The purpose of this panel is to put law professors and social scientists in conversation with each other about the relationship between race-consciousness and diversity. It is often argued or assumed that race-consciousness is necessary to achieve diversity in various organizational settings. Yet the diversity rhetoric adopted by organizations has also been viewed as a form of colorblindness, diffusing or burying awareness of race, and diversity itself is often understood as a means of achieving a race-blind society, or at least one in which racial differences cease to matter. We invite the speakers to reflect on the puzzle of defining race and race-consciousness to advance diversity. How are race, racial identity, and racial equality conceptualized in American institutions and organizations that espouse commitment to diversity? How does the law – particularly the law of employment discrimination – shape, undermine, or reify those conceptualizations? Should the law seek to alter the ways in which organizations collect, publish, and use data classifying persons by race or ethnicity? Our hope is to delve beneath the rhetoric of diversity to consider the complex set of organizational practices through which diversity is pursued and to interrogate the conceptualizations of race and equality that emerge from the dynamics of diversity.
Business Meeting at Program Conclusion.