Post 6: Diversity Isn’t Just a Quota
When I was eating at Parkside the other day, I saw something that made me pause: one of the hospitality workers was white. I was confused by my own reaction and that’s when I realized that up to then, every single hospitality worker I’ve encountered was black or Hispanic. I doubt I — or most people — would have noticed if it weren’t for that moment because we are so used to seeing black and brown people working blue-collar jobs and white people in white-collar ones. Seeing this pattern all the time signals to our subconscious that these are the only type of jobs this demographic of people can work because of a difference in cognitive ability between them and white people. This is how stereotypes and racial biases are enforced.
Someone may argue that the reason why most of our workers are Hispanic or Latino is because they make up a large amount of the population in Los Angeles. However, if this were true we should also expect to also see more Hispanic/Latino professors which we definitely do not. This is not because of the difference in degree attainment between white and black or Hispanic people, but because of the difference between opportunities given to white versus black or Hispanic/Latino people which leads to the former. Racism, discrimination against immigrants, and gender bias are all factors that lead to these groups getting hired slower, paid less, and fired quicker than their white counterparts. This is an issue that has traumatized minority communities for decades and prevents them from building generational wealth. And since black people and Hispanic/Latinos are less likely to have money to afford quality higher education or a proper support system that will allow them to graduate, they hold degrees at a much lower rate than white and Asian people. Without degrees (and even with them still), they have little choice but to work any job they can find which mostly means blue-collar level work like cooking for students at a college.
But why should we really care about closing the opportunity gap (besides the fact that we are all human so it’s the right thing to do)?
A philosophy paper I read further enlightened me on why diversity is so important in the workplace. This particular paper was about biological sciences but it could very well apply to any important field. To summarize, Kathleen Okruhlik gives examples of when scientists have reached the wrong conclusion because of gender biases which then were used as support for the oppression of women. She says the main reason why scientists are oblivious to incorrect background assumptions in their work is because the scientific community (much like the teaching community) is too homogenous and therefore more likely to share the same values that lead to these assumptions. She claims the best way to reveal background assumptions is simply by having people with diverse backgrounds work with each other. This way they are less likely to all dogmatically hold the same values and the conflict will give rise to more accurate conclusions being made (Okruhlik).
I believe the same connection can be drawn to the teaching community and other fields where minorities are underrepresented. If a school is full of teachers and higher-ups who hold the same beliefs because they all grew up in suburban, predominately-white areas, they are much less likely to have those ideals challenged and the students they teach could be detrimentally affected because of it. For example, a school with an all white staff may decide to stop giving a class of predominately minority students resources because their attendance rate is too low. But if this school had a more diverse staff, because of shared experiences and identities they would be more willing to get to the root of the problem (maybe the students were low-income and their job takes priority) and get their attendance rates up. So the problem of closing the opportunity gap isn’t just something we have to do, it’s something we should do because everyone in our society would greatly benefit from it, not just black people and Hispanic/Latinos.
Work Cited
Okruhlik, Kathleen. “Gender and the Biological Sciences.” Canadian Journal of Philosophy Supplementary Volume, vol. 20, 1994, pp. 21–42., doi:10.1080/00455091.1994.10717393.
