Sick to Walgreen's (with a Diversity Diversion)

Okay, so I haven't updated WaHo Life in a while.  And I'm a little at a loss of what to write about, so I'm just going to spend the next fifteen minutes writing about my life in LA for use in my possible book about service years in America.

This will be from the section entitled "Shredded Cheese, Trash Bags, and Sour Patch Kids."

I'm exhausted.  Scratch  that.  I was exhausted three days ago and fifty work hours ago.  Right now, I'm bitter and vitriolic, and I don't even know what I'm doing.  I'm stumbling down the road with my roommate Sophie and our friend Joe.  Sophie is in her usual state.  Joe and I are comparing notes about our lives working in Watts schools.  I'm telling him about why the double D's quit.  D-female quit because of some unhealed family wounds.  I totally understand how that happens.  And I don't know if it was entirely unresolved issues or if something new came up or if CYLA just wasn't her place, but she quit.  I'm not going to say that she and I were best friends, but we got along okay.  Had that common interest in theatre. 

But the other D...Lisa Bohn once told me that "two perfectly good midgets could have been made out of the skin wasted" on her philosophy professor.  While boy-D wasn't this malevolent, he was rather useless.  Always asleep in circle.  He was the poster child for diversity.  Wore a wig everyday.  Multi-racial.  Bisexual.  Bipolar.  But, being the poster child for diversity isn't enough to get you employed.  Or at least it shouldn't be.  The only reason your differences ever become a difference at CYLA is when they are an issue.

(For instance, we watched the documentary Made in America;  Bloods and Crips about ten days ago at the office.  Regardless of what you think of the movie, it's well made and it raises some interesting questions about the interconnected relationship of race history, crime, and gang culture.  Does oppression bring out violent responses?  Are whites responsible for gangs by jailing or eliminating more organized and peaceful black movements?  Are the conspiracy theorists correct?  Were gangs inevitable?  And, with a group of people who don't see color, all of the sudden color was the issue to talk about.  And everyone was very conscious of where they sat on the color divide.  So anyone not black had to be careful about what they said, regardless of the aptitude of the statement.  So many people responded with emotion instead of reality or intellect.  God, that's why those conversations degenerate into uselessness.  If everyone can't say what they think realistically, then all of our walls stay up.  Diversity is a goal.  It's not a location that's easy to stay on top of it.

After all, what is the goal of diversity?  Making everyone able to work together?  Making sure we all understand each other?  Or just looking like we come from all places?  Is diversity an appearance or a reality?  What does it mean?  I don't know.  But CYLA tries to hit it really hard.  So, that's something I'll have to attack more in the future.  Figure out on my Idealist's Journey path...but certainly not in group.  Note to self: figure out what diversity means to you.  Then, get someone not like you to agree.)

To Be Continued.