Diversity science: Why and how difference makes a difference

A deep concern with how race and ethnicity make a difference for behavior has always fueled social psychology. This concern is now more necessary and relevant than ever. The first decade of the 21st century is characterized by an increasingly complicated set of racial issues invigorated by a steady flow of immigrants, deeply entrenched racial disparities, vastly divergent views on race-related events and policies, and a concomitant, growing sentiment that recent political events have erased the problems of race in the United States. As demographics change and as select members of underrepresented groups achieve positions of power, how will individuals and communities make sense of this diversity? Can they do so without turning a blind eye to racial inequality? Why and how will difference make a difference? The ability of social psychology to address this complicated set of issues rests in part on its ability to continue to develop a science of diversity that adopts a sociocultural understanding of racial inequality-one that recognizes the intertwined roles of cultural and structural realities (i.e., cultural beliefs and social positioning) in shaping intergroup relations. 1 The central, but often ignored, insight of this approach is that intergroup relations do not occur in a vacuum. They unfold with certain cultural understandings about what race is and how difference should be understood and dealt with. Accordingly, these ways of thinking about difference and whether this difference matters help people not only to make sense of racial realities but also to reinforce them. A diversity science must therefore be able and willing to avoid employing and perpetuating an abstract conception of race; to locate the sources of inequality not only in individual minds but also in the practices, policies, and institutions that they create; and to unearth cultural ideologies that 1 There are many types of diversity. For the purposes of this article, I focus almost exclusively on racial and ethnic diversity within the United States