Laila McCloud, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Educational Leadership and Counseling Department, Grand Valley State University.           I didn’t become aware of the term  diversity  until my first year of college. I left the west side of Chicago for a small, private liberal arts college in rural Ohio. It was on that campus that I learned about the many ways to be Black. I learned to love the distinct way that Black folks from Louisville and Baltimore pronounce words with the letter “r” in them. I met Black folks from California and Texas who told me that the tacos I had in Chicago were trash. Some of us graduated from elite boarding schools in the northeast like Choate or the George School. Some of us had white parents and some of us were dating white people. Some of us were the children of immigrants from the Caribbean, west, and east African countries. Some of us were coming into our queerness. We had different religious upbringings that im...