The Diversity Paradox

African Americans grappled with Jim Crow segregation until it was legally overturned in the 1960s. In subsequent decades, the country witnessed a new wave of immigration from Asia and Latin America—forever changing the face of American society and making it more racially diverse than ever before. In The Diversity Paradox, authors Jennifer Lee and Frank Bean take these two poles of American collective identity—the legacy of slavery and immigration—and ask if today’s immigrants are destined to become racialized minorities akin to African Americans or if their incorporation into U.S. society will more closely resemble that of their European predecessors. They also tackle the vexing question of whether America’s new racial diversity is helping to erode the tenacious black/white color line. The Diversity Paradox uses population-based analyses and in-depth interviews to examine patterns of intermarriage and multiracial identification among Asians, Latinos, and African Americans. Lee and Bean analyze where the color line—and the economic and social advantage it demarcates—is drawn today and on what side these new arrivals fall. They show that Asians and Latinos with mixed ancestry are not constrained by strict racial categories. Racial status often shifts according to situation. Individuals can choose to identify along ethnic lines or as white, and their decisions are rarely questioned by outsiders or institutions. These groups also intermarry at higher rates, which is viewed as part of the process of becoming “American” and a form of upward social mobility. African Americans, in contrast, intermarry at significantly lower rates than Asians and Latinos. Further, multiracial blacks often choose not to identify as such and are typically perceived as being black only—underscoring the stigma attached to being African American and the entrenchment of the “one-drop” rule. Asians and Latinos are successfully disengaging their national origins from the concept of race—like European immigrants before them—and these patterns are most evident in racially diverse parts of the country. For the first time in 2000, the U.S. Census enabled multiracial Americans to identify themselves as belonging to more than one race. Eight years later, multiracial Barack Obama was elected as the 44th President of the United States. For many, these events give credibility to the claim that the death knell has been sounded for institutionalized racial exclusion. The Diversity Paradox is an extensive and eloquent examination of how contemporary immigration and the country’s new diversity are redefining the boundaries of race. The book also lays bare the powerful reality that as the old black/white color line fades a new one may well be emerging—with many African Americans still on the other side.

In this book, the authors assert that representative institutions such as legislatures face a 'diversity paradox': when the size of a minority group increases beyond mere 'tokenism' in representative institutions, it tends to create an unintended backlash toward the minority group's members that emanates from both majority and fellow minority group members. The inclusion of minority group voices in representative institutions is critical in a wide range of political decisions, ranging from legislative gender quotas in the new Iraqi constitution to attempts in the U.S. to increase minority representation through redistricting.

In recent years, a sense of community has declined throughout the United States. This trend is especially evident among younger generations, whether measured by civic participation, political involvement, or religious affiliation. Central Community Church—an intercultural congregation located in Tampa Bay’s urban corridor—has responded to this trend by promoting “community” as an organizational metaphor. The Diversity Paradox: Seeking Community in an Intercultural Church explores the ways in which that metaphor was co-constructed by Central Community’s racially/ethnically diverse leaders and members, as well as limitations and tensions that emerged from those efforts. After surveying the three prevailing views of community: community as physical space, community as disembodied concept, and community as communicative process, Jenkins builds upon four years of ethnographic fieldwork in order to fully understand this community. He concludes by introducing an original theoretical concept called the “diversity paradox”: an emphasis placed upon one potential understanding of diversity which, paradoxically, limits opportunities for alternative expressions of difference.

The authors assert that representative institutions such as legislatures face a 'diversity paradox': when the size of a minority group increases beyond mere 'tokenism' in representative institutions, it tends to create an unintended backlash toward the minority group's members.

Does the word "diversity" conjure up any feeling for you? Have you been on the receiving or giving end of the persistent lying, crying and denying associated with traditional diversity and inclusion efforts? If so, then Lively Paradox is the book for you. This book provides practical advice and tools for improving your personal and professional relationships with all the "different" people in your life.

Americans want it both ways. They are committed to cultural diversity, yet demand an endless variety of cheap consumer goods from a global system that destroys distinct ways of life. In this groundbreaking work, David Steigerwald argues that Americans have papered over this paradox by embracing the rhetoric of diversity and multiculturalism, which hides the extent to which they have accepted homogenized ways of working and living.

This book is about ethnic diversity in voluntary organizations and seeks to explain whether intergroup contact contributes to the development of generalized trust. It relies on a novel multilevel design and data from Amsterdam in which 40 voluntary organizations and 463 participants have been sampled. Contrary to conventional wisdom, this book argues that cognitive processes are contributing more toward the evaluation of strangers or generalized trust than interethnic contact. Since trusting unknown people is essentially a risky endeavor, this suggests that participants of both association types who report trusting strangers can afford to do so, because they are better educated, have a more positive worldview, and have had fewer negative life experiences. That is to say, they are socially more successful and view their future as more promising. Previous findings are inconclusive since most studies that conclude diversity has led to less generalized trust do not include interethnic contact directly in their analyses. These studies also downplay the importance of cognitive processes, which may shape generalized trust. What is more, people join ethnically diverse civic groups, because they already have more trustful attitudes, rather than learning to trust through interethnic contact. Despite the recent multiculturalist backlash, this book demonstrates that participation in ethno-national organizations does not pose a threat to social cohesion. The analysis in this book serves to build a general theory of trust that moves beyond emphasizing interaction between people who are different from each other, but one that includes the importance of cognition.