We hear the word “diversity” a lot here at NC State. You don’t have to look too hard on the university website or around campus to find something praising the benefits of a diverse campus.
That’s a great thing; a diverse community at the absolute least provides a level of cultural understanding that simply cannot be achieved without in-person interactions between different individuals. But too often do we think of our diversity as a combination of cultures, races, genders and religions, and too rarely do we realize the importance of a socio-economically diverse community.
Being inclusive among class backgrounds is naturally a difficult thing for colleges to make reality. Try as universities might, through scholarship programs and federal aid, universities naturally deter students of lower income, and by nature of education, neglect students of lower income whose skills present themselves less in class and more in labor-intensive jobs.
This is why socio-economic diversity is an issue that would be better treated at an earlier stage of education, specifically middle and high school. Just as college is unique in the way that it allows us to interact with others from different cultures, secondary education provides a unique opportunity to increase the contact that students have with peers of different amounts of wealth than themselves.
Wealth disparity is common throughout the United States, meaning that redistricting schools to have better ratios of upper, middle and lower classes would be significantly less tedious than similar undertakings, like the busing systems to desegregate schools in the ‘70s and ‘80s which mainly failed.
In order to create a society that is more empathetic toward the hardships and lifestyles of others, North Carolina, as well as other states, needs to create legislation that accomplishes the goal of mixing students of different income backgrounds more effectively. Ideally, it could accomplish this by setting income diversity requirements for certain counties and school districts and altering the way those districts decide what schools students attend.
It can be easy to imagine the ideal scenario as one in which low-income and middle-class students are not bunched up in one place but get to interact with each other. But that scenario itself would be missing a key factor: high-income students. In order for secondary education to be truly diverse, so students can realize the reality of others’ backgrounds, the poor, middle class and rich must all attend the same school as children.
This would necessarily require the elimination of private schools, since they often contain a high proportion of very wealthy students. Without interacting with other economic classes, private-school students are effectively separated from the reality of others their age, preventing them from developing a full view of their position in society.
Likewise, without students of higher income around them, students of lower income are subject to second-hand knowledge of private-school students in the form of rumors and unsubstantiated biases against the well-off. Private schools provide a foundation for a lack of understanding between the rich, poor and middle class. In order for empathy between classes to be achieved, individuals of different income levels need to grow up and communicate together in the same environment.
While this proposal opposes the idea of private schools, it would help make sure that after secondary education, when students are applying for college, they have all had an equal education up to that point. This allows for merit to be the sole factor in the acceptance of a student and decreases the need for programs like affirmative action.
We’ve seen the consequences of individuals in the Rust Belt, whose circumstances have lead them to be working-class laborers, who feel abandoned as all nations become more globalized. If we want to fix the issue of tensions across backgrounds, every factor must be considered.
We, as the next generation, need to consider that diversity isn’t just applicable to the middle class; it’s not just reserved for those who can qualify for college. Diversity is a benefit meant to be enjoyed by everyone, by its very definition. Moving forward we can’t pat ourselves on the back for only including people of different cultural backgrounds, we need to socially include those of different financial backgrounds.
We can try as hard as we want to have a diverse friend group, but as long as we only talk with the people at work or the people in class, we will only be interacting on a social level with those of a similar financial standing as us. If you ever have kids, tell them to talk to the kid that wears secondhand clothes to school. Talk to the friends you had that didn’t go to college. Start a conversation with somebody who earns more than you. Don’t be afraid to discuss wealth and the way it influences our perceptions.
Voting for policies is fine, but the only real way this problem can be solved is by stepping out of our comfort zone and looking at people as the sum of their actions and not the sum of their wealth, no matter how rich or poor they may be.
