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Boalt Hall News Update: White Folk Somewhat Racist

Or at least, that's what I think is suggested by the headline, "Whites Often Resist Effort to Create Multicultural Work Environments."

There's no link to the forthcoming research, but I bet it's more nuanced than the article describing it. For one thing, the research appears to focus less on obstructionism than on the ineffectiveness of diversity programs that exclude important stakeholders.

Consider the research results, described as follows:

Research in three of the studies?of college students and employees?shows that whites associate multiculturalism with exclusion as opposed to inclusion. But importantly the same bias does not exist when whites are explicitly included in conceptualizing a multicultural paradigm. . . .

In a fourth study[,] the research team found that whites are less likely to endorse diversity than minorities?in part because they feel less included in their organization?s definition of diversity. In their fifth study, the researchers found that white business students with a high need to belong are less attracted to multicultural than color-blind organizations.

This leads to the authors' conclusions:

?We?re not arguing that diversity initiatives should cater to whites instead of to racial minorities,? Plaut said. ?But our research does suggest that signaling to whites that they have no place in diversity programs will hinder the success of these efforts.

That last sentence doesn't sound controversial to me. It's almost a tautology that non-inclusive inclusion programs are going to be ineffective. But when a diversity program signals that it has no place for certain groups of people, I don't think it's fair to blame those people for "resisting" that program.

Full post as published by Nuts & Boalts on January 31, 2011 (boomark / email).