Teaching About Diversity and ‘Optics’.

When Diversity is Just About ‘Optics’ it Doesn’t Count

This article brings to light the issues of diversity and inclusion in today’s corporate world and the phrase, “bad optics”. It mentions the #metoo movement, the Starbucks lawsuit, and other various conflicts that were given massive media attention. The author proclaims that when situations such as these arise, the social “progressivism” that follows isn’t always as benevolent as it may seem.The author separates progressives into two groups, the first being those who believe in diversity and equality for the true benefits that it brings despite the uncomfortableness that can sometimes follow. The second group declares themselves progressives and hire women and minorities, simply to keep good PR. Overall I think this is a very important article to consider at a time when society is seeing — and expecting — social changes of this type.

When presenting this article to my students I would hope that they would ask questions such as:

• “What group do I honestly see myself relating to the most?”
• “Am I uncomfortable in situations where I am the minority? Have I ever been in a situation where I was the minority? How did I react?”
• “Does it always take a very public, very visual incident such as the #metoo movement to cause this type of social change?”
• “How could I individually influence a workplace that was hoping to achieve inclusion of diverse groups? How could I be a powerful and positive contributor?”

The Grand Challenges that this article connects to are:

• Valuing World Cultures
• Understanding the American Experience

A sub bullet that could also be addressed is the generation of learning experiences that invite students to pursue the creation of knowledge as well as providing provocation for reflection and activism.

Montana Social Studies Content Standard 1: Students access, synthesize, and evaluate information to communicate and apply social studies knowledge to real world situations.

Upon Graduation — End of Grade 12: synthesize and apply information to formulate and support reasoned personal convictions within groups and participate in negotiations to arrive at solutions to differences (e.g., elections, judicial proceedings, economic choices, community service projects).

The strategy from 50 Routines that I would like to use with this article is Text Impressions. I would write the words, Progressives, Optics, Inclusion, Starbucks, Diversity and Knapsack up on the board. I would then give my students 5–10 minutes to write a short descriptive passage of what they thought the article would be about. We would then complete the activity by having a couple volunteers read what they wrote down before we begin reading the article as a class. I think this is a fun activity that has the students engaged before even reading the text.