Corporate opponents of the initiative, which is based on the language of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, never acknowledge the possibility that voters approved it out of a simple belief in equality. In light of the alleged petty-mindedness behind CCRI's approval, many corporations now view their own affirmative action efforts as all the more crucial. Thus California corporations will continue to hire and promote based on race and sex. San Francisco-based LeviStrauss, for example, hires employees based on their ability to fill a specific demographic gap in its work force. Corporations minorities and- women.
Corporations universally claim a business rationale for such policies.
But while it's plausible to suppose, for example, that Hispanics tend to know best how to market to Hispanic consumers, the diversity mandate often leads to a preposterous essentialism. Corporate diversity trainers have no patience with quaint notions of equality. Before I can teach you to become aware of others' differences, you have to get in touch with how those factors have affected your own life. It is difficult to understand how encouraging such self-absorption could improve business competitiveness. The irony of the diversity effort is that it is superfluous.