On the inherent benefits of diversity

Great Debates
1

Yesterday someone asked me, "Why is diversity considered inherently good."

Well, I figured I’d swat this one out of the park, with the old “input from persons with the widest range of experiences results in the best decisions.”
And they responded that they weren’t all that sure that was true, and questioned whether any increases in the quality of outcomes might be outweighed by conflict related to the differences. And observed that the most effective decision-making groups they have been on have been the least diverse.
And I rejoined, “Yeah, but how do you decide who gets to be the group making the decisions, and how do you ensure that their decisions will be fair/benefitical to folks outside of their group.”
They responded, "Participation is determined by merit."
Next card I played was, "But some groups have historically been precluded from participating."
Their final observation (as the commercial break was ending) was that the US and (much of) western Europe seem to favor diversity more than much of the rest of the world. And within the US, religions are one place where you are under no pressure to be diverse for diversity’s sake, suggesting that as one possible explanation for the popularity of religion in America.
Then the stupid show with Kelsey Grammer came back on.

I guess it is kinda hard to have this discussion completely out of context, but I admit I was a little surprised at my inability to readily mount an ironclad defense of diversity. Can I get a little help here?

2

More kinds of food. Nobody doesn’t like food.

3

In the business world, diversity of perspective is typically seen as a good thing if you wish to sell the marketplace at large. Only having a bunch of 30 somethings designing your computer, for example, results in a computer that is not usable by those over 50 with bifocals (mythological story about the design of the early Macintosh - can’t validate at this time).

However, there is the recent research regarding the COST of diversity:

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c4ac4a74-570f-11db-9110-0000779e2340.html

The genetics folks can talk about the need for biological diversity in case of inbreeding or disease susceptibility.

Soooooooo…

What type of diversity are you really trying to defend?

4

[QUOTE=Dinsdale]
And observed that the most effective decision-making groups they have been on have been the least diverse.

[/quote]

How did they define effective? If they meant speed in decision making, they may be right. If they mean how good the decisions are, I think they’re wrong.

Again, how do they define merit? if merit means intelligence, and the task is deciding which television show to broadcast, a high merit group may be very ineffective.

Psychologist talk about imaginability which means the range of options you can think of. A person used to hiking in warm weather might not imagine the need for cold weather clothing in the mountains in September. The more diverse the group, the more things in their set of imaginable items, and the less chance they get blindsided.

5

It depends on what you want to do. If you’re an army that has to get a specific job done, no matter what, and you have a limited amount of time, diversity might be a bad thing. It’s easier to mobilize and command a homogeneous group of people.

If you are trying to brainstorm product strategies or solve a complex problem, having more points of view on the subject is often helpful. If you have too many points of view, you do run the risk of analysis paralysis, so the whole process still has to be managed.

In the US we value diversity, possibly because we are a diverse nation. But I spent a lot of time in Japan, where I often encountered the sentiment that diversity was a weakness. Japan is relatively homogeneous society (although not as much as some Japanese might like to think), and they tend to value uniformity. *The nail that stands out gets hammered down. * (Old Japanese proverb.)

So, if you value diversity you need to define what diversity is. Often, it’s simply a phrase used to mean “include minorities”. But it’s diversity of thought and experience that is the most important. That will sometimes correlate loosely with ethnic background, but not always. This message board, for instance, is good because of the different ethnicities of the participants. But if we were all left wing liberals or right wing conservatives, it wouldn’t be as good.

6

[QUOTE=Dinsdale]
I guess it is kinda hard to have this discussion completely out of context, but I admit I was a little surprised at my inability to readily mount an ironclad defense of diversity. Can I get a little help here?
[/QUOTE]
In all seriousness, I would ask you for a rigorous definition of “diversity.” Stated alone, the term is sufficiently vague as to make a strong defense problematic.
ETA: I see John Mace has asked the question in a more complete and coherent manner. Oh well.

7

[QUOTE=Algher]
However, there is the recent research regarding the COST of diversity:
[/QUOTE]
Professor Putnam appears to have discovered a correlation in search of a meaning.

More diversity = less trust?

