Consider a few groups:
•U.S. Presidents, Senators, and members of the Congress
•CEOs
•the military
•teachers
•doctors at a hospital

Wouldn’t you want the best person for the job — regardless of their background or what they look like?

Here’s one way to make sure that happens: encourage everyone to pursue all subjects and areas of interest. Make school free for students, and well-funded by taxpayers—regardless of school district. Give people lots of support to let their abilities flourish. Encourage diversity—don’t say that it’s irrelevant. To get the best people for the job, draw from the deepest well possible.

How can we know if we’ve reached this goal?

If everyone in a particular position looks the same, there’s a good chance that you are not drawing from a deep well.

I still remember seeing a poster of the U.S. Presidents the first day I walked into my third grade classroom. My first thought was “that’s no fair that only guys can be President.”

When you’re 8, you see the world in black-and-white terms. Even if someone had been standing next to me to tell me that I could be President, I still had a lifetime of social cues to pick up on: grandparents and teachers who called me, but not boys, “mouthy.” A lack of role models, pruning a possible version of my future self as President.

Because it’s impossible to accurately map every inch of reality, we can never have precise figures that would explain the impact of representation—but representation matters. Without it, we can’t envision ourselves in that role.

Without Diversity: The Rich Get Richer

A lack of diversity in public spheres can create a self-reinforcing cycle that hands out rewards more easily to those who look like past winners.

The mere exposure effect is a phenomenon that explains why we like people we’ve seen before—“if it’s familiar, it hasn’t eaten you yet.” Over time, you gather more information about someone’s warmth and competence; you give them a chance to grow on you. As a result, we like people who remind us of other people we already like—new faces that feel familiar.

I was listening to a comedy podcast where the host was singing the praises of comedian Pete Davidson. “He almost reminds me of a young Frank Sinatra — very vulnerable but relatable. You’re rooting for him.” When there are 1,000 white male celebrities to use as reference points, any white male can easily draw comparisons to plenty of successful examples. If you’re a female comedian or a comedian of color, you’re less likely to draw that comparison.

Subjects who learn new faces of different colors show a reduced racial implicit bias. The more we know other people of all shades, the more we can see them as individuals, rather than representatives of their race or background. Diversity can lead to less fear of the “other” and more diversity—but it has to start somewhere.

The problem with data

Data is the religion of researchers: blindly accepted and never questioned. The problem is that there simply isn’t any data to show the large-scale effects of big issues like representation. How many other women and people of color never considered politics because they didn’t see anyone who looked like them in their textbooks?

Whenever I read a post on “critical thinking about diversity” by a white male professor, I can’t help but think: why are they doubting the benefits of society drawing from the deepest possible well?

The evidence on the value of demographic diversity to group performance is mixed at best. A body of evidence that runs counter to the narrative told by many colleges and universities, organizations, and societal leaders who understandably, want the science to be clear-cut.

Let’s look at the paper: it’s a meta-analysis from 2005, showing mixed results.

The majority of these effects of diversity on group performance (both positive and negative) have typically been explained by their effects on potential mediators such as social integration, communication, and conflict. However, the actual evidence for the input–process–output linkage is not as strong as one might like. For example, the results linking racial/ethnic diversity to negative group processes is quite mixed, showing negative results in some studies but positive results in others.

So, let’s get this straight: some groups are negative and some are positive.

WHY YES I BELIEVE THAT’S CALLED LIFE.

Every social problem hasn’t improved since women gained the right to vote, so should we stop letting them vote? Life is complex. Isn’t it safe to assume that some people in those groups were racist or sexist? But is that reason to stop giving other people a chance to be seen and heard?

When white men ask “When is diversity irrelevant?”, they may only see the most blatant example. In this case, male architects who never considered that women in dresses might feel uncomfortable walking up a clear spiral staircase.

Why is it important to a tenured white male professor that we not jump to conclusions about the importance of diversity and representation? Are alarm bells or dog whistles going off for anyone else?

Maybe, after hundreds of years, we’ve gathered enough information to know that we need to open up positions of power to more than just privileged white men—and if we want diverse leaders everywhere, we need diverse teams everywhere.

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