Diversity is Valued When It Is Quiet

The conference room is set. Staged at the front are the diversity panel speakers. The speakers are eager, ready to tell the audience of the statistics, the data, the research and their lived experiences. Yet the moderator asks very limited questions and we understand very quickly the intent of the session. “Let’s keep it friendly. We’re here to ‘open the conversation.’ But not too much that anyone gets uncomfortable.”

It’s strange, isn’t it? We say we want diverse voices in the room, but we still want to decide when they speak, how they speak and what they speak about.

Give them the microphone, sure, but make sure they stay in their lane — contained, boundaries set, their stories trimmed neatly to fit the spaces we want to control. Not too loud, not too bold, please. We need to be nice, after all.

But what if diversity weren’t on the panel at all? What if it were the main speaker? The keynote, taking center stage, saying whatever it needed to say without the comforting walls of “too much” or “too strong” to contain it? What if diversity’s voice was a full-volume song—more than a whisper, nothing less than a shout?

Would we listen?

Here’s the truth that I feel deep down, the part that makes me uneasy: I don’t think we’d listen.

Because, in Western culture, diversity is cherished only when it is controlled, when the volume is low, when it sounds a certain way. We prize it, but we also keep it fenced in, manipulated, forced into a sound that we are willing to hear from the outside but we will ignore it on the inside.

Diversity becomes an option, a checkbox, maybe an obligation, but rarely a gift. It’s for “them,” not for “me.”

And that’s when I think—what does diversity hear?

Diversity is called into conversations only to be hushed, spoken over, or ignored. Diversity is easily sidelined when it gets too real or too personal. It’s invited, yes, but treated like strategy, not like a relationship. It’s become so accustomed to dominant voices that it hardly flinches at being interrupted anymore. It’s become all too familiar with being paraded as policy or manipulated as a statement piece.

Diversity is often asked to listen to harmful, painful, or flat-out wrong assumptions—and respond with a gracious nod. It has no choice. It must hear everything, even when it’s offensive or outright damning.

And then I wonder—if diversity were a person, if it were one of us, how would we survive? Could we breathe under the weight of forced politeness? Could we sing the way we need to, tell our stories with truth and fire, share our lived experience with the accent and melody that is our own?

Maybe that’s the question we need to ask. Because what we do to diversity—how we control, coerce, or limit it—is exactly what are doing to each other. Too often we expect people with differences to operate within the boundaries of tamed speech, quiet voices, controlled narratives. We cut corners on authenticity until only polite versions of ourselves remain, too rehearsed, too careful.

So, what will you do when you hear diversity speak? Not as a panelist or a checkbox, but as the main voice, loud and unapologetic? Will you listen, really listen, to the stories that are raw, complex, and real?

That’s what I ask myself, again and again. Because if diversity spoke to us fully, we might find it has a voice not only for itself but for each of us waiting to be heard. It's time we listen to that voice rise.