OK. How about quality of life? If a failure to give unquestioning trust to all one’s neighbors results in more people watching for evil, do we catch and prevent more evil? If we are less likely to simply “trust” the mayor/governor/president, are we more likely to demand accountability from authority and power? If few people trust their neighbors to handle things at a lower level, does that mean we wind up with more people participating in communal decisions and shared labor out of a sense of self-interest? Does trusting fewer people mean that we are less likely to let good ol’ Uncle Jack molest the kids?

And that is even without dragging up the hoary old aphorism that correlation is not causation.
Is there a completely separate quality that correlates to either/both trust and diversity that explains their correlation?

I suspect that I will be happier living in a commuity where I count my change and lock my doors,* but where I can dine at restaurants featuring a dozen different cuisines, than I will living in a community where no one pays any attention to locks or change, but my only options for food are Mickey D’s and Mel’s Diner.

  • And even here, Professor Putnam only indicated that the trust was lacking, not that there was a need to be mistrustful. The people in diverse and uniform communities may be equally honest, but it appears that in the more diverse community people are less likely to accept that–no evidence currently presented indicates that that lack of trust is justified.
8

[QUOTE=Algher]
In the business world, diversity of perspective is typically seen as a good thing if you wish to sell the marketplace at large. Only having a bunch of 30 somethings designing your computer, for example, results in a computer that is not usable by those over 50 with bifocals (mythological story about the design of the early Macintosh - can’t validate at this time).

However, there is the recent research regarding the COST of diversity:

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c4ac4a74-570f-11db-9110-0000779e2340.html

The genetics folks can talk about the need for biological diversity in case of inbreeding or disease susceptibility.

Soooooooo…

What type of diversity are you really trying to defend?
[/QUOTE]

This is very interesting.

Allegedly, my home town of Toronto is the most diverse in the world:

Therefore, if the theory is correct, Toronto should by rights be the city with the least trusting population in the world, full of angry protests and lacking in civic participation.

I can assure you this is not the case. Therefore the theory as presented cannot, in my experience, be correct. :confused:

9

[QUOTE=Malthus]
This is very interesting.

Allegedly, my home town of Toronto is the most diverse in the world:

Therefore, if the theory is correct, Toronto should by rights be the city with the least trusting population in the world, full of angry protests and lacking in civic participation.

I can assure you this is not the case. Therefore the theory as presented cannot, in my experience, be correct. :confused:
[/QUOTE]

His research is based on a survey of 41 sites in the US - which might be part of the issue.

I linked one article - you can get a lot more information from Harvard and the original research:

10

“Diversity” is too vague a word; you need to define just what it means. Ethnicity is only one sort of characteristic, after all–there’s also age, religion or philosophy, politics, experience…and so on.

And there are also too many different applications for such a general statement to work very well. There are probably many situations in which too much diversity will not help (off the top of my head, for example, if you have an environmentalist group meeting to decide what their next area of focus is going to be, it may not be helpful for people who do not share the same philosophical goals to be in on the decision-making process–though it may well be quite helpful to invite different perspectives on the question of whether the group should exist or not).

Anyway, on the whole I’d agree with the statement, but it’s too broad and ill-defined to be all that useful.

11

[QUOTE=Malthus]
This is very interesting.

Allegedly, my home town of Toronto is the most diverse in the world:

[/quote]

Hardly. My town has you beat.

From here.

That’s my experience also. I think we’re as trusting as any reasonably large city, and more than most. We were the safest city of our size for quite a while, but cuts in policing hurt that. I suspect economic inequality correlates to lack of trust far more than diversity.

12

[QUOTE=Algher]
Professor Putnam: When the data were adjusted for class, income and other factors, they showed that the more people of different races lived in the same community, the greater the loss of trust. “They don’t trust the local mayor, they don’t trust the local paper, they don’t trust other people and they don’t trust institutions,” said Prof Putnam. “The only thing there’s more of is protest marches and TV watching.”
[/QUOTE]

Reading that upside-down, the Spain of the early 1990s, when trust of the government was so low it went underground; people had gone back to keeping money in a piggy (or, preferably, spending it on additional education or trips abroad) because they didn’t trust the banks; there were several massive protests (country-wide general strike, LOGSE marches)… was more diverse than current-day Spain? I mean, if it’s diversity that leads to distrust, then more distrust comes from more diversity, wouldn’t it?

