Diversity

This was a topic I was waiting to hear more from...

Coming personally from a very diverse community at home, in school, among my friends and work. It may seem that diversity comes easier to me.
I do accept everyone as they are, and I do acknowledge their differences and gain more understanding and compassion towards them in that way. I strongly believe that there is a difference between understanding diversity and living diversity.

Understanding diversity is when I do know that people are different than me due to their color, race, ethnicity, gender, social class and so on.
But living diversity is a much harder task. I may accept people for being different but to which extend I allow that difference to merge within my norm.

Diversity is like paint spilled with different colors everywhere, could those colors stay away from each other for long or will there be a merging point?

When we decide to live in a world of diversity, then we need to accept that this will sooner or later be merging and that should be accepted not cause conflict.

In another class, we were watching a documentary about Serbia, Yogoslavia and Bosnia and what astonished me was a girl who says that, I live in Bosnia but I am Serbian. That does not mean I am Bosnian because I am Serbian, but when I go to Serbia, I'm not Serbian because i'm Bosnian , then who am I.

This is what we create when we only acknowledge diversity and not believe in it and accept it.

A great struggle faced with diversity is religion.

Many religions defy and go against each others in belief, then how can we unify and still allow freedom and equality and not become the next France? 

I must quote Mike and say, those past two presentation classes made me pregnant with thought! I believe I will be even more pregnant when I try to fulfill those ideologies i have into Humanity. 

How can I allow people to freely express themselves while respecting others but at the same time make them understand and believe that if someone wants to merge those two extremes then it is acceptable even though the norms might go against it. 

For example, I might know and live with GLBT people but my religion defies it. I might choose to accept it as long as it does not affect me personally, but what will happen when it is merge into my family? 

I believe many of us may accept something on concept but when it comes to actually being a part of it, it is different. 

To be honest, I do not think that any level of awareness is enough to make people accept and appreciate others for who they are. What should we do?? is a big question mark I still hold???