Implementing diversity and inclusion in Parliament: A more complete picture | My piece in the hilltimes.com

2015/12/23 1 Comment

With the appointment of parliamentary secretaries and opposition critics, we now have a more comprehensive picture of gender and visible minority diversity in Parliament’s leadership positions. How well has the Liberal government implemented its overall diversity and inclusion commitments, and how have the other parties responded to the “because it’s 2015” challenge?

Although Prime Minister Justin Trudeau appointed a Cabinet with gender parity (15 each of men and women) and almost 17 per cent visible minority ministers (four Sikh and one Afghan Canadian), gender parity was not attained for parliamentary secretaries (12 positions out of 35 or 34 per cent). Visible minority parliamentary secretaries are over-represented (nine positions or 24 per cent) in relation to their share of the voting population (15 per cent).

Moreover, the government addressed some of the criticism regarding Cabinet over-representation of Sikhs by appointing three African Canadians, one Chinese, one Arab, one Latin American and three South Asians (two Sikhs, one Ismaili Muslim). Three of the nine visible minority parliamentary secretaries are women, including Celina Caesar-Chavannes, a parliamentary secretary to the Prime Minister.

In total, of the 68 leadership positions (ministers, parliamentary secretaries, whips, and House leaders), 59 per cent are men, and 21 per cent are visible minority men or women. The detailed breakdown is shown in the chart below:

In terms of percentage of caucus, there are 27 women in leadership positions out of 50 elected, or 54 per cent. For visible minorities, there are 14 out of 39 elected, or 36 per cent. In contrast, 30 non-visible minority men are in leadership positions out of 134 elected, or 20 per cent.

No matter how one looks at the data, this marks a major shift in government parliamentary leadership appointments, towards more women and visible minorities.

The Conservative official opposition compensated for their relatively low number of women MPs (17 per cent of caucus), making 35 per cent of critics women (the Harper government’s last Cabinet similarly appointed more women to Cabinet—31 per cent—compared to the 17 per cent in caucus).

However, with a small number of visible minority MPs (six or six per cent of caucus), critic visible minority representation is only slightly compensated at nine per cent, although visible minority MPs form 13 per cent of the smaller number of deputy critics. But in relation to caucus membership, 50 per cent of visible minority Conservative MPs are critics, reflecting again the same drive to present a more inclusive face to Canadians.

The NDP opposition has the largest proportionate female caucus representation: 41 per cent. It is no surprise that women MPs form 45 per cent of critics. With only two visible minority MPs to choose from, only one (three per cent) is a critic (but again, this is 50 per cent of those elected).

So what does all this mean in terms of diversity and inclusion?

The Liberal government, given the large number of women (50) and visible minority (39) MPs elected had little difficulty in meeting its stated goals of Cabinet gender parity (but slipped in other leadership positions). It also was able to significantly exceed visible minority representation in relation to the number of visible minority voters.

This ‘over-representation’ reflects a conscious decision to demonstrate diversity and inclusion, one that started with having the highest percentage of visible minority candidates (17 per cent) compared to the other major parties (13 per cent).

For both opposition parties, the weakness in visible minority representation reflects the small number of visible minority MPs elected. With respect to women, the Conservatives responded to the ‘because its 2015’ challenge, compensating for their small number of women MPs, and applying the same approach to visible minorities. The NDP made the most effort in recruiting female candidates, many of whom were successful, and thus close to gender parity was not a challenge.

All in all, taken together, the Liberal leadership positions reflect a significant implementation of the diversity, inclusion and multiculturalism agenda, one that, given the horizontal ministerial comment for parity and diversity in all government appointments, holds significant promise in ensuring greater representation in government.

Moreover, to the extent that the opposition parties could, their choices recognize the need to respond to this agenda and ensure that their leadership reflects Canadian diversity.

Source: Implementing diversity and inclusion in Parliament: A more complete picture | hilltimes.com

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ICYMI – The U.S. Senate: Still One of the World’s Whitest Workplaces – The Atlantic

2015/12/23 Leave a comment

Not that surprising. Have not seen a comparative Canadian study on staffers (anyone know one?) but I would suspect that visible minority percentages would be higher:

The U.S. Senate is famously known as the world’s most deliberative body, but it has never been its most representative. And that remains true not only of the 100 people elected to serve, but of the hundreds more hired as their top advisers.

Just over 7 percent of congressional aides who hold senior staff positions in the Senate are people of color, according to a new study set to be released Tuesday by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. That amounts to just about 24 of the 336 people who hold top job titles, and it is a far lower percentage than the country as a whole, where people of color—defined as African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans, and Native Americans—comprise about one-third of the population. The lack of diversity is particularly glaring among African Americans (0.9 percent of top staff positions) and in the offices of senators hailing from states with large black and Hispanic populations. And it suggests that little has changed in the decade since the online magazine Diversity Inc. called the Senate the nation’s worst employer for diversity.

