Diversity Is More Than Skin Deep
By: Riad Kherdeen
Tags: Race, Culture, Diversity, Ideas, Politics

Image courtesy of the Goldfarb School of Nursing

President-elect Joe Biden has already been garnering praise for some of the historical nominations and appointments to his cabinet and administration. He has also been under mounting pressure to continue to supposedly “diversify” his cabinet simply by nominating women and people of color. The big problem with this kind of approach to “diversity” is that while you may end up with a group of people who may look different from one another, they do not necessarily think differently and represent different interests.

Diversity needs to be more than just skin deep. Mainly advocated for historically by white liberals through policies like affirmative action and quotas, this normative sort of valorization of racial and ethnic diversity above all else merely treats the symptoms of structural racism and inequities rather than fixing or dismantling the underlying structures themselves that have perpetuated these racial and socioeconomic disparities. Instead of prioritizing “diversity” as such, those who are interested in racial justice and equity should focus on addressing and correcting the ongoing systemic root causes of underrepresentation and marginalization.

Furthermore, what (typically white) advocates of “diversity” don’t often realize is that people of different races and ethnicities can have similar educations, interests, goals, and worldviews, despite their different lived experiences. And while, to a certain degree, it may be better to see people in prominent positions who are not all white, straight men, it is ultimately not very productive if they all think alike, talk alike, and share the same values.

Just seeing “Black faces in higher places,” as the expression goes, is not enough if those same Black people who managed to get to those higher places betray the interests of their fellow Black folk and the communities they came from. Activists and intellectuals like Malcolm X, Cornel West, Angela Davis, and Nina Turner have all been critical of this phenomenon. What happens is that when people from underrepresented groups attain a position of power, they are likely to become more interested in maintaining and furthering their newfound power — along with the wealth and class privileges that come with that power — rather than empowering and championing the people in their communities that did not have the same opportunities.

These interests are usually in conflict, and instead of taking an intersectional approach, many of them fall into a false trap and choose class over race. In other words, just because you have some Black faces in higher places does not mean that they are going to change anything if they have sold out (which is more often the case than not). What proponents of “diversity” lose sight of — and this is perpetuated by the media and those in power — is that the Black and Brown working class have more in common with the white working class than they do with the Black and Brown bourgeoisie.

“Diversity” is harmful — violent, even — if the only criterion for this diversity is skin color or last name alone. It tends to flatten the complexity and humanity of people in favor of a single, usually visible, attribute as standing in for a group of people who are erroneously understood as a monolith by the very same people championing “diversity.”

When Joe Biden is lauded for simply picking a person of color or a woman for a prominent position, then he can get away with choosing people who are deeply embedded within the political swamp of DC or the military industrial complex, are architects of neoliberal trade policies and advocates of globalization, are cozy with Wall Street, and are beneficiaries of and invested in the status quo (these qualifiers apply to nearly all of Biden’s picks, regardless of race or gender). Just because we have some “diversity” in terms of how these people look does not mean that we can give them a pass on their records and values.

So even though Joe Biden may have a Black and South Asian female vice president and has nominated and hired a handful of Black, Latinx, South Asian, and East Asian Americans for his team, it does not mean that he has a diverse circle around him. Most of these people went to the same elite schools, know the same people, see the world through shared lenses, have white-collar careers, are Washington insiders, and are extremely well-connected.

Real diversity is not just racial/ethnic, gender, and sexual difference. It is a multiplicity of viewpoints, backgrounds, experiences, tribulations, values, and classes. To a certain extent, these details are more important than race or gender alone.

For example, let’s take two groups of people. The first group is all white, straight men, and the second group represents a mix of genders, races, and sexualities. The first group consists of working poor, blue collar, and white collar people who span political and economic spectra and come from all over the US with various levels of eduction; the second group are all white-collar people from big cities who attended the top-ranked schools in the world and hold a college degree or higher. Which group is really the diverse one? Would you even consider the second group diverse compared to the first one? The second group is the one that Biden is assembling, and while I would hate for his senior officials to be as racially and gender homogenous as those in the Trump administration, I would champion a team like that of the first hypothetical group far more enthusiastically than I would a team like the second group.

It is imperative that Biden and others in all kinds of leadership positions think more deeply about what diversity really is if they are to reap its proven rewards and do the best work they possibly can. More than easy virtue signaling or simply placating identitarians through “diversity,” smart leaders must work harder to assemble their teams to represent a plurality of thought and interests so that they can be challenged, confronted, and better informed. Unfortunately, nearly all of the “diverse” appointments by Biden have little diversity of ideas, beliefs, and values, and many of them worked with Biden in the Obama administration. Trump was the outcome of how these people led the country, so if Biden is not more careful this time around, then we should not be surprised when Trump — or someone even worse than him who is smarter and more dangerous — returns to power in 2024.