" You Don't Look Like You Can Run A Marathon!" : Fat Girl Running

It doesn't take a diversity consultant to recognize that we are a country that is obsessed with body image. Irrespective of where you fall on the gender spectrum, each day we are all inundated with increasingly narrow notions of ideal beauty. The vast majority of these images, ironically, are digitally enhanced and simply unattainable- at least without the help of a doctor. Perhaps Cindy Crawford summed it up best when she noted, in reference to her own media images, " I wish I looked like Cindy Crawford." In other words, even super models envy the perfection of the computer-generated and digitally-enhanced images of themselves!

This can certainly seem overwhelming, both for young people as they construct ideas about their identity and beauty as well as for adults as we strive to maintain our individuality against the ubiquitous forces that conspire to define a single image of beauty. And  all within a consumerist framework!  Lest we forget, being beautiful usually requires buying a product or service. If anything, today's notion of beauty has little to do with "natural." Notwithstanding, there are increasing counternarratives that challenge this single story of beauty.

One such striking counternarrative is that of one of my dear friends from Oberlin Conservatory, Mirna Valerio, another fellow linguist, educator and musician. Mirna is also incredibly athletic, having always participated in some sport since middle school. Moreover, Mirna is unashamedly " not a little girl" and  can literally run circles around the best of us. When she isn't conducting her student choir at Rabun-Gap, traveling to Italy to perfect her already-fluent Italian, attending AP Spanish conferences or training for marathons in the woods, she chronicles her experience as a " Fat Girl Running". Take a look here:

Mirna Valerio's Blog

The title of my current blog entry is inspired by an anecdote that Mirna shares regarding the repeated surprise that she encounters of those who make assumptions about her athleticism based on THEIR perception of her body size. This "surprise" manifests in a perhaps well-intentioned but equally ill-placed, "You don't look like you can run a marathon!"  Wow, deconstruction of this comment merits an entire post until itself.

As it turns out, however, I'm not the only member of the Mirna Valerio Fan Club, as she was recently featured in a Wall Street Journal article that examines the benefits of exercise beyond weightloss.You can read the article here:

Weight Loss or Not, Exercise Yields Benefits- WSJ

So, if there are two insights that I hope we can all gain from this post it's that :

 a) Beauty comes in all shapes and sizes. Moreover, notions of beauty are a function of time and society. (Think about how Marilyn might be judged by contemporary standards. Ouch!) So find the inner-beauty AND outer-beauty that makes YOU happy.

b) Be mindful the next time you catch yourself about to make a correlation about someone's body size and your understanding about their lifestyle and/or athletic abilities. That "fat guy" or "fat girl" may just out run, outbike and outswim you in the next triathlon.

How Many Black Friends Do You Have?

Last week, in honor of Black History Month, Jimmy Kimmel and his crew took to the streets of Los Angeles to ask a simple question: " How many black friends do you have?"  Take a look:

http://www.complex.com/pop-culture/2015/02/jimmu-kimmel-asks-white-people-if-they-have-black-friends?utm_campaign=complexmag%2Bsocialflow%2B02%2B2015&utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social

The satirization of this question is ironic, funny, sad and instructive. Why? Because the number of black friends white people have has become a proxy for determining if whites are racist, at worst, or the degree to which they are "diverse, " at best. The irony is that, as demonstrated by one of the participant's in this video,research consistently indicates that an overwhelming majority of whites don't have poc in their network. A recent survey from the Public Religion Research Institute found that most white people have no black friends in their social circles.

You can read an article from the Washington Post here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/08/25/three-quarters-of-whites-dont-have-any-non-white-friends/


And for those who are interested in delving more into the data and methodology of the survey:
http://publicreligion.org/research/2014/08/analysis-social-network/


In short, we have an absurdly imperfect criterion to assess white people's racial conceptual frameworks, attitudes, beliefs and behaviors; an overwhelming white population that lies about the question because, in fact, they have no black people in their social networks, and a polarized society, along racial lines, regarding perceptions of the saliency of race. We a also know that authentic exposure to people of different backgrounds and cultures is critical to cultivating respect for difference. So instead of asking people how many black friends they have, maybe we should encourage ALL people to consider the nature of their social networks and reflect on how they learn about those who are different to them? The "how many black friends do you have?" ultimately serves no purpose besides promoting a fictitious sense of "diversity."

Why Diversity Doesn't Always Help!

So this is it-- my first blog post. After 5 years of serving as an independent resource to hundreds of schools in the US and abroad and 18 years of involvement in educational spaces dedicated to diversity and inclusion, I have finally "found the time" to create a blog. In the spirit of full transparency, I was also " strongly encouraged" by Joe Mazza, my STEM professor at University of Pennsylvannia, where I am currently a doctoral student.

While I don't regard myself as a "blogger" or "writer," per se,  I am nonetheless committed to my longstanding idea of providing a resource for educators, faculty and staff, and students interested in enriching community and promoting inclusion within their schools-- public, charter, independent, and parochial. I hope that this is the first of numerous relevant, meaningful and instructive posts to that end.

After successfully jumping the preliminary hurdles of identifying a platform and setting up the blog, I then encountered the challenge of naming the blog. This was doubly frustrating because I wanted to choose a name that could be easily recalled and searchable amidst the sea of blogs, but I also acknowledged the baggage associated with the word "diversity."I have found during the nearly two decades that I have have engaged in diversity work that "diversity" doesn't always help!

Why? In many circles, "diversity" functions as an identity and represents specific historically marginalized groups, ranging from blacks, Latinos, Asians, gays, Jews, women-- anyone but straight Christian men. While this view is rarely articulated, it is commonly understood. Think about it-- whom do you picture attending a "diversity" meeting? I've even heard a number of people proclaim , proudly, that they are "diverse"-- which suggests that other people aren't diverse. It makes sense, then, that people think that "diversity" initiatives only serve to benefit the "diverse." Or, that the goals of "diversity" aim to indict or take away from "non-diverse" people in support of "diverse" people.

Conversely, many have lamented not being able to attend diversity meetings as they felt that their needs and identity would not be addressed. So whom do diversity initiatives benefit employing this framing? It's time we rethink and reframe "diversity" if the goal is truly to promote fostering an inclusive, equitable and democratic society.

So part of intentionally naming this blog" Diversity Derrick" is an effort to reclaim and reframe "diversity" in a way that actually promotes increased humanity, while integrating the perspectives and experiences of all people. Diversity should ideally encompass all identities while also galvanizing people from all backgrounds to collaborate toward our common community goals. This also suggests acknowledging the ways in which identities are stratified in a society that don't value all people equally.

If you have 7 minutes, I invite you to watch my Tedx Talk where I explore this notion of the double-edged sword of diversity:

And with that, the first blog post has been written!
Derrick