Beyond Diversity

12 Non-Obvious Ways To Build A More Inclusive World

Rohit Bhargava, Jennifer Brown

• Publisher: Ideapress Publishing
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781250307774
• eBook ISBN: 9781646870851
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Workplace Culture
• Index: Business

"A useful, forcefully written, and wide-ranging study of inequities—and how to fix them." — Kirkus Reviews

What if we could go beyond the conversation about diversity and take real action?

In early 2021, more than two hundred widely respected experts gathered virtually for the world's most ambitious conversation about diversity. Our aim was to do more than spotlight injustice. We challenged ourselves to imagine how to fix it. The dialogue brought together casting directors, bookstore owners, disabled leaders, healthcare professionals, students, VCs, standup comedians, chief diversity officers, pro gamers, archaeologists, government insiders, startup founders, and even a master puppeteer.

Now for the first time, these solutions are compiled into one groundbreaking volume organized into twelve powerful themes including: storytelling, technology, identity, retail, education and more. Each chapter paints a revealing picture of the world, how it is, how it could be and what needs to happen for us to get there. For newcomers to the topic of diversity, and DEI experts alike, this book offers a much-needed actionable blueprint for creating a more inclusive world for us all.

Beyond Diversity … The 12 Themes

Storytelling

Identity

Family

Culture

Education

Retail

The Workplace

Technology

Entrepreneurship

Leadership

Government

The Future

1

BEYOND DIVERSITY IN
STORYTELLING

“‘Diversity’ should just be called ‘reality.’ Your books, your TV shows, your movies, your articles, your curricula, need to reflect reality.”

— Tananarive Due, Author and American Book Award winner

Chapter Summary:

Representation in storytelling matters. The characters portrayed in fiction and the way cultures are covered in news media shape our perceptions of everything. An inclusive world must therefore start by reinventing the stories we choose to tell, consume and share.

How It Is …

In the final days of December each year, thousands of competitors gather in Saudi Arabia for the King Abdulaziz Falconry Festival. Known as the “sport of kings,” the ancient art of falconry uses trained raptors to hunt and return prey to captivity. It is a millennia-old sport practiced by cultures across the globe … and usually by men.

But in 2020, there was one participant among the many falconers at the event who made international headlines—Athari Alkhaldi, the first woman to ever qualify.¹

Alkhaldi herself recognized the significance of her entry: “With my participation … I proved I am here, that women can join this field, that it’s not only restricted to men,” she shared with global media while standing with her falcon, Ma’aned.

At approximately the same time, a British jockey named Rachael Blackmore broke another barrier by becoming the first woman to win the challenging Grand National horse race in England.² These types of barrier-breaking stories, once a rarity, now seem to be shared regularly.

A scan of worldwide media on any given day offers plenty of examples. A hip-hop musical from Puerto Rican musician Lin-Manuel Miranda passes $1B in revenue. African American poet Amanda Gorman is selected to speak at the 2020 US Presidential inauguration. Fifteen-year-old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg rises to international prominence, while referring to her diagnosis of Asperger syndrome as her “superpower.”

Taken together, these inspiring examples illustrate how storytelling can be the most potent way to celebrate progress, inspire change, and bring about a more diverse world.

They also raise an important question: what about the thousands of stories like these that remain untold? If stories shape our perceptions, then perhaps the stories we never hear shape our biases through the lack of awareness they perpetuate.

“Storytelling forces readers to come in and experience this entirely new world … it’s a place where we connect with one another on a human level.”

Samina Ali, Author, Curator, and Speaker

Beyond the stories we read, our worldviews commonly come from the movies we watch, the news we follow, or the events we attend (either virtually or in-person). We constantly surround ourselves with an ever-growing collection of stories. When told skillfully, they can offer us a sense of connection with others and a feeling of acceptance for ourselves.

All too often, however, the stories we hear aren’t being told by the people who have truly lived them. As a result, those same lived experiences can be marginalized or depicted in unrealistic ways.

When people’s stories are told from the perspective of an outsider, they can reinforce negative stereotypes.

In early 2020, we saw an example of this in the literary world: backlash brewed when a novel about a Mexican migrant journey called American Dirt was selected for Oprah’s Book Club.

It started with writer and podcaster Myriam Gurba calling out the book’s White author for her self-described ambition of giving voice to the “faceless brown mass” of migrants at the Mexican border.

Writing critically about the novel’s main character, Lydia, Gurba pointed out that she “experiences shock after shock when confronted with the realities of México, realities that would not shock a Mexican … she perceives her own country through the eyes of a pearl-clutching American tourist.”³

“As a Latina writer, I’m very often asked to make my stories more relevant … when the publishing industry is 80 percent White, what I’m really being asked to do is to make my stories more relevant to White people.”⁴

Julissa Arce, Author and Co-Founder of Ascend Educational Fund

The portrayal of non-White, one-dimensional characters like Lydia by White storytellers is not uncommon, and the implications of these portrayals are serious for the groups they are intended to represent. The history of film is filled with similar examples.

Native Americans have been typecast as barbaric warriors or enemies in Westerns. Men with Eastern European accents frequently play villains. Our stories cannot become more diverse and inclusive if the characters inside them are reduced to stereotypes.

When these biased portrayals carry over from fictional realities into lived ones through biased representation in the news media, the ramifications for real people can be life or death.

Nielsen, a media metrics comp...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Advance Praise:
• Copyright Page
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Authors’ Note
• Contributors
• Introduction
• Beyond Diversity …
• Conclusion
• Acknowledgments
• Appendix: Terminology
• About the Artist: Zharia Shinn
• Endnotes
• Index