Diversity is more than appearances

Academe, media and some woke corporations believe that diversity is a matter of skin color or biology. Not so. Sitting next to a rich Nigerian at Yale graduation isn't diversity, and hiring an Asian female retired from the National Guard should not be a check mark for government regulations.
Here's my idea of inclusion, equity and diversity (IED).

• Spend a week or two at Walmart training a new employee who doesn't speak English and uses a wheelchair;
• stand on your feet for 8 hours at a register in a big box store--with any ethnic group;
• attend for a few months a Catholic mass or a Baptist revival with a colleague of that faith family if you're an atheist professor;
• learn to work with the crew and drive one of those huge street sweepers without hitting any cars;
• find someone on your board allergic to dogs and send her out to work at the pet rescue or pound;
• assign your president to the library reference room for weeks to teach the elderly how to use the computer;
• hand the CEO a set of earplugs and send him outside in the wind with the foreign workers to blow leaves for hours;
• drive, park and unload a semi at a dollar store;
• run on concrete floors and retrieve for immediate delivery for a full shift week at an Amazon warehouse;
• or any job that moves you out of your comfort zone and into the real world of work. And then do it over again, and again. That IED.