Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

Inspiring an imagination for change is one of the hardest things to accomplish in the classroom. My students are brilliant at understanding social problems. They can connect causes of inequality across the globe and analyze how the past informs the present. However, it is hard for them, and sometimes me, to see beyond a slightly better version of the status quo when it comes to figuring out how justice and equity might work.

When we don’t go far enough in our imagination of what could be, we get compromises like workplace diversity programs. These programs began in the 1980s, as the Reagan administration loosened equal opportunity enforcement. Human resources departments, needing to justify their continued existence, turned to diversity management to stay organizationally relevant. Advocates of just workplaces followed this change because it was better than nothing. Yet, diversity didn’t fill the place of equal opportunity enforcement; diversity’s metrics were largely decided within individual workplaces and lacked links to what would be effective for the advancement of women and employees of color. What’s more, they were tied to the business case for diversity, which is “the proposition that a diverse workforce is essential to serve a diverse customer base, to gain legitimacy in the eyes of a diverse public, and to generate workable solutions within a global economy.” The problem in the business case is more about what it doesn’t say than what it does. Workers and what benefits them are nowhere to be found in this justification for diversity programs.

So, what........

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