Living in "Diversity" - What does it even mean?

As the move draws closer, (62 days left, but who's counting?) I've been thinking about the potential affect on Small Sun specifically and all of our children in general.

The word "diversity" seems to be a blanket that gets thrown wide to cover all sorts of ideas and ideals. In moving to Sydney we are moving to a city with greater statistical cultural and linguistic diversity but what will that mean for our lives? Small Sun will be leaving a city that is roughly 26% Black, and a place where he has Black friends, to a city where his ethnicity doesn't even show up on the census.

We want to live in a "diverse" city in that we want to be closer to a wider variety of languages, religions, and cultures, but in so doing we are potentially alienating our son from his heritage. How will that affect him?

What will it be like to go to school where there are children from many different backgrounds in the class, but none of them share his ethnicity? We have been told there are many mixed-race families and children so he will have that commonality, but how much will he relate to a friend with a Chinese-Australian parent and a European-Australian parent?

I am also concerned about the injustice that has occurred between the Aboriginal people and the European Australians. Will Small Sun be perceived as mixed-race Aboriginal? If so, how will that affect society's reaction to him as part of our family?

From my understanding (and small amount of experience), Australians are like the Dutch in their direct way of stating an opinion or asking a question. I am trying to prepare for questions and statements. I am trying to thicken my skin in anticipation.

In one way I think living outside of America (and especially the American South) will be advantageous to Small Sun. I hope he will have more opportunity to define his Blackness on his own terms, instead of coming under the weight of cultural expectation. At the same time, the assumptions about who he should be as a Black male may be even more stereotypical in OZ, if all they're seeing is American TV representations.

What if we choose a neighborhood where we are in the minority, but that majority ethnicity isn't necessarily keen about our family? I think as educated white people we have this ideal of living in diversity and we assume that everyone wants that. I think even in trying to reach out, we have walls all around us in the shape of mis-assumption and mis-application of ideals.

While I'm preparing the details of the move, the ramifications of the move are also rolling around in my head like golf balls in a shipping container. I guess someone should ask me about it in a year and I might have learned something.

Comments

[Dee Dyess]

need a article for school about diversity in families

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That's a truly remarkable amount of incompetence, hypocrisy, arrogance, and obliviousness to pack into a few short columns.
Imagine the state of reporting in the future, if this is the quality of instruction and example tomorrow's "journalists" are getting at the Elon journalism program today.