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In most Western countries today, embracing diversity is considered both a desirable end and a means to an end[Unsupported assertion]. Every other day sees another academic publication showing that more diversity leads to better decision making, more efficient output, and etc. [Unsupported assertion]

This certainly was not the case a century ago.

When did embracing diversity become such an important (and almost religious) pursuit for modern Western societies? Can this be traced to specific movements (e.g. women enfranchisement, civil rights movements)?

MCW
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J Li
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  • @DevSolar that's exactly what I meant to ask: when did the acceptance of diversity become a strong social imperative in Western societies. I adjusted the wording of the question to reflect this. Further, my question is a purely factual one about timing and the origin of the acceptance. – J Li Jul 04 '22 at 06:18
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    I figured as much; it's just that I find your Q to (still) be rather poorly worded, as if the Q is "when did we start 'being diverse' all of a sudden". You will find that re-phrasing it so "the change" is not on the people not fitting the mould, but on the people making their lives hard for it, that some things become clearer -- and others more difficult. – DevSolar Jul 04 '22 at 06:26
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    @DevSolar If you have specific suggestions for how to rephrase the question I'm all ears. Or, perhaps you can directly edit it? – J Li Jul 04 '22 at 06:28
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    The addage of "embracing" was excellent, and turned the Q around for me. – DevSolar Jul 04 '22 at 06:47
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    Please document your preliminary research Please provide evidence of the assertions.Is diversity important? Is it important for some/many/most/all Western countries? How important? Absent preliminary research, I'm not sure that historical sources and methods will be useful to answer this question, and it might better be asked in a different forum – MCW Jul 04 '22 at 09:32
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    I think the acceptance of "social diversity" is a highly debated topic, you cannot take it for granted as a "goal" in western countries. Electoral results % will show you that very few western countries have a social majority for "embracing diversity". Even all the progressive countries have sizable % of political parties that are against this (such as the Netherlands). – James Jul 04 '22 at 15:22
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    I am having trouble finding peer-reviewed papers connecting "diversity" to "more efficient output". The results appear to be masked by diverse sources of energy and diverse investment strategies, rather than the ambiguous diversity referenced in the question. What are examples of "Everyday sees another academic publication..." If you help me find a starting point, I can snowball from there. – Cardinal Jul 04 '22 at 15:51
  • I think this is an interesting question (and I enjoyed @Jan's current answer). I don't have the expertise to answer it but I would expect that an answer would connect the current political mainstream to civil rights/liberation movements as the OP suggests. Certainly progressive politics has other strands (e.g. trade unionism) which have not historically considered diversity as a focus. – dbmag9 Jul 04 '22 at 19:52
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    The founding document of the USA says right near the beginning that all people are created equal and have the same fundamental rights. And that idea wasn’t brand new in that document. – Todd Wilcox Jul 05 '22 at 04:17
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    "(and almost religious)" what do you mean by that? – njzk2 Jul 05 '22 at 08:23
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    You probably need to define what you mean by diversity and embracing diversity. Diversity of what and where? Diverse cultural backgrounds in the workplace? Diverse social classes in parliament? Diverse gender in boardrooms? Diverse sports on television? Diverse art forms in museums and public life? Diverse income/wealth in the general population? Diverse crops in agriculture? Diverse skin colour in schools? Diverse cuisines in gastronomy? Diverse sexual orientation portrayed on TV? Diverse political preference in media? Diversity is broad and vague — what do you mean specifically? – gerrit Jul 05 '22 at 11:44
  • Interesting that my initial comment got deleted. A comment upvoted several times that led to an improved Q, but apparently someone felt it needed moderation... – DevSolar Jul 05 '22 at 12:24
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    I don't want to write a long answer, but I think a good case could be made for the roots of this to be in the Peace of Westphalia. 109 different states agreed to tolerate a diversity of religions in Europe, ending a century of pointless and ruinous religious war in Europe that killed millions. This is the beginning of liberalism, a philosophy in which we agree tolerate other people's strange and uncouth ways, not necessarily because we like or respect them, but because fighting over them is wasteful and rarely conclusive. – Mark Dominus Jul 05 '22 at 17:16

3 Answers3

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Embracing diversity (as well as the contrary, wanting more uniformity) might be a bit of a historical constant. You can find it at the very beginning of Confucius' Analects.

Is it not delightful to have friends coming from distant quarters?

John Tzetzes from Constantinople expresses similar sentiments in the 12th century, albeit with a heavy dose of intolerance at the same time:

One finds me Scythian among Scythians, Latin among Latins...

And also to Persians I speak in Persian...

To Alans I say in their tongue:

‘Good day, my lord, my archontissa, where are you from? Tapankhas mesfili khsina korthi kanda, and so on’ . . .

Arabs, since they are Arabs, I address in Arabic...

And also I welcome the Ros according to their habits...

‘Sdraste, brate, sestritza’, and I say, ‘dobra deni’.

To Jews I say in a proper manner in Hebrew:

‘Your blind house devoted to magic, your mouth, a chasmengulfing flies,

Memakomene beth fagi beelzebul timaie..."

I am sure that it is possible to find lots of similar quotes through the centuries.

One example of turning (intra-Christian) diversity into official policies is the Electorate of Brandenburg and later the Kingdom of Prussia during the late 17th and early 18th century, epitomized in Frederick II's famous sentence

Everybody should go to heaven in his own fashion here

(den hier mus ein jeder nach Seiner Fasson Selich werden)

As for the current push for more diversity, it seems to be mainly the logical consequence of women's emancipation and increased international mobility post-WWII. In the US the Black civil rights movement probably also plays a role. Supporting equal rights and non-segregationist policies means, in practical terms, that one should also support more diversity at the workplace.

