I am a college student and I came across a scholarship turned essay. Or in other means a scholarship where you have to write a ridiculous amount of words to get money. The scholarship was to write an essay on what diversity is and if it's good to have it. I've always known what diversity was but I wanted to look it up in the dictionary. The meaning for diversity is the state or fact of being diverse, different, or unlikeness. I agree with this definition but when it says unlikeness, that's where it gets me. When I think of diverse I, of course, think of an enormous room full of people of diffrent gender, religion, skin color, background, etc. But what is with the word unlikeness in there for. Yeah everyone isn't the same color or have the same ethnicity but if you think about it, there is a likeness is everyone of those people. Everyone has one quality or trait, there human beings. The word unlikeness doesn't affend me but i don't think it should be there. I believe that everyone has one similarity and that's that we are human beings. It doesn't matter whether your skin color is tan,black,or, maybe even, pink. Everyone is a human being and should be treated as equally as everyone else. I am writing this because, maybe, diversity is a good thing. I think life would be boring if everyone were the same color who had the same ethnic background. Diversity brings some life into the world or better yet some color. With that said diveristy, for me, is a good thing.
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Scientists tell us that genetic difference (diversity) between a white person and a black person is so trivial it is insignifcant. There are a few trivial differences for example some blacks are more prone to sickle cell anemea. Irish people often look Irish and Italians often are recognizeably Italian. I could go on but you get the point. These are the types of differences that are normal in isolated populations but they are hardly significant indicators of diversity.
Race in itself has little to do with the kind of diversity that makes a college interesting. At most it makes a room full of people LOOK or APPEAR different.
Diversity of experience and diversity of ideas are really the far more interesting and significant types of diversity. After all you don't learn much by looking at people. You learn by talking with them and sharing ideas.
Race or ethnicity may play a role in experience such as blacks being discriminated against. Experience shapes ideas so we could expect people of a similar race to have ideas different from those who had not had those experiences.
On the otherhand, race or ethnicity is not the only thing that determines experience and ideas. For example, Affirmative Action has been around since the 1960s and some blacks are moving into their third and fourth generations as successful members of the middleclass (or better). Despite their skin pigmentation, these people probably have less in common with ghetto blacks then they do with whites of similar economic and social status. And likewise poor whites might find more commonality of experience and thought with ghetto blacks then they do with richer people of their same race.
College admissions officers often lose sight of these difference and admit people on the basis of race to meet their idea of the "appearance" of diversity. It is frankly easier for them to recruit qualified minorities who will succeed in their schools from the ranks of the middleclass and privledged foreignors on student visas then it is to find qualified applicants from the ghetto. They essentially substitute the appearance of diversity for the reality of diversity which is found in ideas and experience not appearance.
I personally am half hispanic. My mother was born in Cuba and came to America before Castro came to power. She attended Welsley and got her PHd from Harvard so she is well assimulated. I look white and nobdoy knows otherwise unless I bring it up. I was raised in a small white town in Wyoming and everybody I know is white. I have absolutely nothing in common with anybody Hispanic. I can check that box on a college application and get an admissions preference and possibly a race specific scholarship but from the perspective of the kind of diversity that matters the school would just be getting another privledged white person.