Diversity: Virtue or Ruse

In today’s world, many organizations and people put a high value on diversity. Diversity has become the gold standard, almost out of thin air, with no rational basis for its value. Yet, diversity seems to be a virtue that everyone must have simply because someone decided that it needed to be important and everyone else jumped on the band wagon without giving much in-depth thought to what they were saying. It is an easy sell and it has sort of a feel-good feeling to it.
    However, I disagree with the notion that diversity is a virtue. Virtue means having high moral standards. Virtues are things like honesty, courage, patience, perseverance, kindness, and commitment. Diversity itself is neither good nor bad. Diversity can be beneficial in certain settings, but diversity is not what makes us a great society. Morality and virtue (as listed above) make us a great society. Diversity does not make a great basketball team nor a great ballet company nor a great opera. Diversity does not improve the chances of finding a cure for cancer nor improve the quality of new bridges and aircraft carriers. Diversity does not make my neighborhood safe, and it does not make my church more worshipful. Diversity might make a church choir better because of the need for different parts and different voice qualities, but an all male choir could be just as beautiful.
    When we talk about diversity in the workplace, I’m all for hiring different types of people, but I want to hire people based on what they can offer my company, to make my company better. I don’t care about their outward appearance, like what color their skin is, what their gender is, or what their religion is. What I care about is how well can they do the job and whether or not they are a good fit for my company. Are they smart, are they teachable, are they capable of growing into a leadership position, do they have a track record, are they good communicators? These are some of the questions I would ask before hiring someone. As a leader of an organization, I want to have the very best people on my team. Forcing me to hire based on arbitrary, exterior characteristics robs me of my freedom to choose what is best for my company or my department and it has no historical, objective data to prove that it has made us any better. (One historical data point that most people get wrong: our nation was not created by a melting pot of diverse people. We were mostly a homogenous group of Western Europeans with similar Judeo-Christian values who were not tired and poor, but hardworking, tenacious, and determined to make a successful new life in a new wonderful country.)
    “Variety is the spice of life” for some, but I say, “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it”, and this new social experiment of forcing diversity into the workplace and the school yard just doesn’t make sense to me. ​

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