Crayons.

One of the most surprising facts about the power of diversity evolves around crayons. Do you ever stop to think what impact crayon names have on some people? One October, a nineteen-year-old law school student, Chirayu Jain, filed a complaint against ‘skin colored’ crayons that were peach colored. Those crayons represented white skin. The student said that having peach-colored crayons named ‘skin color’ or ‘flesh’ was a racist thing to do.

After that moment, on one International Diversity Day, a crayon company sold 24 colored crayons that represented dozens of skin tones of people around the world. Just like this, we need to learn to embrace diversity. We’ve got to make everyone feel like we’re one group no matter how different we are.

Our world is getting one step to full globalization by the second. To achieve globalization, we need to learn to appreciate others no matter who they are without any kind of discrimination. That’s diversity. No matter how much we're different, we need to gather together to create a greater masterpiece.

The first way is to make sure that we embrace each other’s culture. We shouldn’t be afraid to come together even if we look different or speak different languages because that’s not the point. Diversity shouldn’t be about our differences tearing us apart. It should be about how our differences bring us together. Since we’re all different, we can help each other and share knowledge to make the world a better place. There are approximately 195 countries and about 7.8 billion people on Earth and we’re all different in our ways. One helpful way to get together is cross-cultural communication. Cross-cultural communication is any form of communication between people who have differences. Cross-cultural communication is how we realize our differences and similarities and communicate easily because we do so. Cross-cultural communication is even more important right now with globalization happening.

The second way is to accept and respect others no matter how old or young they are. We shouldn’t dismiss children’s ideas because they’re inconceivable. We shouldn’t dismiss an adult's ideas because they’re too pragmatic. Children have unimaginable ideas sometimes that adults can’t even think of. For example, a 15-year-old child, Chester Greenwood didn’t want cold ears in the winter so he built a wire frame and sewed beaver skin to it. Robert Patch invented the toy truck at age 6, Frank Epperson invented the popsicle at age 11, and Louis Braille presented the gift of reading by inventing the braille system at age 15 for people who are blind. Even though it may have sounded impossible when those ideas were first born, those inventions and ideas are ordinary nowadays. Just as children have great ideas, adults have more experience. They know the world better and are wiser. They are more mature and have a lot of advice that children need to get. We could help each other by appreciating each other’s opinions no matter how old the other person is. Both adults and children have great ideas and thoughts that can be helpful to everyone. By appreciating others' opinions even if they might be older or younger than you, you’ll be one more step closer to making the world greater.

The third way is not to discriminate against people based on their gender. No matter what gender you are, you can achieve just about anything if you just put your mind to it. There shouldn’t be any gender discrimination going on in the world. We can help each other. There shouldn’t be any discriminatory sentences such as ‘only one gender should be cops or firefighters’ or ‘They have to be nurses or have to stay home and take care of their children because they’re that gender’ and so on. There shouldn’t be any gender-biased jobs. Everyone has the right to choose a job that they want to do. They shouldn’t be stripped of a right just because they’re not a specific kind of gender. Everyone should have the same fair chance no matter what sex they are.

The last and final way to get together that I want to point out in this essay is to not differentiate between people who have disabilities and those who aren’t disabled. Just because they have disabilities, it doesn’t mean that they can’t do any better than you or that they don’t have better ideas than you. Those people aren’t that different from non-disabled people. They’re a part of our society. We can’t treat them like they’re outsiders because they aren’t any different from us. For instance, Stephen Hawking had a rare slowly progressing form of MND which paralyzed him over time. Even though Stephen Hawking was disabled, he still achieved a lot of things like his theory of exploding black holes. It drew upon both relativity theory and quantum mechanics. Disabled people are the same as non-disabled people and can achieve things that a non-disabled person can too. We should treat them the same way and acknowledge the things they do. We shouldn’t be quick to judge people. Just because they’re disabled doesn’t mean that they can’t do things that non-disabled people could do. They’re just as hardworking as others are. No one should be defined by their disabilities.

There are four types of diversity. Internal, external, organizational, and worldview. We need to recognize all four of that diversity. Culture, age, gender, and the disabled have a really big role in representing those four types of diversity. With these four types of diversity, we can improve the world. No race or any situation that different people are in is superior or better than others. We’re all equal as humans. We don’t need to be afraid of coming out and speaking up for diversity. We shouldn’t be afraid of coming out and speaking up for diversity. The more diverse we are, the better we can get. We shouldn’t discriminate against people just because of their culture, age, gender, or their condition. Of course, everyone’s valuable and amazing even on their own. What we can do to make that better is gather to be the best.