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Broadening Horizons: Considerations for Creating a More Complete Science of Diversity

“The way to stop discriminating on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race,” opined Supreme Court Chief Justice Roberts in a recent court decision striking down a school integration plan in a highly segregated public school district (Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1, 2007). This quote and the case from which it stems reflect not only the role that law and other social institutions play in prejudice and discrimination (either by inadvertently allowing it or protecting against it) but also the role that such institutions play in shaping how people construe the problem of discrimination and, thus, its solution. Victoria Plaut (this issue) argues that social psychology has an important role to play in the development of an empirically based science of diversity. She points to the extant research in the field on categorybased information processing (see Fiske, 1998, for a review) and more recent research on the effects of different models of interethnic diversity on intergroup attitudes, judgments, and interactions (e.g., Vorauer, Gagnon, & Sasaki, 2009; Wolsko, Park, Judd, & Wittenbrink, 2000) as examples of the potential contributions that social psychology can make to shape lay and institutional understanding of the promise and perils of diversity and various models of interethnic relations. At the same time, Plaut (this issue) argues that in order to develop a meaningful science of diversity, social psychologists will need to incorporate the sociohistorical context in which lay beliefs about diversity have been shaped. Most notably, she highlights the role of the law in promoting and enforcing either “race conscious” or “colorblind” models of diversity and encourages social psychologists to seriously consider both the historical and contemporary influence of the law on individuals’ beliefs, preferences, and reactions to diversity. Both the call for a “diversity science” and the necessary interdisciplinary sociocultural approach required to achieve it are important challenges to contemporary social psychological research on intergroup relations. In the sections that follow, we first echo Plaut’s (this issue) review of important legal precedent in the development of the “colorblind ideal” as well as present additional evidence regarding the limitations of this approach to interethnic relations. Next, we expand on her review with a broader discussion of the legal foundations of race and argue that this is another area in which a social psychological “diversity science” must understand and intersect with the law. After, we propose several areas that are ripe for future research, including (a) the views, judgments, and reactions of members of racial minority groups to various models of diversity, and (b) the potential insight to be gained on interethnic models of diversity from an examination of parallel models of diversity regarding identity dimensions other than race (e.g., gender). Last, we conclude with a brief discussion of how changing societal demographics may continue to shape, and potentially reshape, both legal and lay perceptions of and beliefs about racial categories, models of diversity, and discrimination.