UConn lecturer explains diversity

The+Sunflower

The Sunflower

On Tuesday afternoon some students attended a lecture on diversity where the main idea was pretty simple: diversity is bad.

Dr. David Embrick, an associate professor at the University of Connecticut, gave a lecture entitled “What Does Diversity Look Like in 21st Century America: Diversity Ideology and Thinking about ‘Real’ Change.”

Embrick was straightforward, opening the presentation with a simple statement.

“I don’t like the word diversity; I don’t care about diversity” Embrick said.

Over his 15 years of research, Embrick found two things to be true about diversity: we care about diversity and we are committed to diversity. He began working in the corporate world where he witnessed the outspread of the word “diversity,” and every company’s vow to do something about it.

He showed mission statements and diversity plans of various places including Wal-Mart, Tyson Foods, the University of Central Florida, the Archbishop of Chicago and other entities. Their pledges were all similar. Diversity is good, it strengthens us, it is our foundation. Embrick, however, argued the hollowness of not only these statements but the word diversity itself.

“What is diversity? Because what I’m reading is we want diversity because it’s diversity and that’s great” Embrick said about the meaninglessness of the word. “How do you quantify diversity if you don’t know what it means?”

Embrick had multiple statistics to show that there was not diversity in the companies that were claiming to be diverse and even winning awards for their diversity. One striking statistic was that African Americans represent one percent of C.E.O.’s in Fortune 500 companies.

One thing Embrick has learned in his years is that people can ignore statistics, so he began a project with visual sociology. He began looking at companies that were claiming to be diverse and creating collages of photos (headshots) of the managerial teams. When the board of directors, higher-ups and so forth were put in front of your eyes it was obvious that diversity was not taking place.

“I am a person of color so I kinda knew coming in that, you know, we were not going to be represented well. When we are looking at workplace diversity, racial minorities are going to be at the bottom of the totem pole” Rachel Embray, a WSU student, said. “But it was interesting to see it in picture format, it was pretty powerful.”

All the companies had the same demographic: white middle-aged men. These were the companies claiming diversity, companies being run by little to no minorities.

Even with the visual representations Embrick felt backlash from peers.

To counter this he began interviews with people in middle-management positions or higher.

He discovered most of the people – to be specific white men – either could not describe exactly what their companies meant by diversity, or had such differing answers that it made diversity even more ambiguous.

Ambiguous.

That was where Embrick was leading his argument, that the word diversity is indefinite, not concrete in our minds.

“[Diversity is] a false promise. It’s an empty egg shell with nothing inside it” Embrick said.

With Embrick crushing the idea of diversity, the ways we approach it and our thought that we were making strides, many audience members – not unlike myself – wanted to know: how do we fix this?

“We need to engage in more specificity” Embrick said.

“At least if you identify the consistent problem within the institution that you can deal with, because you have a pot of resources to deal with it, then you can have some movement forward.”

And that was Embrick’s call to action.

Name diversity.

Say what needs to be made more diverse.

Name the problem and then we can work on the solution.

“I kinda assumed people had diversity defined. I did not realize the extent in which it is not defined” Dr. Charles Koeber, assistant dean of the fairmount college of liberal arts and sciences, said.

In regards to Wichita State, they might be closer than most schools when it comes to the progress of defining and actuating diversity.

“This university actually has defined it, I believe. In terms of trying to be proportional. A proportion of student body and the employees here that [reflects] the larger community” Koeber said.