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closeEditor's column: Working to put diversity in The Herald
By Heather Meier/of The Herald
The opportunity to showcase and celebrate diversity in The Herald’s pages doesn’t happen often enough.
Our East Pierce communities are not very culturally diverse. When the Caucasian population hovers around 90 percent, the opportunities to feature minorities occur infrequently.
We seize those moments when a window opens — The Puyallup Fair, the Spanish-speaking congregations, President Barack Obama’s inauguration. But despite our best efforts, I never feel like it’s enough.
Instead of covering classroom celebrations, which are wonderful but would have captured primarily white students learning about minority advancements, or highlighting the lack of diversity, which anyone living in East Pierce County already knows, we decided to turn the light on the diversity we do have.
For our front page story this week, reporter Avani Nadkarni (born to parents who moved to this country from India) talked to three men about the experience they’ve had in a community where they stand out.
While each man’s story varied differently, all were well aware of their opportunity to educate an entire community.
I didn’t know what I could expect when Avani started working on this story. I didn’t know if anyone would be willing to talk to us about such a delicate topic. We did what you’re never supposed to do in polite society — single people out because of their race and then draw attention to them. But we did this with the best of intentions to show a broader portrait of East Pierce County.
If we had the space, I would have loved to see more faces of diversity shown in today’s newspaper.
Diversity, though, isn’t limited to the color of one’s skin.
Within our community we have families headed by two moms, men living on the street and children who spend most of their days in wheelchairs.
There are families that live in million-dollar homes and others that can hardly pay the rent.
Diversity is here. It might not always be obvious but it’s something that should be celebrated, cherished and encouraged.