What do Americans, particularly white Americans, mean by the term diversity?

For much of the past two decades, associate professor of sociology Sarah Mayorga has worked to find out.

For her book, Behind the White Picket Fence: Power and Privilege in a Multiethnic Neighborhood (UNC Press, 2014), Mayorga spent 18 months interviewing residents in the supposedly “integrated” neighborhood in Creekridge Park in Durham, North Carolina.

She came away with the conclusion that diversity was an ideology that enabled whites to only superficially commit to achieving social justice. “Diversity ideology dictates that intentions, as opposed to outcomes, are what truly matter,” she writes. It “does not demand that individuals take specific actions to promote inclusion or equity.”

In recent articles in Sociological Perspectives and American Behavioral Scientist, Mayorga has furthered her argument, deconstructing diversity ideology to expose its underlying assumptions and contradictions.

Here she speaks about diversity and what she sees as a better alternative for achieving racial justice:

What do you see as chiefly wrong with diversity?

When we talk about diversity, it often becomes this performance of being “the good type of white person.” We hyperfocus on the person’s intentions. We stay in that first step of proving we’re committed to diversity and never really follow through with the commitment. We don’t ever really get to the conversation, “Okay, are our measures to promote diversity effective or not?”

And you feel this prevents us from having a more substantial discussion about racial justice?

Yes. Diversity becomes about inclusion and tolerance—including everybody at the table—but without ever really talking about why the table looked that way in the first place. In other words, there’s no discussion about how one group of people has been systemically privileged over others.

Read the full article about diversity and racial justice by Lawrence Goodman at Futurity.