Diversity and the Commodification of Non-Whiteness

As the Supreme Court prepares to confront affirmative action in Fisher v. University of Texas next term, a careful examination of some of the consequences of the diversity rationale seems timely.  In a forthcoming article, I argue that the diversity rationale has had the effect of reducing non-white racial identity to a commodity.

How and why does non-whiteness function as a commodity?  I argue that the diversity rationale and diversity thinking more generally has fueled an intense legal and social preoccupation with diversity.  As the result of this preoccupation, non-whiteness has become something to be desired and displayed.  In a previous post, I wrote about the incentives that the diversity rationale creates for predominantly white institutions to display their racial diversity.  For both educational institutions and businesses, this might involve calling attention to non-white individuals in promotional materials -- even, at the extreme, by photoshopping them into such materials.  Both educational institutions and businesses often feature pictures of non-white individuals prominently on their websites, or include links to statistics regarding the institution's diversity.  Indeed, most large companies have an entire section of their website devoted to diversity.  All of this contributes to the commodification of non-whiteness.

And such showcasing often has quite tangible economic benefits for the predominantly white institution.  For a business, hiring and displaying non-white individuals can improve relationships with potential clients who value racial diversity.  Likewise, showcasing non-white employees can facilitate recruitment of other talented non-white individuals or of white individuals who, for any number of reasons, value racially diverse work environments.  A similar phenomenon can occur with colleges and universities: diverse student bodies often please influential trustees or donors, and racial diversity is often a selling point in attracting a well-qualified student body.  The presence of non-white individuals throughout an employer's workforce also yields more concrete economic benefits by helping to provide a defense against ongoing employment discrimination suits or by preempting future suits.  And apart from this litigation benefit, an employer's demonstrated efforts to diversify its workforce can help to protect the company's image and reputation in the face of litigation.  One notable example of such successful image management is that of Wal-Mart, which undertook a well-publicized initiative to diversify its workforce with the result that even in the face of various sex and race discrimination suits the company received an array of awards and recognition for its efforts at achieving diversity.

This commodification of non-white identity presents a range of troubling consequences.  I'll raise one here, and discuss others in future posts.  One problem with thinking of non-white identity as a commodity is that it values non-whiteness in terms of how it can benefit predominantly white institutions.  This fosters an institutional view of non-whiteness as something from which the institution can profit -- while obscuring broader concerns of racial justice whose benefit to the specific institution may be less clear.  That is, showcasing non-whiteness prioritizes the aesthetic appearance of diversity over tangible improvements in racial relations both within particular institutions and in society at large.  So an educational institution focused on finding photographs of non-white students for its brochures may give little attention to the fact that its campus is highly segregated by race, or that the campus is plagued by interracial tension.  Or a business focused on improving its diversity numbers may give little thought as to whether its non-white employees are thriving, or to whether its workplace culture is one in which many non-white individuals feel subtly unwelcome.

None of this is to say that racial diversity is a bad thing.  Indeed, I think that the presence of racial diversity and with it the opportunity for interracial interaction are important steps in improving racial relations in America.  But fostering racial diversity is a necessary step rather than a sufficient one.  And I am concerned that the way that the diversity rationale is presented sometimes makes racial diversity -- or even just the appearance of racial diversity -- an end in itself, rather than a means to a much more complex end goal of progress toward interracial understanding.