Diversity, Inc.: The Fight for Racial Equality in the Workplace by Pamela Newkirk

One of Time Magazine's Must-Read Books of 2019: An award-winning journalist shows how workplace diversity initiatives have turned into a profoundly misguided industry--and have done little to bring equality to America's major industries and institutions.

Diversity has become the new buzzword, championed by elite institutions from academia to Hollywood to corporate America. In an effort to ensure their organizations represent the racial and ethnic makeup of the country, industry and foundation leaders have pledged hundreds of millions of dollars to commission studies, launch training sessions, and hire consultants and diversity czars. But is it working?

In Diversity, Inc., award-winning journalist Pamela Newkirk shines a bright light on the diversity industry, asking the tough questions about what has been effective--and why progress has been so slow. Newkirk highlights the rare success stories, sharing valuable lessons about how other industries can match those gains. But as she argues, despite decades of handwringing, costly initiatives, and uncomfortable conversations, organizations have, apart from a few exceptions, fallen far short of their goals.

Diversity, Inc. incisively shows the vast gap between the rhetoric of inclusivity and real achievements. If we are to deliver on the promise of true equality, we need to abandon ineffective, costly measures and commit ourselves to combatting enduring racial attitudes.

Pamela Newkirk is a New York University professor of journalism and award-winning journalist who has written extensively about diversity in the news media and art world. Her first book, Within the Veil: Black Journalists, White Media (NYU Press) examined the tumultuous entry of African American journalists into mainstream journalism. The book, based on archival research and interviews with more than one hundred journalists across the country, won a National Press Club Award for media criticism and continues to be widely adopted by colleges and universities.

Her most recent book, Spectacle: The Astonishing Life of Ota Benga (HarperCollins) uncovered the story of the young African who in 1906 was exhibited in the Bronx Zoo monkey house. The book, based almost exclusively on archival research, was included on a number of Best of 2015 lists, including NPR's, the San Francisco Chronicle's and the Boston Globe's and won an NAACP Image Award for literature and the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Foundation Legacy Award. The book has also been optioned for film and stage by producer Scott Rudin. Newkirk's articles and reviews are regularly published in major media, including the Washington Post, the New York Times, The Guardian, The Nation, and the Chronicle of Higher Education.