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Tolerance for Diverse Opinions?

I may have flunked one of my last assignments in diversity class... maybe I'm just being a Nervous Nellie, but I was awfully honest with my views on this class! To frame this properly, I'm in the last week of a 9-week online Diversity class. We have a "discussion question" (which actually contains a number of questions in a paragraph) to answer right before our final project.
This is just a snippet of the number of questions included in this assignment:

"What information about diversity in America has helped you better understand or relate to specific minority groups?"

For some reason, I feel like sharing my answer to this question. Well, probably because it is my answer to this question that is likely to get me in trouble grade-wise...

"I didn't find anything new about relating to other cultures, races, and ethnicities simply based on the class textbook and activities. To be quite honest, I found the focus on oppression and blame scattered through the textbook to be unproductive and extremely slanted. I think the textbook should be titled "Races, Ethnicities, and Genders Oppressed by the White American Male." (I hope that my honesty is not considered unproductive to my assignment; I simply think it needs to be said.) The book focused solely on the United States for some reason. Frankly, I'm surprised. There was so much oppression of races by the British white men that was not included -- the East Indians, the Irish, and the Scots. While we're at it, why not discuss the oppression of white people in other countries? Why not include the oppression of Christians in the Middle East? For an alleged study of diversity, the textbook we used for this class was too narrowly focused on the "evils of white America" to be very educational. There are other evils in diversity as well that weren't even touched upon. If this comment can be forwarded to whoever selects textbooks, I'd sure appreciate it.

Throughout my 41 years of life, I have been fortunate to live a life that includes many different cultures, ethnicities, and races. I have learned a lot from many new friends from different backgrounds along the way. If the goal of studying diversity is to motivate people to drop prejudiced thinking and embrace other cultures and races, I believe the study needs to be focused on how humankind has struggled together over history and how very much diverse races actually have in common. Even though the class focuses on statistics and hypotheses with regard to population, immigration, power struggles and race, it has been my experience that focusing on similarities -- rather than who oppresses whom -- actually brings the goal of diversity to life. Only by finding common ground do we begin to truly get to know another individual."


I suppose we'll see if diversity of opinion is tolerable in online universities based on the grade I receive. There were other questions involved as well but my answer to that part of the assignment is likely to get me in trouble if there's no tolerance of diverse opinion. There was another part to this assignment where we have to research the projected population diversity in the year 2050. Basically, what I found is that Hispanics will surpass blacks as the second most populous group in America then. So, my answer to this question might also get me a demerit or two:

"How can America best prepare for the changing diversity of its current and future citizens?"

"So what does this mean to the American effort to embrace diversity? In the world of academe, I believe that it simply means that, possibly for a while, the oppression perpetrated by white men against black slaves and Native Americans will finally get put to rest in the textbooks; while the new evil will become the oppression of the Hispanic people from wars against Mexico to our intervention in Nicaragua. I hate to write that but, unfortunately, I believe that "diversity" in the world of academe will never be about the commonalities of humankind. It will always be a study of oppression perpetrated by white Americans against other races.

If I might be so bold as to suggest a better way to handle the preparation of the next generation of Americans for the changing face of America in 2050, I suggest that we begin to teach Spanish as a required course in all high schools throughout the United States as well as requiring all new Hispanic immigrants to learn English within the first three years of their stay in the U.S. As the Hispanic group becomes more prevalent in our society, I believe the dominant group of people (white Americans) will begin to embrace and celebrate this race. After all, we have many things in common: a belief that hard work will make a better life for our families, a desire to achieve the best life possible, a religion that embraces a Higher Power, and a special place in our hearts for our families (old and young). I hope that diversity takes this turn. It would be wonderful to see races, cultures, and ethnicities brought together by their commonalities rather than blame-setting and a belief that old "crimes" cannot be forgiven in the name of moving forward as a civilized society."

I'll let you know how this turns out. I may or may not receive any comments from the instructor as this is an exercise shared in the main classroom. He may choose not to take me to task in the group setting. If he does, it will be in the grade and that comes out next week sometime. I'll keep ya posted!

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