When the word is proudly invoked in a corporate context, it acquires a certain sheen. It can give a person or institution moral credibility, a phenomenon that Nancy Leong, a University of Denver law professor, calls ‘‘racial capitalism’’ and defines as ‘‘an individual or group deriving value from the racial identity of another person.’’ It’s almost as if cheerfully and frequently uttering the word ‘‘diversity’’ is the equivalent of doing the work of actually making it a reality.

This disconnect is not, of course, limited to tech. In this year's annual Pub­lishers Weekly survey of book-publishing employees, respondents — 89 percent of whom were white — found ‘‘no real change’’ in the racial composition of the work force since last year, despite ‘‘increased attention given to diversity.’’ The television and film industries are being investigated by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission over complaints of sex discrimination. And yet, as is the case in Silicon Valley, small victories are often overenthusiastically celebrated as evidence of larger change. In September, for example, when Viola Davis became the first African-American woman to win the Best Actress in a Drama Series Emmy, the moment was cheered in the press as a triumph of racial equity in Hollywood. But just a month before, Stacy L. Smith, a professor of communication at U.S.C. who, with other researchers, had just released a damning report that studied gender bias in 700 films made between 2007 and 2014, lamented ‘‘the dismal record of diversity, not just for one group, but for females, people of color and the L.G.B.T. community.’’

Why is there such a disparity between the progress that people in power claim they want to enact and what they actually end up doing about it? Part of the problem is that it doesn’t seem that anyone has settled on what diversity actually means. Is it a variety of types of people on the stages of awards shows and in the boardrooms of Fortune 500 companies? Is it raw numbers? Is it who is in a position of power to hire and fire and shape external and internal cultures? Is it who isn’t in power, but might be someday?

Adding to the ambiguity is the fact that the definition of ‘‘diversity’’ changes depending on who is doing the talking. The dictionary will tell you that it is ‘‘the quality or state of having many different forms, types, ideas,’’ and the word is often used, without controversy, to describe things like the environment and stock-market holdings. But in reality — which is to say, when applied to actual people, not flora, fauna or financial securities — the notion of diversity feels more fraught, positioning one group (white, male Americans) as the default, and everyone else as the Other. Multiple studies suggest that white Americans understand “diversity” much differently than black Americans. When Reynolds Farley, a demographer at the University of Michigan, researched the attitudes of people in Detroit about the racial composition of residential neighborhoods in 1976, 1992 and 2004, most African-Americans considered ‘‘integrated’’ to be a 50/50 mix of white and black, while a majority of whites considered such a ratio much too high for their comfort each time the study was conducted.

Bragging about hiring a few people of color, or women, seems to come from the same interpretive bias, where a small amount is enough. It also puts significant pressure on the few ‘‘diverse’’ folks who are allowed into any given club, where they are expected to be ambassadors of sorts, representing the minority identity while conforming to the majority one. All this can make a person doubt the sincerity of an institution or organization — and question their place within it. When I was starting out in magazines, I was told by a colleague that my hiring was part of the company’s diversity push, and that my boss had received a significant bonus as a result of recruiting me. Whether or not it was true, it colored the next few years I spent there, making me wonder whether I was simply some sort of symbol to make the higher-ups feel better about themselves.