Jambo, A day of Multiculturality

Today was our school's Journée Multiculturel or Diversity Day, as we like to call it in The United States (or on the Office). It was a concept that I was very familiar with, but was given a different feel in a foreign country, and being a "diverse" member of SFX1.

We started the day with by watching the film "Bend it like Beckham" For those who are unfamiliar with the premise of the movie it goes something like this. A girl named Jess lives in England and is a member of a very traditional Indian family. Her passion is playing soccer (futbol) but it is forbidden by her parents. She meets a white girl and joins an all girls team. Conflict arises of course because of a boy and because Jess has dishonored her family by disobeying their wishes and complicating the marriage of her sister. I think that this film could be connected to the theme of the day, because it had two clashing cultures (traditional Indian and contemporary British) which were brought together by athletics (more importantly soccer because it is an international sport)

One of the interesting aspects of our day of multiculturalism was that there was a large focus on the multiculturality, which surrounds us. At Delta when we had diversity day, we looked a many different ways that people can be diverse and in some ways it was not directly connected to us. In Belgium, we talked about people's backgrounds and countries of origin, and there was a representative of the culture there to speak. There was a presentation on the different clothes in different cultures, and all of the clothes belonged to the students that were presenting. We saw outfits from Morocco, Kenya, Japan, France, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It was also a very well organized day that was very inclusive to everyone at SFX.

At the same time, there was not as much as an emphasis on different ways that people can be diverse. The emphasis rested only on what kind of background people had. In addition, I thought that they day could have added an aspect to how we can bring diversity together, not to homogenize it, but to learn and share the differences of individuals. In a country where I find there to be a different genre of racism, I am surprised that there is not a stronger push for acceptance of unique qualities. I would think that there is such a strong push for acceptance and equality in the United States, because of our past with silencing this right for different types of individuals. In school the subject of our history of oppression is frequently brought up but we are also opening discussion on how we can man amends for our wrongs and strive for a more socially just community. There are many extremist views in the United States, from the most liberal of democrats, to the Grand Dragon of the KKK, however I have not yet encountered such differences in the views of the Belgian citizens. It is perhaps because of this that there is less of a discussion of different forms of diversity, because of the less extreme differences in views.