Arjun Khemani

It feels great to see more and more people and large organizations take giant leaps forward in making the world a more diversely thriving place. We’re all, as a species finally beginning to see the effects of having different people with their valuable distinct perspectives to work and be friends with, and that’s amazing!

To put it simply, there are two reasons to diversify, from two different ways of thinking. The first is the rationalist mind. The rationalist mind looks at diversity being a mutually (and universally) beneficial thing of mixing up of ideas and perspectives.
The other one is the emotional mind. The emotional and more humane mind sees that it’s just wrong to discriminate between ethnicities, etc. and that at the end of the day, “they” are “just like us” and have feelings and desires to belong and be accepted just like us.
I think both ways are equally good to look upon at this subject and it purely depends on the individual person which lens to choose from to look at diversifying with.

But in organizations and businesses I feel that the main rationalist reason for diversity prospers more.

Although it’s great to see people with opposite genders, differing religious beliefs, different colors of skin and people from different ethnicities getting well together—in the workspace as well as in private life—I sense something missing.

We don’t talk much about kids, children, teenagers and students on the subject of inclusion. Mostly we tend to overlook opinions and perspectives of kids and fail to believe or really take them seriously. Oh and I can speak from good enough near past- and present-memory experience on this subject, since I’m sort of just a kid. I think the primary reason more people don’t talk about kids (or rather a little bigger children or teenagers) being “included” etc. is because we think that we need to teach the children, not learn from them. When that’s just NOT the case! Also the reason may be because early teenagers and late children really don’t get a shot at business or any big real decision-making stuff or responsibility because of well-thought government laws of not allowing children to work before 18 (or 16 in other places). So children are completely out of the question in terms of inclusion in business and that’s fair enough really.

But the real part of the problem is just not listening to kids. For kids, everything is so new and so “curiosity-sparkling”. It doesn’t seem fair not to recognize that by taking them seriously. And although it doesn’t really feel right to press for social change for “Inclusion of Children!” and crowd the streets solely for bringing adults to take children seriously, it’d be cool if we could all acknowledge kids’ perspectives rather thoughtfully.

When we look at children and teenagers in terms of inclusion. Kids can indeed be viewed from both the minds. The rationalist and the emotional. Children do have good stuff going on in their little brains. And adults can learn from them just by taking what they say seriously. And they wish to belong, not just with their non-adult friends but they wish to belong as a valuable member of the human race.

This was just another way to look at it all. But I’m still proud of our world making so much great improvement in the field of diversity and inclusion. (Though we still have a fun long way to go!)