A facile understanding of the meaning of diversity is troubling, as is the oversimplification of the issue of equality into a stark dichotomy of race and wealth.  

Walter Benn Michaels, professor of English at the University of Illinois-Chicago, declares in The New York Times that in their quest to increase the wealth of “cultural identities” in their student bodies, colleges and universities obscure the question of socio-economic diversity. Michaels claims:

Diversity, like gout, is a rich people’s problem. And it is also a rich people’s solution. For as long as we’re committed to thinking of difference as something that should be respected, we don’t have to worry about it as something that should be eliminated.

Michaels does make a valid point that socio-economic diversity is vital to creating a vibrant, fair, and stimulating educational environment. However, framing the issue of diversity in such stark and, if we were to believe Michaels, mutually exclusive terms — race or wealth — is abysmally unproductive. We — and certainly Michaels — must expand our understanding of what constitutes diversity without compromising our commitment to furthering, in concrete terms, the wealth of diversity in institutions of higher education. Absent of diversity — in its physical manifestations, its socio-economic context, and in diversity of opinion – even the best-intentioned education can only create a myopic world view that leaves students ill-equipped to respond to the needs of an increasingly multicultural society. Whittling down the concept of diversity to one of either race or socio-economic status is at best an anemic understanding of diversity.  

Mimi Hanaoka