I thought that I had some kind of vaguely coherent statement on matters of 'diversity'. The more I look around in this site, the more it appears that I've been taking swipes at it from various angles. Well, I'll try to summarize and add a few more angles here.
A thoughtful reader sent the following reference:
CNN’s “In the Money” crew placed the blame on corporate America for a lack of diversity in the workplace in its February 17 show, saying businesses have a long way to go on something “so simple.”
The segment featured two African-American guests. However, “In the Money’s” treatment of minorities in the workplace failed to address such foundational issues as family, culture and education in determining people’s interests, career choices and ultimate success.
On this very topic I just wrote the following over at Tigerhawk.
The purpose of diversity training is to dismantle, or severely cripple white male patriarchy which has made quite enough stupid mistakes to disgrace itself.
The presumption of people who 'are not America' is that this dysfunctional patriarchy has had many generations to straighten itself out and has not. It must therefore be premised on a singular set of false values. There is no other reasonable explanation for x hundred years of non-white males being on the outs. In otherwords, for whatever and presumeably inefficient if not evil reasons, the leadership class of America has tolerated white male mediocrity at the express cost of the rest. And you really didn't get it until people like Rosa Parks slapped you in the face.
So why do we need values that come from folks other than all the things white males have put out there? Because.
But that's just explaining one aspect of it, ie its raison d'etre in a multiculturally politicized world.
So here's my bottom line on diversity and diversity training.
The Empowerment Perspective
This perspective is that the economic prospects of the protected classes and beneficiaries of diversity initiatives will goose them along. I call BS on that. There is no diversity program that is is as hardball as any affirmative action program, whether you are talking zero-sum quotas pre-Bakke, smartly administered racial preferences post-Bakke, or whatever toothless crap passes for Affirmative Action today. Usually diversity is something 'valued' by its own right. It's like having blue flowers in the garden, not for the sake of the flowers but that it makes the garden more attractive overall. If the incentives for blacks to trust in the fleeting political sensitivities of liberal whites who would support Affirmative Action by voting is shaky (and it is) imagine how much more shaky it is when it doesn't depend on the law, but on the bottom lines of corporations. Show me a corporation filing for bankruptcy that makes it a policy to fire white males first and I'll begin to consider such things empowering. Otherwise.. poop.
Now, to the extent that Diversity Training substitutes for home training in the halls of the more dysfunctional companies, it might be empowering, but no more so than Alcoholics Anonymous. I cannot see it as a national political priority. Then again, I never had a problem looking whitefolks in the eye and telling them exactly what I think. Well, not since 8th grade.
No matter what, the amount of power established by diversity training in a corporate context is subservient to the power of any line manager. You can monkey with overhead all you want, if it's not a profit center it's not central to the self-interest of the funding entity and therefore subject to whimsy. That's flimsy.
The Market Perspective
Diversity training in this regard is about properly peppering your corporate face with demographically targeted artifacts. I think that this was inevitable given the passage of the Civil Rights laws and it is one that has been most obviously carried forward by pure business sense. There have been a number of black and latino marketing firms that have carried this business forward but I think their hold on the market will fade over time but not disappear.
I also think that all of the gusto in this is gone, and there are very few dramatic gains to be made in the mainstream. Everybody has a black female model on their corporate website. It's old hat. There's no more efficiency in market penetration to be gained; there's almost nowhere in America where I can't hear black music.
What remains are some interesting upscale niches. I'm still waiting for the Diamond is Forever people who do those silhouette commercials to put some Obama-esque beautiful people in camera, but the folks at Kay Jewelers did it all Valentines.
Bottom line. Blackfolks are in the market at pretty much all levels and they are being marketed to. What's left to complain about are 'positive images' kinds of chauvinistic arguments. Not much there there.
The Political Perspective
What is the difference between 'variety' and 'diversity'? The straight answer is that variety is for things and diversity is for people. The proper clarifying analogy is that variety is difference between Kellogg's Corn Flakes and everybody elses, which is to say that there is essentially no difference. Except when you want to add political diversity and talk about people's race and gender, you expect there to be an essential difference. That's a problem, and the problem is manifest by the use of 'diversity' as a codeword for just that: essential difference by race and gender.
The multiculturalism gone horribly wrong is that 'a lack of diversity' as pejorative assessment of any deciding body means that some race and gender politics must be injected into the mix for it to have any legitimacy. Which is to imply that any consensus which is met without some quota of racial/gender-persons & passions injected is not to be trusted. This is a perversion of democracy which has been tolerated too long. It is destructive of modernity (the good classic Liberal stuff) and corrosive of all institutions which allow such logic to creep slowly in. And of course it sets up premises of permanent gender issues and permanent racial issues, which is ripe for exploitation.
At some point such exploitation will become clear in all of our institutions, and we will then soon be rid of it. Call it 'Sharpton Jumps The Shark'.
Diversity in Retrospect
Diversity in retrospect is something we can all be proud of. It is the recognition that we no longer have racial or gender expectations of various aspects of American life. What immediately comes to mind are the public accomodations of movies. While we may guess that certain movies appeal to certain people and we could certainly prove it were we to drill down for affinities, there is never the assumption that we don't let blackfolks into certain movies. And so on any day we can go to any theatre and eyeball the crowd. We are likely to find, just as with the composition of a McDonalds drive-through that we have a lovely diversity of people. In otherwords a reflection of who we are.
Summary
Diversity is a substitute for talking about race and gender. There is no easy way to talk about such things. I think instead we ought to talk about race and gender, and I think at the end of the day we won't have much new or interesting to say except that we expect no artificial barriers or boundaries. The people dedicated to goosing the system have had plenty opportunity and I think such market-makers will continue to ply their trade. An honest suggestion that racial preferences should be established or upheld for the purposes of integration will have honest support and honest opposition. But I expect the importance of such discussions to decline over time, and that is primarily because the existential barriers of the protected classes have long been removed. That means people on the outs will fend for themselves, and they will be better equipped to empower themselves than do-gooders on their behalf will.
The work of the Civil Rights Movement is done. It is an irreversible success. Diversity is mostly icing, don't mistake it for cake.
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