Asian American Discrimination in Harvard Admissions [pdf]

It is weird how racial diversity is given so much higher weight than other forms of diversity.

We are different in economic and social class, religion, politics, urban/rural, interest in sports, interest in music, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity and race.

And yet, when we talk about diversity race trumps all other forms of diversity. It is the most visible (other than gender) form of diversity. All other forms of diversity requires getting to know the person.

When it comes to discrimination, again, the most visible form of difference is the most common basis for discrimination.

Maybe the whole thing makes no sense and the apparatus is just in place to make the loudest minorities feel like they are being treated "fairly".

Harvard engages in this sort of "affirmative action" for many different axes, not just race. I think race gets such attention because it's such a charges issue, not because it is the only diversity promotion effort at play.

exactly. don't forget personality diversity at work too.

I manage a team of border-line spectrum to extroverts. I love them all. Quieter ones bring a lot of values to the company, but guess who get all the recognition?

Workplace bias against certain personality types are a huge drag. For the most part, people are more or less born into their personality and predisposition. If not, it was influenced by their upbringing. Yet we feel it's ok to discriminate.

Totally, and it's unfortunate. When people talk about diversity in the workplace or whatever, they aren't talking about diversity in foot size. Diversity is invisible. I wish it weren't the case that so many people use race as a proxy for the kind of diversity that provides the greatest breadth of experience and worldview that lets us benefit in things like problem-solving. Many of us unfortunately live in cultures where it's acceptable to interpret a person's silence as tacit support one way or the other, and so people are under pressure to signal their political affiliations to their peer groups. And since there's been a really poor proliferation of the tools, training, and education necessary to even really identify what people mean when they say "diversity", and using race as a proxy is so easy to do, it's what the vast majority of people reach for first when they need a quick and low-effort signaling mechanism. And in gaining traction as a signaling mechanism in this way, it became the status quo, adding even more pressure to signal using this proxy, in a kind of feedback loop. It's super lazy. And worse, as with any kind of status quo there are also a lot of groups and individuals who've staked significant investment in it (political will, money, their careers, various kinds of relationships, etc.), who may in fact support diversity concepts and initiatives but because of their existing investment and their varying levels of desire to defend this investment (or out of a sense of sunk cost), they will actually in the end be working against diversity. Not to mention using race as a proxy just ends up reinforcing existing prejudices (or creating new ones) on many levels, from individuals to entire systems. It's unfortunate.

Back in 2017 the Heterodox Academy was ranking colleges on viewpoint diversity but they seem to have taken it down. I was only able to find it on web archive. Could be out of date/invalid. 2017 data.

https://web.archive.org/web/20171111053903/https://heterodox...