I’ll be your diversity girl, baby
I wear dresses once every 5 years. Photo by Sofia Kuan on Instagram
[2 min. read]
A friend once asked how I coped with the doubt of being accepted for an opportunity, being a black woman from Africa. I asked what she meant and she said, “Well, how are you sure they’ve selected you for your skills and not just to fill a diversity quota?”
Good question. But I had never thought of it that way until then.
For about a week, this bothered me. Why did she mention it? ‘Cause now that seed of doubt was starting to take root. More than that, I was frustrated with myself that I’d never thought of this myself before.
Then a few things occurred to me that put it all to bed.
I know I’m good at what I do and I’m always seeking to improve. The core question that arose from all this turmoil was “Am I good enough?” We’ve all experienced this at whatever level.
However, I realized that the reason this question of why I have been accepted for a position had never obstructed my vision is that I do my best to improve my craft(s) constantly. And so I already know I’m good enough, especially by the time I have gone through the effort of putting forth an application.
This in itself should give you confidence that you know what you’re doing, you’re qualified and that you’re willing to learn even more as you go.
This is what the world needs to become more inclusive. It sucks but the world as it is very one-sided. Many narratives and points of view are missing from just about every facet of humanity at a global stage. To remedy that, the words ‘diversity’ and ‘inclusion’ have entered the local lexicon of company- and organisational-speak to the point that they almost don’t mean anything any more.
But these are the awkward teenage years before we get to the point where hiring is done so inclusively by instinct that applications do not have to spell out that “we especially encourage minorities to apply.”
The fact that they have to say that means that these minorities are not applying at all or enough, so why can’t it be you? Which brings me to that fact that
If it’s not me, it’ll be someone else. If they’re filling in a quota of X number of Africans or Y number of people from the LGBTQ+ community, who am I to argue? Because that’s something they have already decided.
Either way it’s an unanswerable question because you will never know what truly made them deicide on you.
This is the solution that world has come up with to this problem, so take advantage of it. Though awkward on the face of it, it will (hopefully) end up where we would like to be.
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