A Child’s Ode to Diversity

When you wind in a deep-billowed wistful along neural pathways carved for current, swimming-forward things, urging the inside of the ready walls with your tap-tapping misty reverie back–toward childhood, particularly–tis interesting what your mind will recall.I remember my Mum and Grandmum, themselves immigrants from global South America, gently querying me one afternoon–with their xylophonic accents lilting comfortingly all about my ears–as to the actual racial composition of my de facto-diverse, kindergarten.

We were a household of majority independent, intelligent, and grace-filled females, divergent in culture from most around us–and, besides, I was already quite quick in the head, voraciously reading and writing by the age of 3–so their questions were both pertinent and comprehended well by me.Howe’er what I had not learned to do in my then yet short series of moons was to speak in the polemics of racelikely because such matters, because they were so endemic to, and painfully experienced by, my family in their new environs, were not discussed anywhere within the range of my young spirit.Instead, I was keenly aware of countries of origin (because of my Mum and Grandmum’s foreignness, and that also, of my father’s), class, religion (you might be amazed, if outside of such, at the separations that exist from one Christian sect to the other. Try growing up Roman Catholic and Anglicanthe latter just an offshoot of the former, but in theory npractice, worlds apartas I did, and yet spending many a happy Saturday eating amongst the chosen ones in their Jewish delis), gender, and to a certain extent, colour.And e’en the direst of divisions caused by some of those were somewhat shielded from the just ex-post-tot meas I would have a whole lifetime to be, in part, defined by them.

So, innocently to their inquiry, with a mouthless of still-missing baby teeth, I announced my categorizations of my kindergarten colleagues by flavours–that were directly assigned to their unique, individual skin colourings.E.g., some were peach, others vanilla, some caramel, others mocha, some chocolate,and yet others, I told them, seemed like a combination of certain flavours, etc.God Bless my Mum and Grandmum–they laughed so heartily that evening, as they were both endeared by my sweetness, surprised by my specificity, and in part, also now uncertain as to what at least some of the children therein–who were apparently the result of a mixture of races–exactly were.There is more to the story, which is as compelling and telling a political science point as its initial portions, but I shall save that, like a good lollipop, for later.

The key, the secret’, i.e., the moral of my reverie, is that children become in racial consciousness what they hear and experiencebut for lack of such, by divine default, I believe, happily and organically accept all as themselvesthat of being merely global variations along one, tremendous theme.Implanted in their little computers is the genetic whatsoever with which they entered this world, and the whatsoever that is swirling about their portion of the universe–and by the latter favours or faults do they typically later spout either their tolerance or totalitarianism. Thereby, whilst we adults duly trot along, transforming the tenor of human interactions with our restrictive codes and kumbaya processes, we should also be mindful of what is being downloaded into the minds of children.After that photo-debacle by the still-young Spanish Men’s and Women’s Basketball team last month, at the Olympics in Beijing, my thoughts (and the verbalizations of others, apparently) have had due cause to hearken on such themes–and to revisit what, resultantly, I believe, as regards both diversity and its suggested, supportive behavioursand how/why I have come to believe such (and such mercy I ne’ertheless wish for them–per my spirituality, per my calling–that their transgression be forgiven, and they merely learn the necessary lesson, and further by it, become spiritually enlightened).

I, an attorney, spent my whole pre-entrepreneurial career in the field of all-rights-based ADR, before transitioning to this differently-approached ADR mission.And I believe twas because of the inexplicable divine participation of all around the young mee’en strangersspecifically keeping the gravity of their ?