Diversity is important for all of us, helping to broaden our experiences, to open our minds to new ideas, and to eliminate our biases and prejudices. The person who only drinks Chardonnay would benefit from tasting a variety of other white wines. The person who only eats Italian food from the Olive Garden would benefit from dining at other Italian restaurants. Broadening the horizons of what you eat and drink opens you up to so many possibilities.
The benefits of diversity concern far more than just food and drink. They touch on all aspects of our lives, and it is a topic many people have been addressing. It is a topic that can be controversial at times, but we should not avoid it because of that fact. We need to meet it head-on, to embrace diversity and cherish its positive aspects. Diversity will only make us better human beings.
As a small contribution to this issue, I want to address one aspect of diversity, to showcase people of color who blog about food & drink. I previously highlighted women who blog about wine, and it was an extremely popular post (and also is due for an update). It helped to bring to the forefront all the valuable contributions and unique voices of these bloggers. We need to expand our scope and learn of the unique viewpoints from people of color as well.
I've been blogging about food and drink in the Boston area for over 9 years, and the vast majority of bloggers I see at local events are white. I have spoke of this before, stating we need to find ways to attract more people of color to these events. An initial step would be to identify those people of color who blog, to showcase their talents. This could be a motivation for other people of color to get involved and start blogging too. It will also present blogs with different voices, a way for all of us to expand our own experience and knowledge.
Initially, I would like to create a list of people of color who live in Massachusetts and blog about food and/or drink. In time,I will expand the list to people outside of Massachusetts but I want to start off small first, to make it a more manageable project.
To create this list, I need help. I need local people of color to contact me about their blogs. Please send me the name of your blog, its URL and a brief description of what you write about. You can email me, message me on Facebook or contact me through Twitter. Once I have a number of entries, I will post a directory to these blogs, so that everyone can learn about these blogs and hopefully start following them.
If you have any questions, feel free to add them to the comments or contact me directly.
Thank you for this post Richard. This is been something that I've brought up several times but no one ever wants to really talk about it. We need more diversity in Boston. The only time I find out about local events is when "oh, I have a few spots left" posts go up in local FB groups or when a gracious blogger reaches out to ask if I knew about an event. The latter doesn't happen often. This is a good start and I hope good things come of this.
ReplyDeleteThanks SanTara. Do you have a blog that you would like me to add?
ReplyDeleteThanks SanTara. Do you have a blog that you would like me to add?
ReplyDelete