Diversity is Not Our Greatest Strength
Another frivolous maxim in the culture war
As a school parent who served as the elected chair of the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) Oversight Committee in my child’s school district for two years, I had the displeasure of hearing corrupted language and vapid expressions tossed about with regularity. My least favorite maxim (more a dictum) was “diversity is our greatest strength!” I heard it uttered frequently from learned and esteemed committee members — district administrators, teachers, parents, and students — and most frequently from our hired DEI consultants. It was most often used as an incantation or homiletic exclamation meant to signal one’s true commitment to the cause of equity and social justice.
However, when examined at the meaning of its constituent words, “diversity is our greatest strength” is another empty expression of dubious value in the service of a larger political cause — equity and social justice.
In organizations at any level — a family, a school or church, an army, a community, and even a civilization — diversity is merely a quality of a state or thing. It describes a range of possible differences. It is also value neutral. Progressives counter that in a social justice context diversity has a higher meaning — it is a practice or a value of the utmost importance needed to address centuries of racial injustice. Even accepting this second definition, diversity is one among many competing values and practices.
In my kids’ school district, they spent months coming up with a definition for diversity that a volunteer advisory committee could all agree upon. In the end they settled on the following definition:
Diversity – The array of differences that exist between people, on a personal as well as an organizational level. Those differences include, but are not limited to race, ethnicity, gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, socioeconomic class, ability, religion, family structure, age, and core values.1
Why the dictionary definition did not suffice is an indication of the ulterior motives of those who thrust the word to the forefront of the culture war. A word that is simply a descriptive state was imbued with moral purpose. Asserting diversity as inherently positive commits the is-ought fallacy, trying to derive a value judgment from a mere description.
In its social justice context, diversity is meant to recognize the belief that including representation from different identities (though the differences were curiously limited as the above definition insists — notice the intentional omission of diversity of thought) leads to better understanding, better decision-making within the organization, and better outcomes for both the group and its members.
More problematic, the maxim “diversity is our greatest strength” thrusts diversity to the top of the organization’s value hierarchy. Why diversity is elevated to the supreme value in an organization is baffling. The expression only makes sense in certain limited contexts. Diversity in its social justice context alone does not automatically create benefits — it requires effective integration and management. Poor implementation of diversity initiatives has been shown to increase tension and mistrust within organizations, particularly in schools and in the workplace, but more on that in a minute.
At face value, “diversity is our greatest strength” is true in almost no contexts on an organizational level. Let us consider two broadly different organizational test cases — an army and a school.
Diversity at War
Seeking out diverse opinions when time is of the essence can have catastrophic consequences on a battlefield. In combat operations, vastly more important are the skill and competency of commanders and soldiers; swift and effective communication; unit cohesion and unity of purpose among all levels of the organization; uniformity in training, procedures and response patterns; and courage and determination in battle.
Cultural, gender and cognitive diversity within units can impede battlefield coordination and a unit’s ability to fight effectively. Mixed-gender combat units have many documented challenges that reduce combat effectiveness: physical strength disparities adversely affect critical tasks like casualty evacuation and load bearing; the average female soldier carries 25-45% less load capacity than her male comrade; females suffer higher injury rates during physical training and deployment; male soldiers often exhibit protective behaviors toward female comrades and take excessive risks; unit cohesion is adversely affected by altered social dynamics between male and female soldiers; and unit aggression has been observed to be reduced in mixed combat teams. These facts are why most militaries throughout history, and many even today, have chosen to prohibit females from serving in combat roles.
Successful military units throughout history have emphasized standardization, not diversification, of tactical responses. Every military in recorded history has standardized uniforms, imposed strict hygiene and appearance standards that break down individual differences in order to build unified teams and inculcate esprit de corps, and implemented tough regimented physical training that also encourages loyalty and shared purpose to the unit.
There are a handful of contexts in the military where diversity is a strength. Diversity of thought in strategic planning, when time allows, can lead to better decision-making. Diversity of specialized skills is essential in an army from a broad perspective, but armies recognize this technical competence diversity and organize specialists into special units. Diversity of language skills and cultural knowledge can be beneficial in a counterinsurgency theater of operation, but these are supplements to the military’s core requirement for unity.
Clearly in a military context the opposite of diversity — unity and uniformity — are much higher in the value hierarchy. Even higher are competence, resilience and determination.
Diversity at School
Given the military is a poor example of diversity being its greatest strength, perhaps the adage finds more success in the schoolhouse. Alas, this turns out not to be.
Born and raised in Southern California, I attended co-ed, racially diverse schools at all levels from grade school through undergraduate school. I never noticed race until I arrived at college during the beginning of the multicultural movement of the 1980s and 90s. Being of mixed race myself (Asian mother and mixed northern European father), I never fit in among the half-a-dozen race-based student associations, though many tried to recruit me into their ranks. My parents had always raised me to be American and though aware of my parents’ varied familial and cultural roots, I never took pride in any one racial or national identity. In fact, I jokingly referred to myself as a hapa haole — a Hawaiian slang term connoting half-white racial origin — or ‘half-breed’, made in self-deprecating jest to poke fun at the kids who had such difficulty classifying and recruiting me.
