I recently completed Diversity: Invention of a Concept, by Peter Wood. This is the first of several book reviews I’ll be writing of books generously sent to me by my readers.

Diversity has become one of the defining ideals of our age, surpassing in certain respects our earlier commitments to formal equality, liberty, the rule of law, and merit. The diversity concept, unlike more exotic ideas such as multiculturalism, is important because it has spread outside the academy into the world of business and politics. Every mainstream institution from Hollywood and the art world to the education establishment and business trumpets its commitment to diversity. Yet diversity has undergone little criticism. Unlike affirmative action, which was earlier justified as a form of reparations for white injustice to blacks, diversity is a “feel good” idea that purports to benefit everyone, even members of the majority. Minorities advantaged by affirmative action obviously benefit by receiving positions and admissions they would otherwise not receive. But privileged groups also benefit according to diversity’s partisans because they are now exposed beneficially to different perspectives, ideas, and cultures.

Earlier works such as Dinesh D’Souza’s End of Racism (1995) and Alan Bloom’s Closing of the American Mind (1987) dealt with narrower issues: the continuing social problems facing black Americans and the decline of standards in the academy respectively. Both of these works were authored in an age when diversity was less accepted as an aspirational ideal than it is at present. Wood’s contribution is unique. . . .

The book is ultimately a balanced account of diversity’s impact on our world. Not a man of the right, Wood’s first hand experiences stem from his own role in the academy, where his defenses of standards and merit have largely fallen on deaf years.  Wood reminds us that diversity is an abstract ideal in want of a theorist. There is no Freud or Locke or Rousseau or Marx standing behind the ideal of diversity. It is an idea the became in vogue in the post-1960s atmosphere, where standards of all kinds came under scrutiny. Radical critique was brought to bear against the “dead white male”canon and the privileges that allegedly propelled white males to the elite ranks of science, business, and other endeavors. These outcomes, previously held in place by formal discrimination, were described as anomalies, the continuation of which cannot be explained by more benign causes, such as group differences in talent and energy and culture. For most proponents of diversity, the continuing lag by minorities in selective fields like law and medicine remains a scandal, proof of continuing “invidious” discrimination. This description of minority underachievement is one of the chief engines behind the diversity movement’s momentum.

Diversity was prominently described as a justification for some kind of affirmative action in Bakke, the late 70s Supreme Court decision in which Justice Powell’s concurrence held that an applicant’s contribution to an institution’s diversity could function as a “plus factor” in a university’s admissions decision. Previously activists justified affirmative action as a form of “rough justice” to reverse the effects of specific discrimination against a specific group (blacks) with a persuasive, historical claim to assistance from the white majority. Yet this view left out legions of people whose achievements were disproportionately low. Defenses of affirmative action evolved, particularly by institutions without a prior record of discrimination, to extolling the importance of diversity. In the wake of Bakke, diversity received an important boost in what would otherwise have been an item of dicta in a single Supreme Court concurring opinion.

Wood also has a good explanation for diversity’s popularity compared to alternatives because it is a less threatening goal than “zero sum” appeals for class and racial justice. This may be why traditionally hard-headed business interests gave in so quickly to its logic, even outside of realms like sales where it makes sense to have diversity in order to deal with a niche customer base. People of middling commitment to any ideological cause are far more likely to embrace something positive-sounding like diversity than the dreaded “quotas” and “race norming” that characterized affirmative action of another era. Diversity is thus more subtle and palatable than outright appeals to have equality of outcome, even though diversity policies are little different than the quotas of the past.

In the last 20 years, a whole new breed of professional has emerged, with such august titles as Chief Diversity Officer. Recent graduates find the values of their educational institutions replicated on the first day at a new job where they are educated in “celebrating difference” and “inclusiveness” in the workplace. Whether any of this has actually helped businesses and their bottom line remains to be seen. The rise of such monocultural giants as the Chinese and Japanese manufacturing juggernauts suggests otherwise. Further, Wood reminds us that when important and highly technical positions like “airline pilot” and “brain surgeon” are on the line, the potential costs of admitting far less qualified candidates in the name of diversity is self-evident.

I think another useful contribution of Wood’s book is his reminder that diversity of people, habits, cultures, physical appearance, and the like did not escape the notice of educated people in the past. Rather, the idea that it was always something to be celebrated has emerged. By tracing us through such sources as Herodotus, 19th Century travel literature, and the early 20th Century fathers of anthropology, Wood describes eloquently how human beings, particularly westerners, have been fascinated by diversity and human difference for as long as they have encountered it. One peculiar consequence of modern diversity is that a great deal of diversity goes unnoticed, particularly if it means distinguishing between higher and lower cultures and taking notice of illiberal habits among other people such as ritual suicide, clitoretormy, or polygamy. Where 19th Century man was often horrified by the differences between Europeans and the Third World’s “savages,” the modern purveyors of diversity instead “accentuate the positive.” Thus, the reality of diversity goes unnoticed. We’re embarrassed by the crude generalizations made by older observers on the habits of Indians, black Africans, and regional cultures within the United States, but a more balanced, yet needed, critical literature on other cultures has not emerged. As a result, we are disarmed when truly threatening developments such as Islamic fundamentalism and Mexican reconquistadors directly threaten our way of life. Diversity advocates also make a habit of suppressing the raw data that reveals the extent of differences domestically in matters like crime, IQ, and scholastic achievement. As a consequence, we extol diversity also by denying the sometimes troubling reality of diversity. It becomes merely ornamental, a peculiar mode of dress or food and not the confrontation with a genuinely alien Other that forces us to reconsider our generous, though largely, ignorant acceptance of other cultures.

Wood’s book is not perfect, however. He is a bit too sanguine about the prospects of education and meritocracy eventually solving the problem of group differences. For a nation that fetishizes equality, consistently divergent group outcomes are unpalatable, even for Wood. He also not seem to consider how mere numbers fuel affirmative action policies. He also has little to say about immigration and how these new minorities drive cultural fragmentation, particularly when they no longer are influenced from the hard-headed assimilationist policies of the past.

America was previously a biracial nation with stable demographics and cultural confidence. Today, millions of newcomers of varying abilities arrive on our shores annually, and most are quick to fight for spoils under the aegis of diversity. As Thomas Sowell has observed, affirmative action is not uniquely American and has strong appeal whenever diverse groups of diverse abilities rub shoulders in a modern, democratic nation. I also do not share Wood’s reservations regarding voluntary groups based on ethnicity. A large society such as ours has room for historically black colleges, Greek-American clubs, and a proliferation of other ethnic institutions. In other words, if we are not going to mandate diversity across the board, we should be more accepting of “little platoons” founded on fellow feeling, a common history, and the desires of members of disparate groups to help one another. Of course, this means that we should also be tolerant of ethnic identification among whites, and this so far has not been the order of the day among diversicrats. It’s the one kind of diversity that isn’t. It’s the tabula rasa that exists soley to provide a space that other cultures and peoples can enrich.

Wood offers in contrast to diversity the older American ideals of equality of opportunity, realism, and the rule of law. Unfortunately, in a world of tribes and tribal thinking, such individualism may be the domestic equivalent of unilateral disarmament. Explicit individualism in this milieu will be met with tribal responses by various groups seeking spoils, all the while promising unbelievably to the native-born American majority that they’ll benefit implicitly. Through a surplus of generosity, guilt, and willful ignorance, diversity will likely continue to march forward, destroying the unique culture that Americans have brought to the world. A response more robust and more explicit will be needed that simply papering over the last thirty years and appealing to the values that worked (and could only work) in the more unified America of yesteryear.