In one way, the finding is not surprising. While the 114th Congress as a whole is the most diverse in history (admittedly a low bar), the Senate itself is notoriously unrepresentative as an elected body. There are just two African American senators and three Hispanics to go along with 20 women out of 100 senators. Yet the report’s author, James Jones of Columbia University, said he was still shocked to find the staff numbers to be so low, particularly in the offices of Democratic senators. “I didn’t expect it to be this bad,” he told me. The social demographics of senators naturally influences the social demographics of the people they hire as their senior advisers, Jones said. But, he added, “I don’t think diversity in the Senate—especially racial diversity—should be dependent on the racial backgrounds of senators. All senators come from states with racially diverse demographics, and so I think they have a responsibility to have staffs that look like the states that they represent.”

The Senate’s static diversity also bucks a trend in the federal government under President Obama, who has appointed a record percentage of minorities and women to posts requiring confirmation. The Senate, therefore, is approving a lot of minorities; it just isn’t hiring them. Jones told me that his research indicated that staff diversity in the top rungs of the Senate hadn’t changed much since the 1980s, despite periodic efforts to highlight and remedy the problem. In the mid-2000s, then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid created a diversity initiative to encourage minority hiring by Democratic offices. But Jones said the impact of that effort had been mixed: It helped staffers of color get their foot in the door with entry-level positions, but it didn’t make much difference in senior-level jobs. “Senior positions are more competitive, they’re more political, and the opportunities to fill these vacancies are more rare,” Jones said.

Source: The U.S. Senate: Still One of the World’s Whitest Workplaces – The Atlantic

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Diversity Makes You Brighter – The New York Times

2015/12/10 Leave a comment

Other studies have also shown, I believe, the advantages of diversity in reducing automatic thinking and group think:

Upholding affirmative action in 2003, in Grutter v. Bollinger, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor argued that it served the intellectual purpose of a university. Writing for the majority, she described how the University of Michigan aspired to enhance diversity not only to improve the prospects of certain groups of students, but also to enrich everyone’s education.

Ms. Fisher [the applicant of the case before the US Supreme Court] argues that diversity may be achieved in other ways, without considering race. Before resorting to the use of race or ethnicity in admissions, the University of Texas must offer “actual evidence, rather than over broad generalizations about the value of favored or disfavored groups” to show that “the alleged interest was substantial enough to justify the use of race.”

Our research provides such evidence. Diversity improves the way people think. By disrupting conformity, racial and ethnic diversity prompts people to scrutinize facts, think more deeply and develop their own opinions. Our findings show that such diversity actually benefits everyone, minorities and majority alike.

To study the effects of ethnic and racial diversity, we conducted a series of experiments in which participants competed in groups to find accurate answers to problems. In a situation much like a classroom, we started by presenting each participant individually with information and a task: to calculate accurate prices for simulated stocks. First, we collected individual answers, and then (to see how committed participants were to their answers), we let them buy and sell those stocks to the others, using real money. Participants got to keep any profit they made.

When trading, participants could observe the behavior of their counterparts and decide what to make of it. Think of yourself in similar situations: Interacting with others can bring new ideas into view, but it can also cause you to adopt popular but wrong ones.

It depends how deeply you contemplate what you observe. So if you think that something is worth $100, but others are bidding $120 for it, you may defer to their judgment and up the ante (perhaps contributing to a price bubble) or you might dismiss them and stand your ground.

We assigned each participant to a group that was either homogeneous or diverse (meaning that it included at least one participant of another ethnicity or race). To ascertain that we were measuring the effects of diversity, not culture or history, we examined a variety of ethnic and racial groups. In Texas, we included the expected mix of whites, Latinos and African-Americans. In Singapore, we studied people who were Chinese, Indian and Malay. (The results were published with our co-authors, Evan P. Apfelbaum, Mark Bernard, Valerie L. Bartelt and Edward J. Zajac.)

The findings were striking. When participants were in diverse company, their answers were 58 percent more accurate. The prices they chose were much closer to the true values of the stocks. As they spent time interacting in diverse groups, their performance improved.

In homogeneous groups, whether in the United States or in Asia, the opposite happened. When surrounded by others of the same ethnicity or race, participants were more likely to copy others, in the wrong direction. Mistakes spread as participants seemingly put undue trust in others’ answers, mindlessly imitating them. In the diverse groups, across ethnicities and locales, participants were more likely to distinguish between wrong and accurate answers. Diversity brought cognitive friction that enhanced deliberation.

For our study, we intentionally chose a situation that required analytical thinking, seemingly unaffected by ethnicity or race. We wanted to understand whether the benefits of diversity stem, as the common thinking has it, from some special perspectives or skills of minorities.

What we actually found is that these benefits can arise merely from the very presence of minorities. In the initial responses, which were made before participants interacted, there were no statistically significant differences between participants in the homogeneous or diverse groups. Minority members did not bring some special knowledge.

The differences emerged only when participants began interacting with one another. When surrounded by people “like ourselves,” we are easily influenced, more likely to fall for wrong ideas. Diversity prompts better, critical thinking. It contributes to error detection. It keeps us from drifting toward miscalculation.

Our findings suggest that racial and ethnic diversity matter for learning, the core purpose of a university. Increasing diversity is not only a way to let the historically disadvantaged into college, but also to promote sharper thinking for everyone.