What I did notice, particularly in college at what today would be called a highly-selective STEM school, was what bound us together as friends and classmates was not our race or any other immutable identity, it was our shared suffering in academically difficult coursework, our taste in music, sports and beer. We studied hard and we partied hard — no one cared what your country of origin was, what you looked like, or what type of person you liked to sleep with. Our friendships were bound by shared interests, shared values, and the inescapable shared experience of brutally difficult classes. Much like I had heard from my father, a US Army veteran who spent four years fighting in World War II, shared adversity binds people together beyond any outward shared appearance or shared faith.
I also declined to join the Japanese Students Club and the Asian-American Students Association because I noticed those classmates who did join those clubs were more sensitive to perceived racial sleights, and they tended to stick together in the dining halls and at parties. Having copiously read the work of Thomas Sowell, I was aware of his observation that racial preferential policies increased rather than decreased racial consciousness and intergroup tensions on college campuses and all around the world in countries where such policies had been implemented.2
James Sidanius, a former professor of Psychology and African-American Studies at Harvard University, conducted several studies on diversity policies in US colleges and how they affected student attitudes on campus. Sidanius and his co-authors found that:
“Ethnically oriented, student-based organizations such as the Afro-American Studies Association or the Latin American Student Association create more [racial] tension. Once students joined these organizations, it increased their own ethnic identification and gave students the feeling that they were being ethnically victimized by other student groups.”3
The relatively mild heightened racial sensitivity I observed in the 1980s from the multicultural student clubs pale in comparison to the hyper-charged racial atmosphere on current college campuses stoked by such DEI creations as diversity task forces and resource centers; mandated DEI, implicit bias and microaggression trainings; bias response teams; racial affinity clubs; racially segregated dining halls; and racially separate graduation ceremonies. The Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) in collaboration with the Rutgers University Social Perception Lab released a study just recently that found that anti-oppressive framings widely used in DEI trainings on college campuses and in corporate training rooms increase hostility, distrust, and punitive attitudes — escalating tensions instead of fostering inclusion:4
When participants were exposed to rhetoric from popular DEI frameworks (e.g., Ibram X. Kendi, Robin DiAngelo), the materials induced baseless attributions of hostility. People perceived racial discrimination or bias — even in neutral scenarios — and supported punitive actions without evidence.
…
Our findings also show how the effects of these Anti-Oppressive materials converge with Authoritarian Intolerance which includes coercive control, anti-hierarchical aggression, and endorsement of radical egalitarianism.5
That researchers are finding what many of us are living through is unsurprising. Sadly, most schools measure the success of their DEI programs by how much they spend on them or how may administrators they hire to staff them, rather than whether racial attitudes and inter-racial behavior improve.
So What of ‘Diversity is Our Greatest Strength’?
The evidence from both military and educational institutions demonstrates that diversity, while potentially beneficial in specific contexts when properly implemented, cannot reasonably be considered an organization’s greatest strength. In fact, the aggressive promotion of diversity programs, particularly those focused narrowly on immutable characteristics, often produces outcomes contrary to their stated aims — increasing racial consciousness, fostering division, and undermining the very unity and cohesion that enable organizations to function effectively. What truly strengthens organizations are factors such as shared purpose, technical competence, clear communication, and the bonds forged through common challenges and experiences.
Rather than elevating diversity to the apex of organizational values, we would do better to recognize it as one of many organizational qualities that must be carefully balanced against other crucial factors such as merit, unity, and operational effectiveness. The mindless repetition of ‘diversity is our greatest strength’ as a moral imperative not only defies logical scrutiny, but may actually impede the development of the genuine understanding and cooperation that we presumably seek to achieve.
See Race and Economics (1975), The Economics and Politics of Race: An International Perspective (1983), Preferential Policies: An International Perspective (1990), Inside American Education: The Decline, The Deception, The Dogmas (1993), his trilogy on culture — Race and Culture: A World View (1994), Migrations and Cultures: A World View (1996), and Conquests and Cultures: An International History (1998), Affirmative Action Around the World: An Empirical Study (2004), and most recently Discrimination and Disparities (2018).
The quote from Sidanius is from, “Do Affinity Groups Create More Racial Tension on Campus?” in Diverse Issues in Higher Education, Mar. 10, 2009. See also his book on “The Diversity Challenge: Social Identity and Intergroup Relations on the College Campus” (2010).
Ankita Jagdeep, Anisha Jagdeep, Simon Lazarus, et al, “Instructing Animosity: How DEI Pedagogy Produces the Hostile Attribution Bias,” Network Contagion Research Institute, (2024-Nov 13).
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