Tasty, Tasty Diversity

One of things that is rarely noticed in the affirmative action debate is that business loves AA. And the reason is because a diverse workforce is a more productive and a more profitable one. Workplace Prof Blog tells the interesting story of Frito-Lay utilizing its diversity to drill its introduction of "Guacamole" flavored Doritos. The Wall Street Journal elaborates on how businesses are starting to devote more attention and manpower to diversity issues, giving the executives in charge a greater mandate, and greater top-level executive involvement. The article also outlines five challenges diversity programs face today:

Challenge 1: The difficulty of communicating effectively when diversity-related data include sensitive information such as age, gender, ethnicity, religion and sexual orientation.

Challenge 2: The slowness of change and progress brought about through diversity initiatives, which is especially difficult in fast-paced cultures that want to see immediate results.

Challenge 3: Obstacles to ensuring the consistent and rigorous implementation of diversity programs across large, dispersed organizations.

Challenge 4: "Diversity fatigue," which occurs when employees become desensitized to the many diversity messages they receive through diversity training, recruitment programs and outreach projects.

Challenge 5: Keeping white males from feeling overlooked in diversity programs.

In related news, Eric Rauchway comments on Walter Benn Michaels's new book, The Trouble with Diversity, whose thesis is getting kicked around the blogsphere. Michael's thinks that liberals focus too much on diversity, and too little on inequality. I think that diversity is a really important way to end inequality, primarily because inequality is a particularly non-diverse descriptor.