Title: Has ‘Diversity’ Lost Its Meaning? - The New York Times
Headings: Has ‘Diversity’ Lost Its Meaning?
Has ‘Diversity’ Lost Its Meaning?
Content: And the few exceptions to this rule are consistently held up as evidence of more widespread change — as if a few individuals could by themselves constitute diversity. When the word is proudly invoked in a corporate context, it acquires a certain sheen. It can give a person or institution moral credibility, a phenomenon that Nancy Leong, a University of Denver law professor, calls ‘‘racial capitalism’’ and defines as ‘‘an individual or group deriving value from the racial identity of another person.’’ It’s almost as if cheerfully and frequently uttering the word ‘‘diversity’’ is the equivalent of doing the work of actually making it a reality. This disconnect is not, of course, limited to tech. In this year's annual Pub­lishers Weekly survey of book-publishing employees, respondents — 89 percent of whom were white — found ‘‘no real change’’ in the racial composition of the work force since last year, despite ‘‘increased attention given to diversity.’’ The television and film industries are being investigated by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission over complaints of sex discrimination. And yet, as is the case in Silicon Valley, small victories are often overenthusiastically celebrated as evidence of larger change. In September, for example, when Viola Davis became the first African-American woman to win the Best Actress in a Drama Series Emmy, the moment was cheered in the press as a triumph of racial equity in Hollywood. But just a month before, Stacy L. Smith, a professor of communication at U.S.C. who, with other researchers, had just released a damning report that studied gender bias in 700 films made between 2007 and 2014, lamented ‘‘the dismal record of diversity, not just for one group, but for females, people of color and the L.G.B.T. community.’’