Muralist Okuda San Miguel smiles after signing the Shine Bright Saginaw Mural Project he created near 105 Lyon Street in Old Town Saginaw on Wednesday, June 12, 2024.Kaytie Boomer | MLive.com
Diversity is a word that gets thrown around a lot these days. It’s easy to think of it solely in terms of race, but real diversity includes so much more.
It’s about the different experiences, backgrounds, and perspectives that shape who we are as individuals and as a community.
In this region, our diversity is one of our greatest strengths. I grew up in a city where Blacks and Hispanics lived together because most of our people moved here because of the jobs, mainly at General Motors.
We share many of the same foods, just cooked differently, hence, the “Saginaw Taco.”
Everything about my culture was normal until I got into the professional workforce as a journalist. It was here that I learned that most of my colleagues had family cabins up north, didn’t have kick-back houses in the ‘hood (where we would party and hangout) and usually didn’t have children by multiple people.
How I lived was different. My world was not like theirs. My friends were the norm and so was my family. My co-workers were the weird ones to me. They were what we would call “They think they better than us.”
Honestly, I think it is growth that changed my mindset. I was stuck in a world where if it wasn’t happening in my world, it wasn’t important.
But what I realized was it is all diversity. Most times when we think of diversity we think of the obvious things like Black people, gay people and minorities. What we fail to realize is that people come from different backgrounds than we do, and we need to consider this when we deal with other people.
Being in a management position helped me realize that everyone can’t be managed the same. Being the oldest child in my family, who was the first to experience “the first” of most things, helped me to learn this.
Diversity is about acknowledging and embracing these different realities, not just regarding race or ethnicity, but the varied experiences that shape our lives.
Diversity isn’t about creating a culture where everyone is the same. It’s about celebrating the fact that we’re not the same, and that’s OK.
It’s about recognizing that people who didn’t grow up taking trips up north, or who weren’t raised in “traditional family structures,” have just as much to contribute to our community as anyone else.
Let’s look at diversity this week and try to understand that everyone is not the same, and many of us come from different backgrounds. I think once we take this view we would understand the world a little better.
This is what makes good leaders!