Lorenzo and all,

Interestingly enough, in German "diverse" *can* relate to an individual.
This is a fairly recent development – following a 2018 court decision,
"diverse" was introduced as a third option in census forms and the like, to
be used by people who do not identify as "female" or "male".

Obviously, this doesn't change English language usage, and it wasn't what
was meant here, or what H4 understood, but if you see or hear German
speakers referring to "diverse people" in English, bear in mind that this
may be what they mean.

Moreover, note that if you mention "diverse people" to a German speaker
(saying something like "we need more diverse people ..."), they may be
unsure what you meant, or misunderstand you.

Coming back to H4's point, and English as spoken by native speakers, The
Atlantic has a cool article that expands on Ava DuVernay's comments, called
"A Person Can't be Diverse". It goes more deeply into the linguistic
aspects than the New York Times piece did.

https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/01/ava-duvernay-oscars-so-white-diversity-academy-awards-language/429225/

Andreas

On Fri, May 6, 2022 at 8:00 AM Lorenzo Losa <ll...@wikimedia.org> wrote:

> On mer, 2022-05-04 at 14:36 +0000, H4CUSEG via Wikimedia-l wrote:
> > Can we stop referring to "diverse people" please? It's offensive.
>
> I'm sorry for that.
>
> If I understand it right - and correct me if I'm wrong - you are saying
> that calling someone a "diverse person" is labeling that person in a
> bad way. This is a fair point. Diversity relates to a multitude, not to
> an individual.
> To rephrase my sentence: we need trustees who are individually skilled
> and experienced, forming a board that is collectively diverse - that is
> able to express and create space for different perspectives and ideas.
>
> Lorenzo
>
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