Hello everyone. I’m one of the non-editorial interns here at Diversity Central. I usually don’t write much, but we have looked into the blog as a perfect place for us young interns to discuss our personal experiences and opinions of diversity in a more casual manner.

 

As you know, Diversity Central is a publishing company that provides resources to help businesses build inclusive and diverse workplaces. Honestly, when I first joined as an intern about half a year ago I was surprised that this was still necessary. I was very, very lucky growing up. I never at all thought that I was at a disadvantage by being born as a Chinese-American or female. I instead felt extremely fortunate: I embraced my heritage and American upbringing as having the best of two worlds. I thought issues of identity and social injustice were topics from the distant past, only relevant in the form Amy Tan books on the school’s mandatory reading list. Those struggles had no bearing on my Pacific Northwest life in the 90’s. My adolescent cultivation of identity, while fundamentally tied to my ethnic background, was not constrained by where my parents came from.

 

I went to college in southern California, where Asian-Americans can hardly be called a minority. I studied cognitive science which, more than anything, is about learning about people. If there’s only one thing to take away from any category of brain studies, it’s that human brains are among the most adaptable and plastic: depending on the environment a person will develop in completely different ways in order to adapt. It seems obvious. After all, adaptation, whether you believe in the theory of evolution or not, the basis of survival.

 

So as I graduated and attempted to enter the job market, I was baffled at the how unbalanced the American workplace really is. I couldn’t believe that even today, there is a huge possibility that I won’t make as much as my male peers, or might not be hired at all because of my name?? It’s discouraging, not just for me or people like me, but for American companies. Isn’t a workplace like a mini environment? It seems only natural that a variety of people would encourage innovation and growth.

 

But I don’t believe that approaching the issue of workplace diversity is effective when approached from angles based on shallow, immediately perceptible features like race and gender. I believe that our idea of ”diversity” needs to extended towards the scope of individual personality. We love the individual in America, or so we say, and individuals are as variable as every possible combination of cultural, societal, and biological backgrounds, including race, gender, and sexuality. Each combination has to survive in its own kind of environment and thus brings different strengths (and weaknesses) to the collective table. There’s no reason that any person should be refused an opportunity just because of a feature they were born with.

 

This blog will show you that I, and others in my generation entering society, certainly won’t stand to be left out of anything.