Photo Credit: bostonglobe.com

This week, tech magnate Uber is set to release its diversity report to the public following unsavory reports of its workplace culture. The company was in dire straits after some of its top recruiters who were set to aid the company in embracing cultural and gender diversity resigned after not being given the latitude to do so.

Uber, however, is not the only company to be accused of lack of diversity. While gender inclusion may be one of the key issues in the country at the moment, the focus of this article will be more on the cons of being a person of color in the US.

This morning, the Boston Globe reported the story of Lovely Hoffman, a middle school teacher at the Helen Y. Davis Leadership Academy, Dorchester who is taking steps to correct the misconception black girls at her school seem to have about themselves.

Speaking to the Globe, Hoffman tells her story of being an African-American woman in the US. She says that when she was younger, she would get ostracized because of the color of her skin. “Many years back, I was part of a church group. The sad part is that I was the only African-American girl in that choir and the other members of my team never let me forget it.” Hoffman says that after a while, she began to question if she had the ’right’ to be a musician.

Teacher Hoffman, who is now a musician, stated that she was able to overcome her insecurities because of the familial support she received.

Fast forward to this year, Hoffman has come up with a song that encourages her African-American female students to stop internalizing Western standards of beauty. “I was sad when I realized that the struggles I had gone through as a child were being replicated in my students,” Hoffman remarked.

Hoffman said she realized she had to do something about the unconducive atmosphere African-American girls lived in at the school when she heard a student say that she [the student] did not like dark skins and only associated with white-skinned friends. Other girls also made fun of the facial features and hair texture of the dark-skins, leaving the African-American girls depressed and lacking in self-confidence.

Hoffman called her black students together and had a long conversation with them about self-worth and pride in their origins. She then had them make a video for the song that she released earlier this year praising the beauty to be found in the girls’ diversity. LaTavia Hobson, a seventh-grader at the school, said that Hoffman’s song had changed her mind so that she went from feeling ‘ugly’ to ‘knowing that she was beautiful despite being different.’ The song called ‘My Black is Beautiful’ was released this spring and is available on iTunes and YouTube.

Preferences in skin tone dates back to the colonial period when landowners, mixed-race and African-American slaves were all treated differently because of their skin color. Steps like those being taken by Lovely Hoffman may not fully help decolonize the concept of equality, but they are a move in the right direction.