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Comment by redsummer | Hacker News Reader

"Diversity in everything except thought" is the mantra.

The problem with this is that to solve problems you need diversity in thought: https://hbr.org/2017/03/teams-solve-problems-faster-when-the...

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I've wondered this for a long time but never felt comfortable asking... Has ethnic/racial diversity in the workplace actually been shown to increase productivity or innovation, or is that dogma used to justify the practice?

The article addresses this question:

"Received wisdom is that the more diverse the teams in terms of age, ethnicity, and gender, the more creative and productive they are likely to be. But having run the execution exercise around the world more than 100 times over the last 12 years, we have found no correlation between this type of diversity and performance."

It is a social construct to try and keep everyone at peace. The alternative would be a society with fault lines along racial and religious beliefs. And this would most likely lead to conflict. So, if you don't want conflict, then you need to integrate in some ways. You don't want to have identities develop and take hold. At that point it gets complicated.

For instance, in Brazil, once you know you are a person confined to live in favelas forever, then you participation in the broader society will be very limited. And with that the regard for the rules of the larger society.

In Brazil, American ideas of affirmative action have been imported. This leads to unsavoury situations where nose width and skull shape are being measured to determine who gets a job.

http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/04/05/brazils-new-problem-with...

This actually proves that once the social cohesion has disappeared and that the fault lines have actually enlarged then these methods are just the tip of the conflict.

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