Many people question why it’s important to have a group of diverse people around you. In fact, many colleges use it as a selling point to get students to come to their schools. But why should we care?
In my opinion, being around a diverse group of people—BIPOC, LGBTQ+, different religions, and more—can make one more empathetic with others. And I’m not trying to say that if you live in a predominantly specific area, such as a predominantly white neighborhood, that it automatically makes you unempathetic. Instead, being surrounded by others who have different backgrounds, experiences, and struggles exposes you to more ideas of different people; this, in the long run, can make one more understanding and compassionate. But how?
Well, you see that people have these differences in their lives and can learn from them to be kind to others—even if those differences are ones you do not experience. You learn to be more inclusive of everyone around you, no matter who they are or what they identify as.
There is no science that I know of behind this, but this is what I have learned and observed on my own terms. I hope that you will consider surrounding yourself with different types of people (but not as tokenism, of course. But that’s a subject for another article).