The Pointlessness of Pursuing ‘Diversity’
We’re all obsessing over the wrong thing
Who says you can’t learn anything during a dreaded work presentation? Several Tuesday afternoons ago, when I logged on for a two-hour video seminar on diversity and inclusion, my expectations were low. I figured I was in for more lip service about the benefits of a diverse workplace delivered to an audience that had heard it all before. The audience was also just as predominantly White as any other I’d previously been a part of while listening to the same message.
I turned off my camera and prepared to tune out mentally. (One of the many benefits of working from home is that no-one can necessarily see how engrossed you are — or aren’t.) Then the speaker, who was a Black woman, suggested something that made my ears perk up. My takeaway: We’ve all been mangling the word “diversity” for years because we lack a firm grasp of what it actually means. The diversity problem we’ve been talking about in “progressive” workplaces with increasing frequency since the murder of George Floyd last year kicked off a new era of racial reckoning isn’t actually a diversity problem at all.
I scanned my screen, looking at the faces of my colleagues who had their cameras turned on. Sure the senior staff members tuning in may have been overwhelmingly White, but they were just as…
