Regarding Diversity

A right-wing blog sponsored by the Spokesman-Review posed the following question: "With students forced to pay exorbitant amounts of money for tuition and books to obtain a sheepskin, should [universities] basic requirements for graduation include a course in diversity?"

There's a decided lack of symmetry in the responses. Make your

You can imagine my response [a minority opinion]:

"College is a little late to try and teach cultural sensitivity."

Right, which is why we should be teaching about other cultures from Kindergarten on. I went to high school in North Spokane County, where indians were called prairie niggers, black dolls could be found hanging from lockers and my brother, adopted from Veracruz, Mexico--an American since 3 months--was regularly accosted.

Hate stems from ignorance, so to combat hate we must first combat ignorance. This should begin in the cradle. Sadly, often it does not. But if not, and we are a nation committed to equal rights and respect for all our nation's inhabitants, we must begin the education in Kindergarten, from day one.

But since education is so woefully underfunded, and we can barely teach our children the multiplication tables, let alone the similarities between Chrisitianity and Islam, then I pray to God that someone, SOMEWHERE, will take the time to get people to learn about something other than their own culture.

We decry the Islamic Madras schools for teaching falsehoods about America, but we allow falsehoods about Islam to penetrate the popular culture without seeking to correct it with education.

I went to Gonzaga, where I had to take two classes in diversity. One was taught by a Native American, the other by a Native Chinese. In them I learned about 6 thousand years of culture, art and philosophy I had never even heard mentioned anywhere before. It was stunning the differences I saw in these cultures, but even more stunning were the similarities.

I learned things about people I honestly wouldn't have taken the time to learn on my own. My life is greatly enriched for it and I was never once chastized for being white.

At the same time I had the courage to admit that Europeans and their decendents haven't been perfect.

Diversity, at its best, isn't about placing blame or glorifying one culture above the other, it is about understanding that, in a world full of so many imperfect people of so many different colors and beliefs, the only way to survive is to understand and respect one another.