Diversity Statement Feedback/Parameters
Posted: Thu Oct 26, 2017 10:14 pm
Is this an okay diversity statement or does it focus too little on my actual experiences? I tried to balance talking about myself with relating that to why I would be an asset to a certain law school.
Any advice is very welcome (including length, content, and style).
Here it is:
When I was a college freshmen, I knew there was mismatch between my personality and queer stereotypes. When I came out, I discovered that this was a problem. For men, I was told, an assortment interests or mannerisms that mark one as not-straight—in particular, dress, speech, and behavior traditionally regarded as feminine—are expected to compliment queerness. To the extent that I lacked these, friends and family reacted with skepticism when I told them I was queer. Even within queer groups, I felt pressured to verify my queerness by pretending interests and preferences that, in actuality, I lacked.
My mother was especially critical. She believed—and, perhaps, continues to believe—that people are either attracted to the same gender, or to the opposite gender. She doubts the reliability of those who, like me, describe gendernonbinary attractions. So, when I told her that I was queer, but not simply gay or straight, she told me that everyone experiments in college and admonished me to figure myself out in a few years. In an effort to prove that I was who I said I was, I pierced my ear, changed my wardrobe, and joined queer organizations at my college. I attempted to transform into someone who could plausibly be recognized as queer, but sacrificed authentic elements of my identity to do it.
Weathering this, though, has made me more apt to resist assumptions about both who belongs in a given group, and what group membership actually means. In my senior thesis, for instance, I analyzed the problem of in-group discrimination within minority religious groups. The groups I considered—targets of discriminatory state policies themselves—had committed injustices against their own members. However, because of their statuses as victims, their roles as offenders had gone understudied. I was better able to recognize this dual status because I had personally encountered the unusual circumstance of fighting against exclusion from the professedly inclusive category of LGBT+ individuals. I believe that the knowledge I gained from my experiences as a queer man who presents as straight will enable me to make similar contributions to the University of Chicago Law School community—scholastically and interpersonally.
Any advice is very welcome (including length, content, and style).
Here it is:
When I was a college freshmen, I knew there was mismatch between my personality and queer stereotypes. When I came out, I discovered that this was a problem. For men, I was told, an assortment interests or mannerisms that mark one as not-straight—in particular, dress, speech, and behavior traditionally regarded as feminine—are expected to compliment queerness. To the extent that I lacked these, friends and family reacted with skepticism when I told them I was queer. Even within queer groups, I felt pressured to verify my queerness by pretending interests and preferences that, in actuality, I lacked.
My mother was especially critical. She believed—and, perhaps, continues to believe—that people are either attracted to the same gender, or to the opposite gender. She doubts the reliability of those who, like me, describe gendernonbinary attractions. So, when I told her that I was queer, but not simply gay or straight, she told me that everyone experiments in college and admonished me to figure myself out in a few years. In an effort to prove that I was who I said I was, I pierced my ear, changed my wardrobe, and joined queer organizations at my college. I attempted to transform into someone who could plausibly be recognized as queer, but sacrificed authentic elements of my identity to do it.
Weathering this, though, has made me more apt to resist assumptions about both who belongs in a given group, and what group membership actually means. In my senior thesis, for instance, I analyzed the problem of in-group discrimination within minority religious groups. The groups I considered—targets of discriminatory state policies themselves—had committed injustices against their own members. However, because of their statuses as victims, their roles as offenders had gone understudied. I was better able to recognize this dual status because I had personally encountered the unusual circumstance of fighting against exclusion from the professedly inclusive category of LGBT+ individuals. I believe that the knowledge I gained from my experiences as a queer man who presents as straight will enable me to make similar contributions to the University of Chicago Law School community—scholastically and interpersonally.