DIVERSITY
“One day my child came back from school and asked:
- Mum, what is a black man?
- A black person, where did you hear that?
- In the playground, there is a black girl.
- So what, my darling, what is it? What happened in the playground?
- I was playing with a girl and everyone told me not to play with her.
- Why not?
- Because she's black.
He didn't understand black, the colour. He is three years old; he can't understand. Black colour? the colours, but black on a human being? I still wonder what he imagined at that time.”
Theoretical Background
Diversity refers to the non-separation of sexes, meaning mixing females and males. For example, the so-called co-educational schools do not separate boys and girls. However, it is important not to confuse diversity with equality: equality refers to having an equal number of males and females in a group.
Diversity can also be social, racial, etc. and refer to grouping individuals regardless of their origin, culture, education, or social class.
In France, a recent debate on non-mixed groups has emerged, as the government wants to ban such gatherings reserved for people belonging to one or more social groups and considered oppressed or discriminated against. Some people defend them, as they foster discussion free of any systemic pattern of domination; for instance, a single-sex group will allow a wider freedom of speech for women, without any form of patriarcal domination induced by male presence. The French sociologist Christine Delphy defends this view: “The practice of non-mixity is the consequence of the theory of self-emancipation. Self-emancipation is the struggle by the oppressed for the oppressed (…) Intended non-mixity, political non-mixity, must remain the basic practice of any struggle. ” (extract of an interview for Le Monde, 2006)
