A couple of us were talking about work which touches on the topic of diversity.
Diversity is shaped by the identity and essentially the culture behind. I have always been fascinated by identity and its assembly into a culture, less so about diversity because the term "diversity" is overused in corporate.
Here is the article by BrainPickings that thoughtfully examine the construct of identity through the eyes of James Baldwin and Margaret Mead. It touches on manifestation of the identity in conversations, in the anonymity of the internet where one hide behind the veil to honour one's personhood.
Below are a few snippets:
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Mead and Baldwin first consider how identity’s contour is often shaped by the negative space around it:
Diversity is shaped by the identity and essentially the culture behind. I have always been fascinated by identity and its assembly into a culture, less so about diversity because the term "diversity" is overused in corporate.
Here is the article by BrainPickings that thoughtfully examine the construct of identity through the eyes of James Baldwin and Margaret Mead. It touches on manifestation of the identity in conversations, in the anonymity of the internet where one hide behind the veil to honour one's personhood.
Below are a few snippets:
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Mead and Baldwin first consider how identity’s contour is often shaped by the negative space around it:
BALDWIN: It takes a lot to wrest identity out of nothing…
MEAD: But nobody was talking about needing identity fifty years ago. We’ve started to worry about identity since people began losing it. And that gives us a new concept. And now you go back and work on it and figure out what your identity is. Fifty years ago you might have moved to Paris cause it was the thing to do. After all, lots of white writers went to Europe too, in order to understand America. But you wouldn’t have said the same thing about your identity fifty years ago.
[…]
The whole spirit of the North has been to keep other people out. It’s not only been about keeping out black people, it’s been about keeping out everybody… The North has always tried to establish its identity by cutting other people out and off.
[…]
The Northern identity is dependent upon whom you can keep out.
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Mead articulates this elegantly:
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Mead articulates this elegantly:
MEAD: You see, I think we have to get rid of people being proud of their ancestors, because after all they didn’t do a thing about it. What right have I to be proud of my grandfather? I can be proud of my child if I didn’t ruin her, but nobody has any right to be proud of his ancestors.
[…]
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But identity, Baldwin argues, isn’t something we are born with — rather, it is something we claim for ourselves, then must assert willfully to the world:
BALDWIN: You’ve got to tell the world how to treat you. If the world tells you how you are going to be treated, you are in trouble.