How NOT To Solve Diversity Problems

Every professional job I have ever worked at had a "diversity" initiative.  There was a Black student forum in college.  There was a Black student group in law school.  Of course, just having all the Black students come together didn't solve any of the diversity issues in college.  When I left, there were still no Black employees in the administrative building in positions of responsibility.  Of course, they couldn't find any.  And no matter how often the Black student group met, nothing changed. 

In law school, I don't think that students really even tried to pretend our group had power.  It was a social group; students used it to find friends who looked like them and talked like them; to expand the diversity of their own inner circle. I strongly feel that this is the only thing affinity groups are really good for; they allow you to form relationships with other individuals who share your "other" status.  

In the working world, I feel that groups that target individuals for their "otherness" are an even more disturbing affair.  First, because they can be seen as exclusionary.  And secondly, because people pretend that they make a difference, as if having all the powerless people in a room at one time will somehow make them feel better.  

Individual affinity groups can also cause division in otherwise perfectly cordial settings.  A rowdy discussion of how maybe one person wasn't really Black because they were from a different country, despite that country's shared legacy of slavery, caused a rift in the student group that alienated "traditional" Black students from non-American students, who were equally as Black, but then again, sometimes you can't be sure.  As if there is some metric to Blackness. 

I think that the biggest failing of groups is that they do not do what people pretend they will.  Affinity groups, as they are commonly called, do not empower anyone. If anything, they alienate students, and employees, because they serve as a further reminder of their otherness. 

And, in the work setting, they make it seem like it is the employees fault that they are different.  After going to an event at a former employer, where a supervisor announced that he was doing his part for diversity when he just talked to Black employees, I was dumb struck.  Really? You stoop so low as to talk to little old me? Wow, you must really like Black people!