Diversity as a Selling Point: Does it Make Sense?

In today's world colleges and companies of all kinds are touting the fact that they are "diverse". Diversity has become a selling point for just about everything. It seems that you are able to add this particular modifier anytime you add a minority to an organization. But just how diverse are you when your completely caucasian organization inducts on hispanic?

Being a college student I have seen many college organizations claim to be diverse. Upon further scrutiny, however, one discovers that these claims often do not hold up. Some groups that are exclusively African-American, exclusively Hispanic, or exclusively Native American claim diversity simply because they are minorities. Well, diversity comes in having people of many races not just one. In this way I think it's unfair for any organization, simply because it consists completely of minorities, to call itself diverse when in reality it is no more diverse than a completely white organization.

This diversity labeling is not limited to university organizations. Many companies claim great diversity but once again, if you look closely, these claims don't hold up. You make work in the office and never see a minority because the minority workers are doing the blue-collar work related to the company. (This is merely an example, not a comment on race as related to job position.) Another rather sly tactic that companies use when claiming diversity is to use the demographics of all their employees. Upon first glance this makes sense, but not when you consider the jobs they are outsourcing. You will most likely never interact with an outsourced employee.

One could argue that diversity encompasses more that just race and I agree. Diversity also includes religious affiliations, sexual orientation, economic level, and just about every other quality of a person. If we were to extend this list it could include degrees of extraversion and intraversion, hair color, eye color, height, weight, right-handedness or left-handedness, nearsightedness or farsightedness.

So what defines "diversity"? At what point is the claim of diversity legitimate and at what point does it become absurd? I propose that diversity should be defined as having three or more groups represented in a single organization. This definition is rather vague and I can see it being stretched beyond reason (i.e. an organization being diverse because members are right-handed, left-handed, and ambidextrous) however, I think that this definition may be a good starting point to defining and characterizing what diversity means.