What People Say During Diversity Class

Had a few classes on diversity. Working with diverse people... which, in this line of work, isn't theory, it's Tuesday.

Mixed bag of races doing the work, an even wider mix of people on the receiving end of it.

This is the soft-skill stuff. The thing that separates a good support worker from a great one, and it doesn't show up on any technical checklist.

Our lecturer's been at this a long time. Years under his belt, and it shows in how he talks. He asks open-ended questions and gets out of the way. Lets the room fill the silence. And the room does... everybody gets in on it.

Bring up personal stuff, experiences, and suddenly it's not a lecture anymore, it's a room full of people who've actually lived near this stuff, talking.

You learn more about a person from the question they ask than from a week of small talk. More, even, from how they answer the hard ones.

Racism. Bias. DV. Gender. Sexuality.

Ask a room to weigh in on that, and you get a 4K view straight into who they actually are and what they've seen. Brave people who are willing to say what they think out loud hand you something private conversation never quite gets to. That's my read on it, anyway.

And I'll say this straight... I'm enjoying the hell out of getting to know these people. Good bunch. Genuinely good. A lot of them are carrying more than they let on, and you can feel it under the surface of what they say.

Six months isn't long. It'll fly in the blink of an eye, especially with all the assignments rolling in. But I'm hoping I get to hear at least a few of those stories properly.