Celebrating Diversity 

 

By PATRICK MEIGHAN

Nashua Telegraph Staff

Published: Wednesday, Feb. 25, 2004 

 

MERRIMACK - February is Black History Month. 

 

But does it have meaning for a town of nearly

26,000 people, which, according to the 2000 census,

had fewer than 200 black residents?

 

Even though we’re not African-American, it still affects everybody else,

because it was a major part of our country’s history, Rachel Damery, 14, said.

 

(African-American history) has had such a huge impact on everything. There have been great African-American inventors, musicians, athletes, you name it, Stephanie Greenland, 13, said.

 

Damery and Greenland were among 40 students from Mastricola Middle School who in January attended a daylong conference in Waterville Valley sponsored by the New Hampshire Cultural and Diversity Awareness Council. Each year, a handful of schools are selected to participate.

 

Through speakers, film and group discussions, the students addressed the challenges of living in a diverse culture. Diversity was defined in broad brush-strokes to include not only differences of skin color and race, but also of religion, ethnicity and age.

 

Topics included learning to live with students who might dress differently, wear their hair differently and have different interests. Students also touched on diverse classrooms and school populations that included special-needs students.

 

Five Mastricola eighth-graders who attended the conference gathered recently in the school library to reflect on why African-American history is important to them, as well as to discuss how diversity affects their lives and their school.

 

I think (African-American) history is really important because a big part of our population is African-American, said Rachel Deraney, who shares not only a similar name with classmate Rachel Damery, but the awareness that society at large is more racially diverse than her town, and her school. 

One of the great things about America is how everyone is different, but it doesn’t really make a difference to other people, Deraney, 13, said.

 

The 40 students were picked to attend the conference out of roughly 800 seventh- and eighth-graders at Mastricola based on the strength of essays they wrote about what a truly culturally diverse society would look like.

 

I can say I have never been made fun of because of my heritage. I hope I never will be. That’s why I try not to judge a person. I accept them for who they are, not what they are, wrote Cristina Vega, 14. As a person with family roots in Puerto Rico, she is one of a relative handful of people of color at Mastricola.

 

Vega moved to Merrimack from Lowell, Mass., where she attended a much more diverse school.

 

Since I was in preschool in Lowell, I have been lucky to participate in a I have been lucky to participate in a culturally diverse school system, Vega wrote in her essay. We celebrated Asian, Hispanic, Indian, Jewish and many other holidays. Being involved in those activities brought me to learn that other cultures or religions weren’t wrong, just different from what I was used to.

 

Vega said diversity isn’t discussed much at Mastricola. The students who attended the conference gained a broader perspective on the topic.

 

I was talking to my friends who didn’t go (to the conference), and we were talking about racial diversity and stuff like that, Vega said. It’s not that they had a different view - they didn’t have enough of a view.

 

The conference didn’t sugar-coat the challenges of living in a diverse society, the students say.

 

Tolerance is an ongoing process. . . . It’s not always easy for people, Greenland, said.

 

A lot of people think of racism that happened in our past, but it’s really still something we have to work on today, said classmate Julie Jaynes, 14.

 

Added Deraney: It’s not something that happened in history. It’s happening now.

 

Most Americans are privileged, said Assistant Principal Peter Bergeron, one of 10 Mastricola faculty and staff members who attended the N.H. Cultural and Diversity Awareness Council program.

 

We’re a privileged group. We don’t know what it means to be ostracized, or to experience negative feelings toward one particular minority group. It really made me think, Bergeron said.

 

There’s a lot of different groups in America who are not (so privileged) - and they have to rise above all that.

 

The students all talked about the importance of not judging people based on appearance, and of accepting people who are different, including special-needs students who too often are shunned by classmates. 

Before you judge someone, like someone else in an activity you’re doing, get to know them and talk to them. That’s really what our school needs to work on, Jaynes added.

 

As for African-American history, several students said one thing about the conference that touched them was seeing - some for the first time - a videotape of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivering his famous speech before a great mass of people in Washington, D.C.

 

Every time someone stands up for his or her rights, like Martin Luther King Jr. did on Aug. 28, 1963, with his ‘I have a dream’ speech, the world becomes more diverse, Deraney wrote in her essay.

 

The students’ essays reflected their own dreams for how beautiful a truly diverse society could be.

 

Living in an area where there is not much cultural diversity, I learn about these differences from resources other than just personal experiences, Jaynes wrote.

 

It is important to learn about others in different ways, and that alone shows acceptance as well as respect.

 

Though today’s world is filled with cultural diversity, it would be a beautiful sight to see everyone respecting each other as people, and as equals.