Be different and show it!

Be different and show it!

Diversity strengthens individuality and social freedom.

Text Nasim Saber, DW editor, Dari and Pashto Service

“Every one of us has their own story. It explains why we are the way we are. And that is fine. Because it makes us unique.” This is what the young German-speaking writer Isaac Öztürk says about life. Diversity and individuality in life can hardly be described more beautifully, even if these two categories may initially seem like a contradiction. In this way, diverse people around the world make individual decisions and design their own special life, which is unique in this way and — if compatible with their own catalog of values and conscience — can break through the boundaries of their own tradition and origin. Every person belongs to different realities of life and can carry different characteristics of diversity and represent them (consciously or unconsciously) to the outside world. This includes age, ethnic origin, gender, sexual identity, religion or philosophy and many more. As we go through life, at crossroads we meet people with similarities and differences.

We should live confidently, respectfully and freely and leave an open-minded, liberal and more diverse world to the people of tomorrow.

In a nutshell, this is also the world that I encountered as a young person at DW almost 20 years ago. At that time, I was researching and presenting topics for a youth program for DW’s Dari/Pashto Service. Not just reporting about other people and simply recording their individual perspectives, but making an effort to understand what the individual person actually wants to tell me — maybe that’s the core of what journalism should ideally look like and also my personal aspiration. This also has to do with diversity: if you want to report about a person with a physical or mental disability, for example, you should try to imagine the world from this individual’s perspective and listen carefully.

The redefinition of the “we feeling”

Finding and promoting these intersections can help with redefining the “we feeling” in a society and to calibrate and readjust interests and overlaps. As a member of DW’s diversity work group, I try to provide food for thought and to write about diversity and inclusion in everyday journalistic life. Doing good deeds and talking about it is important to me. But you have to expect to also meet people who have no understanding of these connections or their own individual identity. In my almost two decades of journalistic life, I have had to put up with astonished faces and the phrase “did you write that?” again and again when I wrote a piece in German. With respect, this is not just a preconceived notion, but actually a good deal of racism, since a person is not believed to be capable of articulating or communicating in a certain language at a high level due to phenotypic peculiarities. Another example is when people are consciously or even subconsciously excluded from our systems because of their origin or their social, ethnic or ideological background, their disability or other characteristics.

Diversity demands and promotes empathy, understanding and acceptance

By clearly dealing with the topic of diversity, journalistic products are closer to the reality of the protagonists of a story and simply get better. Acquiring this kind of empathy, understanding and a unique and diverse world view of accepting and respecting other people and their life realities is a long and at times difficult process. Every person goes through it. And as a society we have to deal with it actively and give the diversity that we encounter every day a chance, while managing opposites and potential points of contention in a proper fashion. Encounters can change a person. Our thoughts form our experience and our individual personality, which are not static structures, but are constantly in flux.

I already noticed back in 2006 that DW is multifaceted and diverse when I completed my traineeship here. Everyone in Bonn talked about the second ”United Nations on the Rhine”, a home to people with diverse history and life plans. People working in 32 language departments, bringing with them a wide range of different origins, religions, cultures, world views and individual identities. My colleagues in the Africa and Asia departments, for instance, switch between colorful traditional dresses, or saris and shalwar kameez and a European-style business attire with natural ease. It’s all about modern and enlightened people of the 21st century making conscious decisions and choosing how to express themselves.

Key to individual freedom and contentment

Diversity is much more than that. It’s about our basic values, about respect, human rights and individual decisions that individual people make for their individual life plans. In this way, the topic of freedom, which is repeatedly used by all sides in politics to legitimize their respective guidelines and decisions, acquires a completely new and diverse meaning. Diversity and inclusion are the key to individual and social freedom and liberality, which are based on conscious decisions and experienced plurality. Diversity is therefore much more than a trend or a buzzword. Rather, it is an ongoing process that creates something new and changes structures.

My appeal: be different and show it! Too much conformity sometimes means manipulability. We should live confidently, respectfully and freely and leave an openminded, liberal and more diverse world to the people of tomorrow.