Not skin-color-wise, languages-spoken-at-home-wise or religion-wise, that’s for sure.

Correlation does not mean causation and I’m not even sure that his sample was large enough or properly drawn.

An example from Spanish politics, which matches and expands on the OP’s conversation. Sometimes, we get a government (at whatever level) which has absolute majority, they can push through any bill without talking with other parties. This inevitably has the same damn consequences every single time:

  • that party loses sight of its own electorate,
  • not to mention that % of the electorate who did not vote for them,
  • they push things which will be reverted (if possible) as soon as the wind changes,
  • they’re highly likely to lose that government in the next elections. It’s easier for a party to go from “absolute majority” to opposition than from a workable alliance to opposition.
    They “decide” faster, but not better. Their decisions don’t last, nor do they satisfy their employees (the voters).

When a party governs through a workable alliance or in a minority position (yes, it can happen), any bill they want to get through the corresponding Parliament or Council requires negotiating with other groups; this means that in the end everybody gets some things… nobody gets everything they wanted, but we all get something, and the bills are a lot less likely to get revoked. It ends up being a win-win situation, although yes, it does require more work than the absolute majority. They have to “reach an agreement,” since they aren’t already in agreement beforehand, but this agreement is more likely to be reasoned and effective than something based on “we’re all on the same side, we’re the right side, let’s just do what we want cos we can”.

And when you get an unstable alliance well, the term we use is “cannibalism,” also known as “a bloody mess”. I still prefer an unstable alliance (which ends up leading to advanced elections) to having any party ramming things down everybody else’s throats.
And of course, there’s always the old vive la difference :smiley: Even people who are attracted to others very similar to them do not want to have sex with their own twin!

13

[QUOTE=Dinsdale]
Yesterday someone asked me, “Why is diversity considered inherently good.”

[/QUOTE]

In the US “diversity” as a policy (governmental or corporate) is frequently code for encouraging the inclusion of people not otherwise considered qualified, and in particular, groups considered to be historically excluded arbitrarily.

One generally has to meet both criteria to be considered for the diversity umbrella. Female firefighters? We need diversity. Black physicians? We need diversity. More Asian NBA players? Not so much concern.

I see an enormous advantage to this sort of diversity. The social fabric of a heterogeneous society is strengthened by a perception of equal opportunity. That perception is not going to occur without actual diversity in society and the workplace. Moreover, bringing diversity to previously homogeneous ranks brings perspectives never considered because there was less diversity in the first place. Social evolution needs the injection of different perspectives so that there is a broader menu of choices from which to create a better society.

The counter-argument is that a society is best served choosing only the most qualified. One problem with this approach is that the qualifications have been established by the exisiting groups; it requires a vigorous and open analysis to determine whether those qualifications rest on legitimate concerns or whether they simply reflect a self-perpetuation of the current homogeneity.

There is a difficult balance to strike between demanding competence, maintaining standards and promoting diversity. The particulars of that discussion extend beyond the question here: What is the inherent benefit of diversity? I think the answer to that is easy. Why should one group get everything? How long would a heterogeneous population thrive without a perception of equal opportunity?

14

Thanks, all.

As far as defining diversity, I don’t know that I can be too specific as I was not the one posing the question, and for whatever reasons I wasn’t too desirous of getting too into the topic at the time. I cannot recall any specific incident that sparked the conversation, although I can well imagine it was in response to a news teaser on TV. I know that either that morning or the day before we had discussed a lengthy article in the Trib describing racial differences in school discipline; that article was mentioned again in the “diversity” discussion.

I did not read the article but had lengthy portions read to me. My understanding was that they said black students were punished more severly than white students for similar offenses. It also observed that a large majority of teachers were white. I’m not sure how explicitly they charged racism, but it certainly seemed to be implied.

One part said something like, “The white teachers may not be comfortable with the more aggressive manner in which black male youths participate in class” (paraphrased). And the reader commented that if the black students were participating differently then it may not be accurate to characterize the actions for which they were punished as similar. And commented that perhaps the “aggressive” (or whatever term was used) black male youths should learn to participate in a manner that comports with the majority societal mores, instead of complaining about being treated differently for their behavior. I guess puts some considerable value on assimilation - at least in the manner in which one participates in certain social activities/organizations.

