Subject: Re: What he said
"It seems common in society today to confuse diversity of thought with diversity of immutable traits."

I think that is a very poor and misleading way of summarizing the opinions of the people you are arguing against.

"Doesn't it seem a bit naive and frankly divisive to assume that just because someone has, for example, a different skin color, that they must think differently?"

Yes and no.

Part of making up who we are and how we think is our past experiences. It is generally a good bet that someone with a different skin color (or gender) probably has different past experiences. Those different experiences likely mean that they think about things at least slightly differently.

"Ultimately, the benefit diversity brings to a company boils down to one thing: diversity of thought and ideas.

And if the best a company can do to ferret out diversity of thought in potential applicants is to rely on immutable traits, well, that seems like a pretty sad state of affairs."

You are right in that it is a sad state of affairs, but not just in the way you are hinting at. The part that is sad is that minorities and women make up such a small percentage of the boards of large corporations.

Put it another way (let's invert), assuming that a person believes that business talent, ability, and competence has nothing to do with skin color or gender, then by having BoDs being white male dominated, the business world is losing out on lots of talented, able, and competent females and minorities by hiring less competent directors.

"Of course, this assumes the goal is in fact achieving diversity of thought rather than a ham-fisted, broad brush attempt to right past wrongs. I'm not convinced it is."

Why?