Institutions deploy diversity rhetoric to mask unchanged institutional racism

Evidence

Davis lectured on how certain concepts had been “colonized” by the Bush administration, which had used “democracy,” for example, in speeches about the need to “liberate” the women of Iraq and Afghanistan. “Diversity” had been used by the government, the military, and the prisons to present themselves as the most “diverse” institutions in history. But the oppressors were hiding behind their “diversity” and keeping their institutional racism intact, Davis proclaimed. It was a “difference that doesn’t make a difference.” — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 1208

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s interest in placing arguments into Kendi’s three-way scheme — this is a segue from assimilationist ‘diversity’ framing to antiracist critique. — connects to: Diversity scholarship naturalises plurality and hides how racial distinctions are made — Luke de Noronha, The conviviality of the overpoliced,…, 28
• SEED: Possible essay angle: the ‘diversity that doesn’t make a difference’ as a test for distinguishing performative assimilationism from structural antiracism.