On a more opportunistic note (one that matches well with Prussian and especially the Constantinopolan examples above), in some places there are very direct advantages from having a diverse team. E.g. when developing or servicing products on a globalized market. So economic globalization and modern communications do play a role as well.

Laurel
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Jan
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    Putting aside whether it's been a "constant" in between these examples rather than it occasionally occurring as per them, is the contention that the OP's question warrants the response, "what's changed isn't such tolerance, but how quickly things change now"? It would be far from the only case of history "speeding up", to borrow a term from Roberts & Westad. – J.G. Jul 04 '22 at 22:00
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    What has changed is 1. workforces have actually become more diverse through immigration and more female workers, and 2. there are more cases where diversity has direct economic benefits. – Jan Jul 04 '22 at 22:59
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    Wasn't Confucius just talking about friends within the country? During his time, lands and countries outside China were generally considered to be cultrally inferior or outright barbaric. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hua%E2%80%93Yi_distinction) – KC Wong Jul 05 '22 at 05:18
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Here in America, as you suggest, women's rights, civil rights and the American Disability Act are the cause, but in a legal rather than cultural way. As anti-discrimination laws were passed and then strengthened through lawsuits or other legal requirements, larger companies were forced into proving they weren't discriminating by grudgingly having a few "diversity hires", and then -- after "but we already have a black woman" stopped working -- having a reasonable proportion of hires from protected groups.

After a few decades of that, the culture had changed. A diverse upper management team which would have been shocking in the 1970's, was now completely normal. Note how there's no embracing so far. Anti-discrimination law forced the change, which naturally caused a change in public attitudes. Sure, today you'll find CEO's saying they embrace the changes they were forced to make, but that was never a driving force.

Owen Reynolds
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  • What do you mean by "diversity hire" or a "protected group"? Could you add some citations to support your answer? Were large companies in the USA typically actively supporting/promoting segregation in the workplace in the 1960s or 1970s? – gerrit Jul 05 '22 at 07:53
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    Citations please... This argument is based on the assumption that laws predate social change - but in a (nominally) democratic society, it is difficult to pass a law without broad social support, suggesting that the social change predates the law. Please revise to explain. – MCW Jul 05 '22 at 11:41
  • One example of legality preceding social mores is gay marriage in Canada. The Ontario Supreme Court decided it was discriminatory, based on the interpretation of existing laws. Put to the population, most people sided on embracing the change, to the point where a subsequent Federal vote in Canada's Parliament, under Harper, got very little opposition - even Conservatives members, whose party had called it, saw where the wind was coming from. Once courts decide not to back discrimination, people, not infrequently, follow, if the change is not too far out of step with sentiment. – Italian Philosophers 4 Monica Jul 05 '22 at 16:26
  • Forcing companies is one effect. I'd also argue court cases forcing countries to confront the dissonance between their - often admirable - constitutions and legal rights protecting individuals vs the actual treatment of religious, ethnic or sexual-orientation minorities tends to lead people to question why discrimination is a good idea. Looking at legal influence is at least solid argument as going back to ancient history, where the idea might have been phrased by some, but rather rarely put in practice at scale and breadth. – Italian Philosophers 4 Monica Jul 05 '22 at 16:34
  • @ItalianPhilosophers4Monica: WP states public opinion was already in favor of the move by the time the first court ruling came about. – DevSolar Jul 05 '22 at 19:18
  • @gerrit But do you think this matches the Q? The Asker seems comfortable with the idea there was little diversity (in high status jobs, I'm assuming) so I'm just going with that. It's a pretty rough Q, and they seem to understand civil rights somewhat, so I assume they can look up terms I used. – Owen Reynolds Jul 05 '22 at 22:56
  • @DevSolar In your link the Ontario case is in 2003 and before 2005/6 public opinion was not that obviously in favor (high 40s). By 2006 it was 60%+. So we are reading the same data and coming to differing conclusions somehow: my claim is that public opinion was undecided/waffling before the court case, more generally in favor after. – Italian Philosophers 4 Monica Jul 05 '22 at 23:32
  • @MCW Hmmm...I was hoping it was obvious that I'm flat-out asserting that in this specific case, in the USA, anti-discrimination laws for the most part preceded the specific social change "accepting diversity in important positions". And the idea that "maybe diversity isn't just moral, but also more productive" came even later -- too late to have caused any change. – Owen Reynolds Jul 05 '22 at 23:40
  • @ItalianPhilosophers4Monica The difference there is more one of relative vs. absolute majority. "Indifferent" does not equal "against". – DevSolar Jul 06 '22 at 07:24
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The Holocaust and the reconstruction of Europe.

What is the opposite of diversity? Monoculture. The mono-ethnic, mono-religious nation-state.

What is the only way to achieve a monoculture? Violence. Those that do not conform must be suppressed, driven out ("ethnic cleansing") or murdered, whether at Auschwitz or at Srebrenica or just through a thousand individual local crimes.

As part of the attempts to prevent this from ever happening again, the European Convention on Human Rights was established.
In particular, article 8 "Freedom of thought, conscience and religion" and article 14 "Prohibition of discrimination".

This isn't the origin of "diversity" in general - the Austro-Hungarian empire was a pretty diverse place - but modern diversity thought does specifically set itself against ethno-nationalism.

MCW
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pjc50
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    I'm not convinced; the pattern of states created in Europe after WWII was of distinct nation states, valuing national (ethno/religious/linguistic) unity; that's pretty much the way Europe had been going for a century or more, with each empire splitting into nation states. Diversity - in the questioner's sense - was everywhere a low priority. – Vince Bowdren Jul 05 '22 at 17:09