[Splatter]

I'm not racist and, as you would expect me to say, have over the years made several close friends of widely-varying races. (As an aside, isn't it part of the problem that I even have to open my comment on this topic by expressing my non-racist bonafides?)

In over two decades of work in corporate as well as entrepreneurial environments, I've not seen a difference in efficacy within groups that would be attributed to being either racially diverse or non-diverse.

For example, if there were three groups working on a given technical project, one composed of all white men, one composed of all Asian women, and one composed of a mix of race and gender, would the diverse group produce a superior result? My experience is that they would not. Sufficiently and equally incentivized and qualified, all groups would likely produce similar results.

So, I'd consider myself as somebody who's "against racial diversity" mainly because I haven't experienced it improving the core competencies of my company -- which is what I care about. Nor have I found compelling research supporting higher performance by more diverse groups. Thus, efforts to improve diversity, for diversity's sake, in my experience, feels like an effort to make a change that's not related, and might even be a distraction, to making my company more effective.

[telchar]

Why do you oppose racial diversity instead of taking no opinion on it? One would think a neutral observer, seeing no difference in efficacy between different types of workplaces, would not oppose one of those types of workplace anyway. The conclusion I make is that the observer is not neutral, but biased.

When you say you're "against racial diversity" you are saying you prefer racial homogeneity. If that's not what you mean, you should rethink how you state your preference. Many people would take that statement to mean that you're an avowed racist.

[peoplewindow]

I oppose racial diversity and am not a racist.

The problem is that the word "diversity" doesn't actually mean merely having the presence of different races. Nobody who argues for "racial diversity" ceases to argue the moment the first black or Asian person is hired.

Rather, the phrase "racial diversity" has become code for its own kind of racism against white people. It doesn't mean the dictionary definition of diversity, consisting of multiple types. It means specifically eliminating and pushing out white people on the grounds that there are lots of them around in western countries, so harming them in some concrete, objective way isn't really harmful.

Moreover, the tactics normally used to obtain this so-called diversity are usually anti-meritocratic: literally the promotion and rewarding of people who do not deserve it on the basis of their work or skills alone, but just on the basis of skin colour. This is poisonous and demeaning to those people who do work hard, but don't benefit from being born "diverse".

It's really quite sad that this is actually a topic for debate, and that the ever more extreme elements in California have tried to make "meritocracy" a dirty word. But ultimately it'll be to the benefit of companies in other parts of the world who don't care about this strange and poisonous offshoot of political dialogue. I doubt there are many companies in Russia or China that force all employees to spend time on unconscious bias training, or who reliability promote unqualified people because of their DNA.

[ScottBurson]

The argument for technical people is not that a more diverse group per se produces better results (although that argument is made for some other professions, such as marketing). The argument is rather that by restricting the candidate pool based on irrelevant attributes like ethnicity or gender, one is likely to overlook good candidates and thereby reduce the overall competence of the team.

I would expect you to agree with this since you say you haven't observed a systematic difference in performance between these groups. No?

My own thinking is that it's good to invite a diverse applicant pool, but final hiring decisions shouldn't use diversity except as a tie-breaker. At the same time one should try to be aware of one's own biases, and rigorously careful not to devalue candidates unlike oneself.