Did you know April was National Celebrate Diversity Month? Great! But do you know how to celebrate National Celebrate Diversity Month or why you should even bother?
The goal of “celebrating diversity” is to better understand others; to find the connections and shared experiences that connect you to those who may not look like you, speak your same language, or worship the same deities; and to develop relationships with people outside of your own tribe that can be used to further social progress. Suffice it to say, racial harmony is not a word one would use to describe life in the United States. In fact, statistics from the Equal Justice Initiative show that race-based hate crimes are on the rise in the United States and African Americans are most often the targets. Meanwhile, hate crimes against Asian-Americans are also increasing.
How does a Holiday Get Rid of Hate?
First of all, National Celebrate Diversity Month is not a traditional holiday. It’s not like Christmas or Thanksgiving where you spend a day, eating, watching football, or spending your entire paycheck buying presents for all of your cousins. Like Autism Awareness Month (which is also in April by the way) or Librarian Appreciation Day, National Celebrate Diversity Month is supposed to act as a month-long reminder for Americans to DO something to counterbalance the racial animosity that permeates our culture. We are a diverse nation, but we have yet to figure out how to embrace that diversity and use it to our advantage. We’re still too tribal, too paranoid, and too skeptical to consider a better, more just society where ethnic and racial differences aren’t stigmatized and feared.
National Celebrate Diversity Month is meant to nudge us into doing things that will help us embrace differences, learn about cultures and communities different than our own, and take action that will help level the playing field between those with access and privilege and those without.
What Does a Diversity Celebration Look Like?
What does a diversity celebration look like in action? It doesn’t have to be a party. Celebrating diversity can still involve your favorite activities though, like eating delicious food and binge watching shows on Netflix, but these things have to have a different level of intention.
Here are six ways you can celebrate National Celebrate Diversity Month this year:
Food for Thought
You have two options with the food route. Option one: Go eat at a restaurant where the cuisine is from a culture you’ve never tried before. Do a little research before you go so you know what dishes you should order and what the culinary traditions are in that culture. Going to Taco Bell or Chipotle don’t count. Go for authentic examples of the cuisine you’re seeking.
Option two has you going into your own kitchen and trying your hand at making some food from a culture other than your own. In addition to breaking up the monotony of your regular menu rotation, trying out a recipe or a meal from a culture might require shopping at an ethnic grocery store, researching ingredients and otherwise immersing yourself in that culture. Granted your food might not come out perfectly, but it’s more the experience than the final product we care about. If you need some recipe ideas, check out this post where I recommend a bunch of different multicultural cookbooks to get your juices flowing!
You Need Diverse Books
This needs no deep explanations. Read a book – both fiction and nonfiction count – and learn about a different culture. If you need suggestions for books to read that qualify as diverse reads, check out my suggestions in the My American Meltingpot bookstore. Another option to make reading about different cultures a more meaningful experience, is to read with a friend or a few friends and then discuss the book together. If you don’t have any friends, then look for a book club that focuses their book picks on books from diverse authors. And then be sure to participate in the discussions and activities. Elizabeth Gilbert has a book club called Onward where they only read books by Black women writers. You can also check your local library for other options for group read-alongs with featured authors from diverse backgrounds.
Netflix and Learn
Netflix is good for so much more than weekend binging. Not only can you find movies and TV series that feature casts and characters that may be culturally different than your own – like Unorthodox or Maya and the Three for example – you can choose to watch some of the films and TV shows from other countries. These offerings aren’t made for an American audience and may require you to, *gasp*, read subtitles, but you’ll get a much better immersion into a culture that way, rather than a sanitized American view of the other. Bonus, if you watch in the original language, you can also practice your foreign language skills.
Take a Class
You need to educate yourself to be a better global citizen. Try a language class, a cooking class, an Irish Dance class, or maybe a history class. If you know nothing about the origins of the war in Ukraine, try taking a class at your local college about Eastern European history or the Soviet Union. The best thing about taking a class (in person or online), in addition to getting smarter, is that you’ll inevitably meet other people who might widen and diversify your circle of contacts and friends. Remember, the class doesn’t have to begin and end in April. This month is simply the month you commit to finding and signing up for the class, even if it starts in June.
Listen and Learn from Anti-Racist Experts
One of the ways you can celebrate diversity, is to learn more about what it takes to make meaningful diversity efforts a reality. Usually that means engaging in anti-racism work. There are a lot of dedicated anti-racism and D&I activists out there who use podcasts to share their stories and educate the masses. You can educate yourself, while also being entertained, by listening to their shows. If you need suggestions, try starting with Speaking of Racism, ColorBlind, or CodeSwitch
If Money Talks, Make it Say Something about Diversity
Not everything you do to celebrate diversity has to take up a lot of your time. In less than five minutes, you can make a donation to an organization that supports diversity initiatives in the arts, in education, in business or politics. You can make a donation to a politician who stands on a platform of diversity initiatives. You can make it a point during the month of April to make all of your regular purchases from businesses owned by people of color. Like try Yumday for snacks. And My Happy Flo for period products. Or Puzzles of Color for Puzzles. By financially supporting businesses run by people of color, you are literally helping to level the playing field and filling in the wealth gap between white people and people of color. And that my friend, is how we celebrate diversity.
Get the Whole Family Involved in the Diversity Celebrations
Fun fact, all of these activities can be done with your entire family. By all means, get the kids involved and plant the seeds of doing diversity early. Besides, everything on this list is fun and enjoyable, in my opinion at least. So, get to it. Let April be the month where you go diversity crazy. Learn, laugh, explore and celebrate the beauty and the benefits in difference.
