Diversity, diversidad, diversidade, diversité, diversitas, sokfeleseg

Diversity, diversidad, diversidade, diversité, diversitas, sokfeleseg

I wanted to share some thoughts as the month of the diversity comes to an end.

I just finished listening to Trevor Noah´s “Borna crime” book. It is fascinating and it reads like a Netflix series. Please read (or listen to it) ASAP!

It tells the story of Trevor, being born a mixed race kid during South Africa´s Apartheid, when having mixed (or colored, as he describes it) kids was illegal (aka having sex with someone that was from a different race was illegal).

Other than listening to his amazing story, I couldn´t help but wonder how diversity makes us stronger. And more resilient.

Trevor´s is a story of a kid born to a black mom and a white dad, the latter who was never too close to his child. Women in charge raised him. His mom, one of those force-of-nature woman, raised him with almost nothing but focused on getting him a decent education and keeping him out of trouble. (Spoiler alert: as a child, once Trevor misbehaved, she yelled at a stranger to catch Trevor running on the streets, saying that he tried to steal from her!)

Trevor grew up to becoming one of the best and funniest comedians I´ve known and finally made it as the host of the Daily Show (following my previously favorite comedian of all times, Jon Stewart).

The day I was finishing the book, I kept coming back to Barak Obama´s “Dreams of my father”. Also a “colored” child, Obama survived a difficult childhood being raised by his single mom, living all over the world and adapting to different cultures, languages, traditions.

This kept me thinking: there´s got to be something really great about diversity. It makes us stronger, different, it pushes us and enables us to be more resilient to what´s different. Resilience, resilience, resilience.

So why is it so difficult to embrace it? Why do we still see all whites or all blacks in restaurants in cities as thriving as Atlanta? Why I am still the only woman in the room in so many executive meetings all over the world? Why am I being asked for my boss because top executives believe I am someone else´s secretary (too young, too female to lead?) Why are we still amused when two men kiss in public? Why do governments insist on building walls? We should push us to hire more diverse teams, not only because it is the right thing to do, but because it is the smart thing to do.

My niece in NYC corrected her nanny once. She was playing with two Barbies pretending they were about to get married. Her nanny sad: “Those are two girls, your Barbie should marry a man.” Mi niece ran to the living room and brought a picture of a distant cousin who had just married another girl and replied: “but look, women CAN marry women”.

6 years old. Enough said.