As the only biracial person in my family, I have always been aware of my own diversity. Whether displayed by strangers’ assumptions that I was adopted or merely by looking in the mirror, needless to say it was not difficult to tell. In a similar manner, the community I grew up in lacked diversity; until the 8th grade I was one of two African-Americans at my school and the only one amongst my neighbors. This led me to be ashamed of who I was and it was not until a couple years ago when I took a class on the social justice of the 1960s that I was able to let go of that emotion. Those experiences made me appreciate diversity more and realize its importance. I have since learned that diversity does not have a single definition, which is rather fitting for a word that essentially means variety. Diversity does not simply mean the color of one’s skin or ethnicity; it is much more than that. All of our differing experiences and traits culminate into each of our individual outlooks, which give the world perhaps one of the most important things: diversity of thought. …show more content…
Usually, my different way of thinking benefits me, an exception would be when I can only see the most complicated solution to a problem rather than a more obvious and simple answer (specifically, geometry proofs come to mind). However not unlike the way my physical differences from the general society made me feel as if there were parts of me that I needed to hide, I was not always so willing to share my ‘out of the box’ ideas because I felt that people would not understand me. Eventually I wasn’t able to keep them to myself anymore; my ideas were not always received with perfect understanding but that did not deter me because I realized that I had something unique that other people did