Regional organizations succeed in inverse proportion to civilizational diversity

Evidence

Traditional models of diversity attribute the higher quality performance of diverse groups to the number of different backgrounds of the individuals in those groups, suggesting that diversity increases the number of perspectives introduced during discussion (e.g., Nemeth, 1986). Specifically, information exchange models presumed that group members would make the same contributions to diverse and nondiverse groups; therefore, increasing diversity leads to a change in the contributions to the group through the introduction of different types of group members and not by changing the contributions of any individual member. However, White jurors actually make more high-quality contributions (e.g., discussion of more case facts, more errors corrected) to discussion when deliberating in groups with minorities present (diverse groups; Sommers, 2006). Additionally, deliberating in diverse juries can make White jurors more likely to use self-referential language (Stevenson et al., 2017) and experience cognitive depletion (Peter-Hagene, 2019). Thus, the enhanced quality of deliberations in diverse juries appeared to be the result of both a typical information exchange model and higher quality contributions to discussion from White mock jurors (i.e., more case facts, more corrections of errors; Sommers, 2006). White jurors—possibly because of increased information-processing levels in an effort to avoid prejudice (Petty, Fleming, & White, 1999)—produced higher quality contributions to the deliberation discussion when they deliberated in diverse juries. Possibly jury diversity resulted in a “watchdog effect” through which White jurors engaged in a higher level of information processing because they were deliberating on a jury with Black mock jurors deciding the verdict for a Black defendant in an effort to guard against the potential for prejudice (Fleming, et al., 2005; Sargent & Bradfield, 2004; Sommers, 2006; White & Harkins, 1994). — Joseph Avery, Jim Sidanius, Joel Cooper, Gregory Davis, Amanda N., Bias in the Law, 910 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Racial regionalizations of the kind I have mapped here are dispositions to homogenization, in space and across time. What Gayatri Spivak compellingly has called critical regionalisms and the habits they engender in the places and moments inhabited, by contrast, embody dispositions to heterogeneity, to heterogenizing, across all places and at all times. They concern those regions that are both crucial to comprehending globalizing impacts of racial states and critical of any attempts to narrow the possibilities of people to define their sensibilities and values, their ways of being, their habits and habitations for themselves sensitive to the full and equal consideration of each. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1904 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Civilizationally homogeneous regional groups outperform heterogeneous ones; Post-Cold War regional organizations succeed mainly when members share culture; Institutions inherently operate by reproducing homogeneity rather than diversity — David Theo Goldberg, The Racial State, 20 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Civilizationally homogeneous regional groups outperform heterogeneous ones #expands (0.95)
• Diversity improves group decisions partly by making majority members try harder #complicates (0.78) — Joseph Avery, Jim Sidanius, Joel Cooper, Gregory Davis, Amanda N., Bias in the Law, 910
• Critical regionalism resists homogenization wherever racial states impose it #complicates (0.72) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1904