Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Not Like Us

{Image Credit}
When I was a little girl I remember watching Sesame Street and being hyper-aware that the city scenes shown were very different from where I was living. I was amazed to hear Spanish and see urban scenes with kids playing in fire hydrants and living in high rise buildings. This clip in particular where the little girl is sent to the store to pick up "a loaf of bread, a container of milk and a stick of butter" completely blew my child mind. Who would send a child to the store ALONE?! 

Where I grew up you were either white, black or mixed. I only knew one West Indian family and there were 2 Asians in my graduating class. Needless to say I did not have a diverse upbringing. But there was something planted in me by watching Sesame Street and I knew that when I grew up I wanted to go to that place which, to me, seemed very exciting and magical. When I finally had that opportunity 5 years ago I was ecstatic! I'm so happy to look around and see my daughter surrounded by a rainbow of friends and diversity. Some friends have two moms or two dads while others come from multi-racial families. What a different experience than what I knew as a child! 

While watching one of Mitt Romney's election videos I noticed it was devoid of diversity. At first I thought it was a joke or an SNL skit, but realized this was an official video from his campaign. Our country is becoming more and more diverse and in this election year it baffled me that he would have a video that blatantly ignored this. (You can see the video and read more commentary about that here.)

With our friends and family at Club Brava in Puerto Rico the night before our wedding
Regardless of politics, I've always been hyper-aware when people hang around only people who are like them. I'm a psychology major so I get the us vs. them mentality, but in this day and age we really have no excuse not to broaden our surroundings. Mr. Love Bird and I used to host get-togethers when we lived in Manhattan and my friends would always comment about how wonderful it was that we had a diverse group of friends in ethnicity, live-stage and beliefs. Our wedding reflected that as well. It is very important to us to have a range of friends who are not like us.

I love it! 

How do you celebrate diversity?