“Celebrate diversity.” This is the single most dominant phrase that peppers social, educational and professional environments across the country. We often think of this as a necessary theme society must embrace if we are to progress into a tolerant, hate-free utopia in the foreseeable future. In actuality, this phrase could cause much more harm than it does benefit.
By celebrating diversity and focusing on what group a person belongs to, we’re reinforcing the social segregation that many have worked hard to eliminate in U.S. history. Didn’t the immigrants of the 19th and early 20th century just want to be American instead of “lowly” Irish, Jewish or Italian? Didn’t women of the suffrage movement want to be seen as competent individuals rather than “female property”? Didn’t the African-Americans of the civil rights movement want to be seen as individual human beings rather than for their skin color? The pure emphasis on their social or ethnic makeup is what they tried so hard to get rid of.
This is the failure of workplace diversity policies. They neglect the character of the individual for the pretty rainbow of a statistic that shows how nice and different the population that represents their company is. They zoom in so closely on the color of the outside that whatever color is lodged in the inside is often an irrelevant blur.
The results of such policies reinforce the negative stereotypes and opinions people may already have of other groups. They are the reason that after all these years of work for equal rights, the United States has thrown itself into reverse.
To illustrate the failure of a diversity policy on a large scale, consider the NFL’s hiring policy. In order to diversify the coaching ranks, the NFL has a policy that all teams must interview a minority candidate during the hiring process. (By this rhetoric, shouldn’t the NFL have a policy that teams must consider a non-black athlete in the draft when roughly 70 percent of NFL players are African-American? Wouldn’t a more diverse team benefit all team members?)
This hiring policy may have a variety of negative psychological impacts on many NFL affiliates. For minority coaching candidates, it may give the impression that they’re personally incapable of getting a coaching job without help from their race. For white fans, this may reinforce the same discriminatory idea that minorities are incapable of guiding a football team without help getting the position. If a minority is given a position, white fans might feel that it was just handed to him. If a minority was denied a position, minority fans or candidates might feel like he wasn’t given a fair shot or was just used as a tool in abiding by the league’s policy. This same logic can be applied to corporate diversity policies.
The fact that the majority of NFL players are African-American is totally irrelevant to the fact that they suit the needs of their employers and exceptionally fulfill their duty as employees. It doesn’t bother the vast majority of non-black NFL fans that the best players are on the team regardless of what the diversity policies say.
Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay hired African-American head coach Tony Dungy before the hiring policy was in place, and Dungy proved last year, when he won the Super Bowl, that the coach’s ethnic background doesn’t matter when it comes to being a great boss and the best in the field. Irsay liked what he saw in both character and winning percentage in hiring Dungy and didn’t need a diversity policy to see that.
If the NFL and other similarly large companies were to eliminate these kinds of policies, the listed scenarios may not be an issue. The social or ethnic background of an individual for any position naturally shines through that individual’s personal qualities. If those qualities will suit or exceed the needs of an entity, any interviewer interested in profitable results will extend an offer to that applicant.
It can be legitimately argued that corporations that have diversity policies improve the caliber of their business. For example, companies that hire various minorities through a diversity policy may see their sales go up because of the different ideas and perspectives on commerce such people bring. But if the employer likes what they see anyway, they shouldn’t have to also consider what race quotas need to be met.
This country has been based on the individual since day one. We have long prided ourselves on the individual freedoms and rights we exhibit every day, and a variety of minority groups fought vehemently for those rights and the right to be considered individuals.
Diversity policies disregard those efforts and perpetuate various social stereotypes they’re intended to eradicate. Until this country sees through what group everybody is in, we’re not going anywhere — and neither is racism.
— Oliver Casey is a sophomore in enterprise management. He can be reached at [email protected].
