Diversity: Difference between revisions

To be sure there are far too many white, cis-gendered, London-based, middle-aged men in management roles, but the problem isn’t that they are specifically white, or hetero, or male: it is that through the monstrous meat-grinding systems that shape industry — the education, the professional homogenisation, the intellectual acculturation that weeds out anyone who doesn’t fit a tight profile moulded in the image of those whose are already at the top of the industry, the people who made it to the top of the industry are ''mediocre'' and they are all the same. This mechanism, by the way, exists in every intellectual [[paradigm]].<ref>See {{author|Thomas Kuhn}}’s fabulous {{br|The Structure of Scientific Revolutions}}.</ref>

Their homogeneity is a symptom of mediocrity that is driven by something else, not a cause. These people may be disproportionately white, straight and male, but that isn’t what makes them sappingly dull. It isn’t clear how switching the fellas out for ''other'' university-educated, north-London inhabiting, [[MBA]] alumni — only ones who are not caucasian, male or straight — but who have nonetheless been ''systematically beaten into exactly the same mental space'', would make a difference.  

If the chief benefit to an organisation of diversity is ''difference'' — you know, of opinion; borne of the divergent cultural and sexual perspectives of your staff<ref>And — who knows? — maybe even their varied ''professional'' experiences and background.</ref> — then you might be forgiven for expecting diversity to arrive arm-in-arm with a heightened sense of conflict, grit, chippiness — an air of [[the military school of life]], so to say. That would be great. But this seems not the brand of diversity our millennial wunderkinds, bunkered in their safe spaces, are seeking.