What Is Diversity?

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What comes to mind when you think of diversity? Personally, I think it’s the idea of different people coming together putting aside their differences in a community. The definition in Merriam Webster’s dictionary is “the state of having people who are different races or who have different cultures in a group or organization.” Wasn’t that far off! In the media, themes of diversity have been especially prominent in the last couple of years. One branch of media that seems to be underrated in terms of diversity is music. Luckily, I can think of a song that represents diversity, and that is “We Are the World” by USA for Africa. Today, I’d like to take the time to look at the song’s background, and the impact the song had at the time of release…show more content…
The song was co-written by Lionel Richie and Michael Jackson, who were also 2 of the featured artists. Recorded and released in 1985 with a total of 47 artists, it featured not only Richie and Jackson, but also Stevie Wonder, Bruce Springsteen and Cyndi Lauper. That’s quite a mix of people, and I didn’t even mention Paul Simon, Dionne Warwick or Ray Charles (oh wait, I just did.) In all seriousness, it’s very clear the diversity of the artists (not only in race, but in musical styles as well reflect the message the song is conveying. To understand more what I mean, here’s a snippet of the lyrics, “We are the world, we are the children, we are the ones who make a brighter day, so let’s start giving”. Notice the use of “we”. This tells us no matter who we are, we should come together to bring positive changes to the world. If this song was recorded by a bunch of white rock stars, it would be much harder to get the message of diversity…show more content…
“A new generation” if you will, of artists was brought together to raise money for the victims. Even though none of the original artists made an appearance (besides archival footage of Michael Jackson, who died the year before), this time the number of artists almost doubled. This includes Justin Bieber, Miley Cyrus and a newly added rap including Kanye West. With such a huge group, one would think the impact would be as great or greater than it was 25 years ago, but actually it was less. This is because there were criticisms of poor artist choices, use of auto tune and the song being a sellout this time around. While the intentions were good, it was the original that captured the diversity of the artists and the idea of humanitarianism coming
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