Editor’s note: this piece is part of an ongoing series on the subject of diversity. If you would like to join the diversity debate please comment below or send a submission to pitch@quillette.com.

The issue of racial and gender diversity in our schools, companies, and communities has become highly politicized. While one tribe sees diversity as an imperative cure-all for many of the world’s problems, another tribe sees diversity as a form of tokenism at best, and a nefarious conspiracy at worst. Even political moderates can have a visceral reaction to the term “diversity” and may accept any line of thinking that validates their reaction, leading to shallow reasoning on all fronts. Rather than advocate for a particular position in this essay, I hope to add some nuance to the conversation and show that the truth is much more complicated than many are willing to admit.

The business case for diversity

What are the arguments for and against diversity? It’s often claimed with certainty that a diverse workforce is good for a business’s bottom line, but the data doesn’t actually show an effect on a business’s profits. Take women on boards, as one example.

A 2015 meta-analysis published in PLOS One showed that all-else-being-equal, “the mere representation of females on corporate boards is not related to firm financial performance”. Another 2015 meta-analysis published in the Academy of Management Journal also found that across 140 studies, the relationship between gender parity on boards and market performance was near zero. What seems to matter most is not the gender of executives on a board, but their individual talents and team cohesiveness.

What about other kinds of diversity? Scott Page argues in The Diversity Bonus: How Good Teams Pay Off in the Knowledge Economy that cognitively diverse teams can lead to more innovation and better decision making. Indeed, this has been demonstrated by a recent study titled The Wisdom of Polarized Crowds which found that polarization among Wikipedia editors leads to articles of higher quality. In his book, Page extends the umbrella term of cognitive diversity to include “identity diversity” arguing that “racial and gender differences” can impact cognitive diversity, so this can lead to beneficial outcomes as well.

We should also keep in mind, though, that diversity may decrease social cohesion (i.e., sense of belonging and group solidarity),1 which has been linked to personal well-being and economic output. Diversity may have many benefits, but there are likely to be some costs as well.

To address this decrease in social cohesion, organizations now offer inclusion programs. Unfortunately, these inclusion programs can amplify the salience of gender and ethnic identities, which worsens social tensions by making divisions more apparent.

In countries such as Rwanda and South Africa, governments have addressed problems in social cohesion with some degree of success by doing the opposite: pushing their citizens to identify with their nation rather than their tribe, clan, or ethnic lineage. These policies, however, are controversial, and more often favored by majority groups.

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