DEI helps us learn about the wonderful tapestry of Kentucky and the world | Opinion

One of the changes in Kentucky over the almost 50 years that I have lived here is the wonderful growing diversity, equity, and inclusion in Lexington and at the University of Kentucky where I taught for more than 30 years.

DEI has become a bogeyman for Republican legislators who have proposed Senate Bill 6 and Senate Bill 93 and now House Bill 9. However, since I was a social studies teacher educator, diversity simply meant to me that those of us who teach need to be of diverse backgrounds like our students and have ourselves learned, are continuing to learn, and will teach about the whole and/or pieces of United States history and the history of the world. Warts and all! Early on I suggested students should consider taking one of the late Dr. Bob Olson’s courses on the Middle East. I was excited when Dr. Gerald Smith returned to his alma mater to teach Black History in 1994 and I could urge my advisees to take his courses.

It was helpful, of course, for students coming from diverse backgrounds to have the support of the Appalachian Center, the Martin Luther King Jr. Center, the International Student office, the Office for Students with Disabilities, now part of the Office for Institutional Diversity. As there were scholarships for athletes and merit scholars, there were also scholarships to encourage students of color who in the not so distant past could not attend UK.

Currently, in terms of diversity, we can celebrate that a student at UK might have a professor who was born in China or India. A student who grew up in a mostly white, small town in rural Kentucky might sit next to a refugee student from Democratic Republic of Congo who grew up in Lexington. Teacher education students may be communicating with Spanish speaking students in the elementary classroom in which they are observing, then teaching.

The concept of equity adds an understanding that there are individual and group differences such as nationality of origin, religion, gender, disability, and importantly the social construct of race, all demanding equality of opportunity. These differences mean, for instance, that my granddaughter who has a physical disability needs a handicapped parking place at the university she attends. She has become an active member of the disabled student group at her university’s Diversity Center!

I note that UK’s Office of Institutional Diversity current events page includes Global Hangout Movie Night with S’Mores, Farm to Fork Lunch Pick Up, Pro-Life Wildcats Tabling, The Cultured Kitchen-Soul Food Dinner, Sister Circle, and First Generation Student Services Valentine’s Day Bingo.

As well as our grand diversity that requires equity — equality of opportunity for each of us — we are all in this world together. That is inclusion! A Nigerian proverb of the Igbo people says, “The world is like a Mask dancing. You do not see it well if stand in one place.” Another African proverb says, “A person who has not visited other villages will think only his or her mother’s cooking is sweet.”

Kentucky senators and representatives, please let universities teach and students learn — and vote! UK’s Office for Institutional Diversity’s webpage states “Bringing Together Many People, One Community.” That seems like a fine goal, perhaps for our state as well.

As for me, I will now read recent Kentucky Poet Laureate Crystal Wilkinson’s newest book, “Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts.” I want to try her recipe for the Fried Plantains that I learned to love when I lived in West Africa.

Angene Wilson is Professor Emerita of UK’s College of Education and co-author of Voices from the Peace Corps: Fifty Years of Kentucky Volunteers and Voices of African Immigrants in Kentucky: Migration Identity, and Transnationality, published by University Press of Kentucky.

This story was originally published January 30, 2024 at 9:02 AM.