we have to
interact with people from different
backgrounds but when we go to churches
when we go to
civic gatherings when we go to our
friend groups
we’d prefer those groups to be
homogenous
whether we like to admit it or not
we think having colors around us is
enough we think just because there’s
some
one different from me in the same room
that’s enough
well the reality is it’s
not enough earlier i touched on my
experience as a
high schooler a 14 year old chinese boy
who spoke
broken english in tennessee and my fake
woke principle and my fake love for
country music i wish all the stories
from my time period was as funny and
and light-hearted as those but the truth
is
i endured a lot of hardship in those
four years
english was one of the most difficult
things for me to overcome i had to ask
my classmates constantly to
answer questions and spell out words for
me
i remember asking one of my classmates a
boy in my english class how to spell the
word
performance he looked at me
and he said c o
mm i.e
i didn’t know what kami meant at the
time because i didn’t have the
vocabulary for it
but from the way he laughed when he left
the room i
knew it wasn’t nice
later that night i went home and i
called my mom i asked her
my time version
mom why why don’t they like me
she was silent she she didn’t know how
to respond
because she was the one who told me to
not talk to the chinese kids to distance
myself from my culture
but she didn’t know no matter how hard i
tried
i would still be a 14 year old chinese
boy
with broken english it didn’t matter
that my principle
stated his commitment to diversity
it didn’t matter that my teacher said
the school was accepting and welcoming
it doesn’t matter what we say it matters
what we do and what we need to do
is to focus on inclusion
instead of diversity we need to stop
being
tunnel vision and being so obsessed with
the appearance
of diversity let’s do a little
thought experiment two students are
applying to the exact same university
they have the same sat score the same
gpa the same achievements outside of
school as well
the only difference between these two
applicants is their gender one of them
is male and the other one
is female now keep in mind the school
they’re applying to is predominantly
male
if we blindly accept a female student
just to look nice on paper
and appear diverse theoretically the
female student
might have a harder time adjusting to
the new environment
whereas if we admit the male student he
will have
an unfair advantage because there is
already a layer of familiarity
in the culture inside of the school
before he gets in there
from this thought experiment we need to
realize that before we
want to include underrepresented
demographics into our lives
we need to make sure there’s a welcoming
and inclusive
enough environment and then culture in
place to give them a
fair chance at succeeding
but that’s largely to the discretion of
the folks above to the
administration level what can we do as
regular people
to harbor and nurture diversity
well for one we can stop saying stuff
like nam bread and chai tea naan is
bread
chai is tea the point is
we need to take some time to learn about
the culture we
say we appreciate and second
reach into the unknown last semester i
took an african-american studies class
because i needed to fulfill a gr a
general education requirement
but that class ended up changing the way
i see the world today
i challenge each and every one of you to
reach
into a community that you don’t really
interact with very often
go to beaufort highway or go to the cap
city mall just to
take some time to interact with people
we don’t normally associate with
the takeaway from those interactions
will be so
so valuable i promise you
and finally just keep in mind that each
and every one of us
has a story to tell we’re all unique and
we’re all
awesome the only way
we can listen to those stories is very
simple
just close your eyes
and listen
i want to close with a quote from shelly
zallis the ceo of the female culturally
renowned researcher
diversity is an action inclusivity
is cultural and belonging
is a feeling diversity is a big word
but feeling we all know
my mom’s advice to not talk to the
chinese kids may have helped me with my
spoken english but please
for the love of everyone for the sake
of all of us do
talk to the chinese kids
thank you
you