I guess I have some sympathy with the position that, if there is a predominant social culture (which of course can be debated), then a minority has the choice of the extent to which they assimilate into that culture. To the extent they choose to retain their individuality, they may have less grounds to complain of being treated differently.

As far as “effective”, I’m pretty sure this person places considerable emphasis on efficiency and productivity, with a large side helping of utilitarianism.

15

Wow, that’s a really, really narrow defense of diversity-- Black male students are more “aggressive” than White students. (Where’s the link the that “Why are Black people so loud” thread when you need it.)

But it does point to an issue that is important in schools, and that is that children from different cultures are going to behave differently. Teachers need to be able to deal with that, as it’s not practical to assume that they can just instantly assimilate. Their parents are going to interact differently with the teachers, too, and it’ll be harder for them to assimilate, even though most probably try to some degree.

16

You should all conform to what I believe is correct.

Don’t like that? There’s one solid argument for the value of diversity right there.

17

Diversity in itself is neither evil nor a boon.

A business should seek out the best possible employees, no matter what their ethnicity. A software firm that shunned a highly qualified black or Latino engineer would be acting immorally and stupidly. On the other hand, a firm that sought out black or Latino engineers on the dubious assumption that they’d provide some unique ethnic perspective on technical issues would be acting ridiculously.

Finland and Japan have fairly homogenous populations compared to the USA. So. has this lack of diversity crippled Nokia and Toyota? Of course not! Nokia’s almost-all-white engineers are at LEAST as good as the diverse gang at Motorola, and the almost-all-Japanese engineers at Toyota are probably BETTER than the more diverse bunch at Ford.

There’s no “black” way to design microchips, there’s no “Hispanic” way to build cars, and there’s no “white” way to cure diseases. If diversity means being open to hiring the best of the best no matter where they come from, I’m all for it. If it means using race as a tiebreaker when choosing among equally qualified candidates, I have no real objections. But watering down standards on the grounds that a weaker candidate has something special to offer just because of his race is silly

18

I think an argument can be made that an organization that interacts with the public should have a different philosophy in regards to diversity than one that doesn’t. For instance, I don’t think anyone would think it was a good idea to have a public school staffed with a demographic that is strikingly different than the population it serves. Some people have linked the lack of discipline in schools, and the performance gap between boys and girls, with the sparcity of males in education. Another example is law enforcement. When the police don’t reflect the people it protects, you get distrust on both sides. In the case of working with the public, I think members of different cultures can bring certain intangibles to the table that should be viewed as assets when weighing candidates.

Even when it comes to more insular fields, diversity serves a purpose. Take science/engineering. All of us have different backgrounds and have encountered different problems. What kind of research questions get asked depend on who’s asking them. I’d say it would be advantegeous to build a diverse laboratory so as to bring in new ideas and perspectives. This doesn’t necessarily mean bringing in the Rainbow Coalition, but rather ensuring that not everyone you hire is from the same learning institutions, research areas, and even geographic regions. There’s nothing more annoying than seeing an “incenstuous” lab, where all the post-docs were in the lab as graduate students, all the graduates students were undergrad research assistants in that lab, and the PI discourages collaborations with other labs. An ideal lab is one where the staff comes from all kinds of institutions (Ivy League and state schools, engineering institutions and liberal arts colleges), from other fields (I love seeing math/engineering types in life science fields), and other countries (I once collaborated with a lab where it really did look like the UN and it was great). I think by doing this, you ensure that the research is as creative and open-minded as it can be.

19

[QUOTE=astorian]
…and there’s no “white” way to cure diseases.
[/QUOTE]

I’d say that medicine is definitely one area that diversity could help. There are a number of health disparaties across cultural groups that may be at least exaberated by under-representation of stigmitazed minority groups in medicine.

20

I tend to look at diversity as a healthy challenge. Within reason, different viewpoints, cultures, values, and populations force each of us to review our own viewpoint, culture, and values. Sometimes, those things don’t stand up to the scrutiny, and it’s time to change and adapt. That’s life. That’s healthy. Of course, it isn’t comfortable.