The Four Hundred--As I See It: Dissecting Diversity

I used to believe in diversity, but now I don't. I suppose that's a strange statement coming from one who is a product of diversity. My parents immigrated to this country but kept their language and culture until they died. So having grown up multiculturally, I understand the value of it. A second language, an expanded world view, a broader historic perspective: these are great and enduring gifts. Nonetheless, it would be hard not to notice that outside of ethnic restaurants and cross-over music, diversity isn't quite living up to its potential.

The trying part of diversity is not the mixing of cultures (art, food, music), which in this blessed country is relatively easy, but the mixing of races, which is not easy anywhere. And although policies promote equal opportunity in the workplace and declare that diversity is desirable and honored, racial mixing remains strained.

On the extreme side of the racial divide is a tug-of-war over advantage. Those against affirmative action lament that people of color are getting an unfair advantage based on race. They defend merit as the appropriate substitute for advocacy. Conversely, many people of color believe whites have always held an unfair advantage precisely because of their race, and would like to level the playing field. Ironically, their main concern about merit is that it is sometimes synonymous with pale pigmentation.

In the middle are people with their own biases and suspicions who do their best to avoid the subject. This reluctance to openly discuss race is what UCLA and Columbia law professor Kimberle Williams Crenshaw calls the " 'see no evil, speak no evil' version of racial etiquette." And in the workplace, avoidance is the de facto rule. Both managers and employees, having observed the contrary, know that it's hard to get in trouble if you just smile and keep your mouth shut. Adding to the divide, people of different races often self-segregate on the job, and each night return to their familiar enclaves--from ghettos to gated communities--where everyone looks, acts, and thinks pretty much as they do.

The late Herb Caen, San Francisco's legendary columnist, inadvertently captured the essence of today's racial dysfunction in an anecdote about a Midwesterner who was visiting San Francisco one summer and asked a local if he knew the way to "Gay World."

"Sure," the local replied. "You go through Chinese World, take a right at Hispanic World, then a left at Black World, and you're there."

The isolation of the races suggests that although we've physically integrated many social and economic institutions, we've failed to integrate them psychologically. To feel psychologically visible, people still tend to flock to "their own kind." And because races are inclined to segregate themselves into communities that reinforce existing beliefs and are intolerant of nonconforming beliefs, dialogue between races about race is devilishly hard to initiate. No matter what you say, someone is likely to take offense. And accusations of racism are enough to tarnish reputations and to ruin careers.

Just ask Rush Limbaugh. The conservative radio talk show host's brief foray into T.V. sports commentary was abruptly terminated by a comment made about a black quarterback. The essence of Limbaugh's comments was that Donovan McNabb of the Philadelphia Eagles wasn't very good but was given more credit than he deserved by the "liberal" media, which wanted to see a black quarterback succeed. It was a typical Limbaugh assertion, in which he arranges the facts to fit the theory; and although his reasoning was torturously squeezed through the cheesecloth of his ideology, it hardly seemed sufficient justification to warrant his firing.

Coincidentally, LPGA golfer Jan Stephensen made what could be construed as a racial comment. She claimed that Asians are "killing" the LPGA tour. There are too many Asian women on the tour, according to Stephensen, and they hardly say a word to anyone and therefore fail to promote the sport. Curiously, there was no great outcry against Stephensen; she didn't lose her sponsors and wasn't asked to quit the tour. So is there a double standard, or was Limbaugh operating under the misapprehension that we live in a nation where freedom of speech--even unpopular speech--is still valued and protected? Apparently, the lesson to be learned is that there may be prices to pay for expressing opinions about race, and that is one big reason why such a blaring silence exists in the workplace.

Paradoxically, the legacy of the civil rights movement left behind two disparate lessons. The first was that racism was wrong. The second was that racism was unfashionable. And so it went underground and assumed many disguises. But like a decoy among the ducks, true intention is hard to discern. For example, a call for fairness could simply represent a genuine belief in Platonic equality, blind to color both as a obstacle and as a remedy; or it could be prejudice masquerading as colorblindness.

The dissonance between what some people say and what they mean, and what others hear and what they experience, creates a constant field of low-level racial tension. And living with the contradictory desire to make racism a thing of the past and the reality that it endures leaves lots of folks feeling touchy.

How touchy? The city of Warwick, Rhode Island, commissioned some street art in the form of several six-foot tall Mr. Potato Head statues, decorated in a variety of ways, to promote fun and tourism. One Mr. Potato Head was dark and grinning and wearing an ill-fitting hat and Hawaiian shirt. It stood for several days without objection. But when its picture hit the local papers, city hall received complaints that it was racist, and it was subsequently removed. When the artist, Kathy Szarko, was asked to comment, she replied, "He's a potato; that's why he's brown."

How you react to that story is probably fairly indicative of how much prejudice has been directed at you. It's easier to think the story is silly and to judge the complainants as being quick to find offense, if your race has never been demeaned. Thus, one woman's Mr. Potato Head sculpture is another woman's object of racial ridicule. Neither is "wrong," but at least one is bound to be resentful.

That's why I don't believe in diversity: because, in its current state of evolution, someone will always be the loser. And when it comes to race, creating winners and losers is a divisive and dangerous thing.

Diversity works best when the individuals of many races, like strands of precious fabric, are woven together, each a unique and irreplaceable part of a larger tapestry. What we currently have is a tapestry full of patches; dysfunctional pockets of diversity all competing against one another for legislative advantage and favored victim status. Crenshaw would argue that the divisions are deliberately manipulated by actions that do not align with policy. There's "the official rhetoric of colorblindness," she says, "alongside the unapologetic pandering to a racist subculture. . . ."

David Brooks, writing in The Atlantic Monthly about diversity, said this: "Maybe it's time to admit the obvious. We don't really care about diversity all that much in America, even though we talk about it a great deal. Maybe somewhere in this country there is a truly diverse neighborhood in which a black Pentecostal minister lives next to a white anti-globalization activist, who lives next to an Asian short-order cook, who lives next to a professional golfer, who lives next to a postmodern-literature professor and a cardiovascular surgeon. But I have never been to or heard of that neighborhood."

Indeed, because the essential dialogue is not happening in our neighborhoods, it must begin to happen in the workplace. One on one, over lunch or coffee. In a spirit of mutual curiosity and genuine inquiry, without fear of judgment or accusation. Asking the difficult questions. Responding honestly. Like blind people touching different parts of an elephant and making assumptions about the whole; perhaps we can begin to glimpse the connective tissue that both separates and unites us.

Of course, it's healthy to put all of this in perspective and to remember just how far we have come. Last year, Newsweek sent a team of reporters to Europe in search of ethnic minorities in the boardrooms of the new European Union. A spokesperson for a German chemical company was asked about the status of minorities on his board. He scanned his memory for a long moment and then brightly recalled, "We had a Belgian once."