Student Diversity: Clarifying Meanings

Background and Critiques

As the diversity concept in education has evolved over the past 50 years, it has come to represent an ideal, used to explore issues of representation, advance educational access for students of color, broaden curriculum beyond Western perspectives, and establish a touchstone in debates over affirmative action. Yet several critiques have focused on the increasing attention to diversity as a core concept and organizing principle for the movement toward a more just education system and society, highlighting ways that advocates could inadvertently undermine efforts to improve educational outcomes for the exact students they hope to target.

The first critique, referred to as the dilemma of difference, arises, as Sheila Foster explains, when people of color ask for equal treatment in some cases but different (e.g., culturally responsive) treatment in others. Thus, progress toward an equality based on similarities can be impeded by simultaneous calls to celebrate, honor, and teach to students' different histories, experiences, and needs.

The second implies that some dimensions of diversity count, whereas others do not. This critique notes that the terms diverse and diversity have come to serve as code words to describe student attributes that differ from the dominant group—most often with respect to race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and native language. Yet other dimensions of difference are potentially important—for example, religious preference, sexual orientation, weight, political viewpoint. Do these not matter? It depends on the analyst's purpose and focus—sometimes they do, and sometimes they do not, leaving audiences guessing about what qualifies as “diverse” and what does not.

Third, given a theoretically infinite number of attributes on which group members might differ, the descriptor, by itself, cannot signify which characteristic(s) is being referred to in a particular case. Some people have addressed this ambiguity by modifying the term to ethnically or culturally diverse. However, as Carol Lee explains, these phrases often erroneously suggest that the dominant group has no color or culture at all. These critiques set the stage for a close look at the ways the concept of “diversity” is commonly used.

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