On “The Diversity Paradox”

“Similarly, while professional hockey is considered to have an under-representation problem, the same is not considered true for the National Football League or National Basketball Association, in which African Americans are very over-represented.”

It is common today to hear that “more diversity is better” or that “diversity is strength” or that diversity results in better outcomes along any number of dimensions. One may also have noticed, however, that this does not always seem to be the case. While one might hear that there is a problem, for example, in surgery because there is a higher proportion (over-representation) of male surgeons than there are males in the population, one does not hear similar things about professions such as public health that tend to be dominated by women. Similarly, while professional hockey is considered to have an under-representation problem, the same is not considered true for the National Football League or National Basketball Association, in which African Americans are very over-represented. I call this “The Diversity Paradox”: In some cases, a lack of diversity is considered to be a negative requiring remediation, while in other cases a lack of diversity is considered to be fine. How can this be?

The answer boils down to the Critical Social Justice (CSJ) or “Woke” perspective and two of its core tenets. The first tenet is oppression, and the second is equity. With respect to oppression, and as I describe in my 2021 book Counter Wokecraft authored with James Lindsay, according to the CSJ perspective, people are ascribed to (and primarily defined by) their group identity. People’s identities are seen as comprising multiple overlapping dimensions relating to skin color, sex, gender, sexual orientation, and the like. Importantly, each of these identities is also qualified as being either oppressed or privileged, as are the intersections of these identities. As a result, women are considered to be (historically) oppressed as are people who are black. Black women are seen to suffer from oppression on account of being black and on account of being women—and then in addition on account of being black women.

White men, on the other hand, are seen as being privileged and (historically) oppressors. Someone’s status as oppressor or oppressed accrues to them by way of their identity. This implies not only that they are recipients of contemporary oppression or privilege but also of historical oppression and privilege. Moreover, the privileged are not only recipients of privilege but are responsible for the implied oppression that such privilege represents—not only currently but historically for oppression imposed by members of their same identity group in the past.