Diversity: The Invention of a Concept [Paperback]

Peter Wood (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1, 2004

Diversity is America's newest cultural ideal. Corporations alter their recruitment and hiring policy in the name of a diverse workforce. Universities institute new admissions rules in the name of a diverse student body. What its proponents have in mind when they cite the compelling importance of diversity, Peter Wood argues in this elegant work, is not the dictionary meaning of the word—variety and multiplicity—but rather a set of prescribed numerical outcomes in terms of racial and ethnic makeup. Writing with wit and erudition, Wood has undertaken in this entertaining book nothing less than the biography of a concept. Drawing on his experience as a social scientist, he traces the birth and evolution of "diversity." He shows how diversity sprawls across politics, law, education, business, entertainment, personal aspiration, religion, and the arts, as an encompassing claim about human identity. It asserts the principle that people are, above all else, members of social groups and products of the historical experiences of those groups. In this sense, Wood shows, diversity is profoundly anti-individualist and at odds with America's older ideals of liberty and equality. Wood warns that as a political ideology, diversity undercuts America's long effort to overcome racial division. He shows how the ideology of diversity has propelled the Neo-racialists on the political Right as well as those on the multi-culturalist Left. But even if the diversity movement did not exacerbate racial and social division, he believes that it would be a questionable cultural ideal. As Wood points out, "Our liberty and our equality demand that we hold one another to common standards and that we reject all hierarchy based on heredity—even the hierarchy that comes about when we grant present privileges to make up for past privileges denied."

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Anthropology professor Wood examines two kinds of diversity. Diversity as physical and cultural variation among humans was propounded by nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century systematic anthropology. Diversity as the conviction that physical and cultural traits should determine one's eligibility for admission to college, career advancement, and bestowal of government largesse arose from Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell's freestanding decision in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, in which he allowed that differences in race, gender, and other traits--designated as diversity--were worthy of consideration in distributing social goods. The new diversity quickly became an aggressive ideology, damaging American institutions and poisoning public discourse with "identity politics." Wood blames the Left for using diversity to undermine democracy and faintly praises the marketplace for trivializing it into a matter of lifestyle choice. But the marketplace is interested in making money off diversity, not quashing it. "We will be left," he sadly concludes his otherwise surprisingly congenial survey, "for a long while still, with the reign of diversity's pasteboard stereotypes." Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"A perceptive and closely reasoned examination of the spread and implications of contemporary Diversity."

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Encounter Books (July 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1594030421
• ISBN-13: 978-1594030420
• Product Dimensions: 6.2 x 1.1 x 9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #479,790 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

104 of 113 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Challenging and Infuriating Book March 6, 2003

By jimfocus

Format:Hardcover

My politics and Dr. Wood's are miles apart, but his book is exceptionally well-written, researched and timely (the Supreme Court will be hearing the U-M case next month). Though I disagreed with him on a nearly page by page pace, his engaging style and sincerity kept me at it. Shelby Steele is right--it really reads like a novel in places. The really surprising aspect of this erudite and on-the-face-of-it academic tome is it's humor. This is a very funny book with many laugh-out-loud passages. Wood makes us re-examine ourselves on the most passionate subject in our history with great wit and humor. That's why Diversity is head and shoulders above right wing screeds (anything by Ann Coulter, for example) it may be thrown in with--that would be a mistake. Diversity is an excellent read for unrepentant lefties like me who need to have their orthodoxy and intellectual cobwebs shaken up for review every so often. Highly recommend.

51 of 55 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Nailing diversity February 10, 2003

By A Customer

Format:Hardcover

A brilliant dissection of "diversity." The quotation marks are necessary because the concept Wood is writing about--and all of AMerican higher education is obsessively talking about--has no relationship to the original meaning of the word--multiplicity and variety. "Diversity" is now a word describing schemes to manipulate people and numbers for racial and ethnic objectives. This is a book that shows how this happened. It is far from being a polemic, however. Rather, Wood, an anthopologist by trade, writes elegantly in tracing the back alleyways and intellectual boutiques through which "diversity" has passed on its way to the center stage in American life (and to a Supreme Court decision.)

28 of 29 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Great book that cuts against the cultural grain. . . December 5, 2005

By Thompson

Format:Hardcover

Professor Wood admits that, in contemporary America, only the most intrepid minds dare question diversity's exalted stature as a cultural ideal. So it should say something Wood's disregard for his own reputation that he has written this book, which assails the ideal of diversity on page by page pace. I will admit that I bought this book hoping to see just this kind of thing-to see a credible author and skilled mind slay diversity in a "public setting." Of course, it's only a public setting if more people read the book.

My own antipathy toward diversity took root during my undergraduate experience at the University of Nebraska, where diversity pervaded official policy, speeches, campus news articles, and student government. Not despising diversity, I merely became irritated with its omnipresence, the way one might tire of a food group if forced to eat it at every sitting. In short, I was unaware of diversity's true malevolence before reading this book. But Wood documents diversity's self-contradictions, its empty thinking, its threat to individualism, its corrosive impact on higher education, and more. In higher education, for instance, Wood attacks race preferences for admission (carried out in the name of diversity) and notes that, at the U. of Michigan, a white applicant to law school scoring between 163-165 on the LSAT and holding a 3.25 GPA has about a 23% chance of being admitted. A minority student with the exact same academic credentials has a 99% chance. I mention this in this review so that the potential reader can get a feel for the content of this book.

Of higher education, Professor Wood also points out how diversity is cleverly used as a two-faced recruitment tool. Diversity is marketed to white American teenagers, Wood says, as a way to escape the social narrowness of their high school experience-as a "romantic mingling" experience with "the other". But diversity is then marketed to minority students as an assurance that they will feel welcome at State U., where increased recruitment of students of color will offer minorities a safe haven from the crush of the predominantly white student body. Fantastic observation, because it's true, and it reveals diversity's opportunistic nature.

Despite diversity's grotesque track record, Wood also realizes why diversity has maintained a near universal following in this country-it seems to command us all to be fair, helpful, open-minded, and above all, to avoid judgment of other people, other beliefs, and other ideas (is that such a good idea?). As Wood argues, despite diversity's more noble exhortations, we as neighbors, citizens, and co-workers can better achieve good will and social betterment if we set aside silly race-based distinctions and look instead at individual merit.

As an example of how holistic Wood's view of diversity is, take one of the early chapters. In it, Wood draws on his experience in anthropology to relate how Americans in the 1800s and early 1900s were avid readers of books and compendiums that provided rich, unabashed descriptions of the world's geographic and cultural diversity. True diversity. He contrasts this bygone interest in the world's people and places with the new diversity, which Wood argues accentuates slight differences between people (black Americans, white Americans, Hispanics, etc.) and asserts, against the evidence, that the differences between us are gigantic. Furthermore, he chastises contemporary Americans for believing themselves to be educated about and sensitive to cultural differences, whereas, these same Americans believe, past generations were parochial, ignorant, and unappreciative of these differences. "It is a sad delusion," he writes.

Although it wasn't the most enjoyable segment in the book, the best work Wood does (from an author's and researcher's point of view) is when he traces the growth of diversity from an LBJ speech through the Supreme Court's Bakke decision through the 1980s and then today. Wood's treatment of the Bakke case is remarkable in its detail, and is sure to startle the reader when one realizes how a marginalized, fringe idea (that there is real, measurable educational value in having a diverse student body), set forth by Justice Lewis Powell, spawned the monster we wrestle with today.

Overall, Wood takes a topic that had great potential to be tedious and academic and turns it into a delightful read that manages to deal with diversity comprehensively and delicately without compromising the reader's interest. Flat-out, this is a great book.