Lauren Leader-Chivée’s ground-breaking book, “Crossing the Thinnest Line,” examines how supporting and embracing diversity in terms of race, gender, gay rights and immigration in Hollywood will make America a better country. As the reader will learn, diversity is a topic that is not spoken about freely, but is a much needed discussion.
As Leader-Chivée explains, America as it stands is at a point of division. #BlackLivesMatter, born from the acquittal of George Zimmerman for the crime of murder in the killing of Trayvon Martin, has been accepted by many, but at the same time denounced with a counter claim that all lives matter. More than 60 years after the historic 1954 case of Brown v. Board of Education made segregated schools unconstitutional, the public school systems are still divided in terms of race and class. As we peer through the pages of Leader-Chivée’s work, we will discover that in predominantly white suburban towns such as Clayton, outside St. Louis, Mo., $17, 851 is spent to educate each pupil, and highly qualified teachers make well over $71, 000 a year. In the African-American school in neighboring Normandy, the school district spends $15,096 per student and the average teacher makes about $59,560 per year. As a result, the graduation rate is 90 percent in Clayton and 61.4 percent in Normandy.
The wage gap between women and men still exists, and large corporations are mostly headed by males. Despite the legalization of gay marriage, gays are still fighting for their right to be accepted in our heterosexual society. Anti-Islamic fears and Muslims being victims of hate crimes are persistent. In Hollywood, the leaders of film studios are 96 percent white and 61 percent male. In the literary world, there are few people of color in publishing.
Leader-Chivée realizes that bridging gaps between diverse groups would require more than busing inner-city American-American students to mostly white schools. For true assimilation to occur, we must figure out why an African-American student prefers sitting with other African-American students in the cafeteria. Companies must branch out of their social networks and seek women and minority employees.
Leader-Chivée’s solution for diversity is for “each and every one of us [to] look deeply within ourselves and ask how we can build trust and understanding with someone we might overlook.”
Leader-Chivée seems to be suggesting that for America to be a true melting pot, we must not gravitate to what is familiar in terms of race, class and gender identity. A true understanding of others will require us to look outside of our communities and seek a multitude of pots composed of different ideas, beliefs and experiences. For America to continue to thrive this approach is indeed necessary.