President Obama walks fine line on race, justice
11 years ago
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Is the strive towards diversity any better than racism?
When choosing a modern icon to analyze in my essay, I had considered talking about the fact that many companies, colleges, and institutions make an over-the-top effort to portray diversity in their promotional material. Diversity is the new "green," the image that everyone wants to portray. I would like to hear your thoughts (did anyone happen to write on this) on if a somewhat artificial effort to state "hey, we have asians, latinos, and african-americans working here at our company..." is an offensive maneuver? As we have discussed in class, it is an example of treating skin color as an asset to sell a product.
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I think it depends on the company or product. I know someone who is a teacher at an independent school in Mass. and when he was looking for other possible places to teach this fall, many of the prep schools were very interested in him because he is black. There was even a teaching convention specifically designed for people of color where schools were recruiting their new employees to create diversity in the school with the hope that many races of teachers may mean more diversity within the student body. Colleges and institutions use their diversity rate as a way to emphasize that anyone and everyone can fit in there. So I think that anything education-related benefits from marketing like this.
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ReplyDeleteMy feelings on this topic depend on the truth behind what the advertisement is trying to portray. If the school really is enormously diverse and merely uses diversity-focused advertisements to illustrate that fact and capitalize on it, more power to them!
ReplyDeleteConversely, I take issue with advertisements that seem to deliberately misrepresent the amount of diversity that can be really found in the institution. Even if it makes the institution look good to outsiders, it is easily identified by anyone who knows what they're talking about as false advertising.