Source: Diversity Makes You Brighter – The New York Times

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Trudeau Cabinet takes diversity, inclusiveness to an unparalleled extent | hilltimes.com

2015/12/08 Leave a comment

My piece in The Hill Times:

The Liberal government has emphasized its diversity and inclusive language in speeches, in Cabinet, in Cabinet committees, and in Cabinet ministers’ mandate letters. This emphasis has been reinforced by the return of the multiculturalism program to Canadian Heritage. All together, these initiatives represent the mainstreaming of diversity, inclusiveness and multiculturalism to an unparalleled extent.

It starts with the language of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau who regularly emphasizes that: “Canadians understand that diversity is our strength. We know that Canada has succeeded—culturally, politically, economically—because of our diversity, not in spite of it.”

It continues with the creation of the Cabinet Committee on Diversity and Inclusion, with a strong inclusion mandate for indigenous and new Canadians: “Considers issues concerning the social fabric of Canada and the promotion of Canadian pluralism. Examines initiatives designed to strengthen the relationship with indigenous Canadians, improve the economic performance of immigrants, and promote Canadian diversity, multiculturalism, and linguistic duality.”

It is reflected in his choice of ministers: 50 per cent women, 17 per cent visible minority. And is further reinforced in the shared mandate letter commitments for all ministers with two strong multiculturalism-related commitments: “Canadians expect us, in our work, to reflect the values we all embrace: inclusion, honesty, hard work, fiscal prudence, and generosity of spirit. We will be a government that governs for all Canadians, and I expect you, in your work, to bring Canadians together.

“You are expected to do your part to fulfill our government’s commitment to transparent, merit-based appointments, to help ensure gender parity and that indigenous Canadians and minority groups are better reflected in positions of leadership.”

Holding all ministers to account, with PMO tracking of these and other shared commitments (in addition to minister-specific commitments), should ensure greater progress on the two objectives of multiculturalism:  recognition and equality.

It will take some time to see how well these commitments are implemented.

Equally important, the previous government’s weak record on the diversity of judicial appointments (less than two per cent visible minority) will start to be addressed.

Overall, the new government made few changes to how government is formally organized (machinery changes). This was wise given the disruption and turmoil that such changes can entail (e.g., the Martin government’s splitting apart Human Resources and Skills Development and the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade in 2004, reversed by the Harper government in 2006).

This makes the return of the multiculturalism program to Canadian Heritage all the more striking, after some eight years at Citizenship and Immigration (now Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship or IRCC).

The original transfer to CIC was largely driven by political reasons given then Immigration minister Jason Kenney’s political outreach role with ethnic groups. However, there was also a policy rationale. Multiculturalism deals with longer-term multi-generational issues (along with ‘mainstream’ visible minority relations) in contrast to the newcomer focus of the immigration, integration and citizenship programs, and multiculturalism could be seen as a logical extension of CIC’s mandate, and was portrayed as such in one of CIC’s strategic objectives, ‘building an integrated society.’

In practice, however, the multiculturalism program withered away at CIC.

When the program moved to CIC in 2008, it had a $13-million budget: $12-million for grants and contributions and 73 full-time positions. The last departmental performance report (2013-14) showed 29 full-time positions (a decline of 60 per cent) with a $9.8-million budget. Money for grants and contributions fell to $7.9-million.

Negotiations over the resources to be returned to Canadian Heritage will be challenging, given the impact may be felt in other program areas in IRCC that benefited from the redistribution of Multiculturalism funds. Moreover, the weakened capacity will require a major rebuilding and restaffing effort.

From a policy perspective, the return of multiculturalism to Canadian Heritage reinforces the overall government diversity and inclusion agenda, as well as the Canadian identity agenda, which fits nicely with Canadian Heritage’s overall mandate.

However, Canadian Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly’s specific mandate letter commitments make no mention of multiculturalism. This apparent oversight may just be to provide the public service time to manage the return of multiculturalism and reintegrate within Canadian Heritage. Furthermore, the lack of a junior minister may make it harder for the multiculturalism program to define its new role within Canadian Heritage and, more broadly, across government.

Joly’s public statements to date have not included any significant references to multiculturalism. Her general orientation, however, has been clear: to promote the “symbols of progressiveness. That was (sic) the soul of our platform.”

Overall, the commitment to a diversity and inclusion agenda, supported by a Cabinet committee and shared ministerial mandate letter commitments, and the rebuilding of multiculturalism back at Canadian Heritage bode well for a more effective inclusion, diversity, and multiculturalism strategy across government.

Source: Trudeau Cabinet takes diversity, inclusiveness to an unparalleled extent | hilltimes.com

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An Alberta MLA on battling gender identity

2015/12/03 Leave a comment

A reminder of the value of having diversity among Parliamentarians:

The Alberta legislature has lately become a place for remarkable confessionals, courtesy of the governing New Democrats. Last month, it was a member from Lethbridge who told of the brutal abuse her ex-husband inflicted on her, to bring clarity to a debate on reforms making it easier for Albertans to escape domestic violence.

On Tuesday, an Edmonton-area New Democrat personalized transgender issues, as the legislature debated—and would unanimously support—explicitly adding gender identity and expression to the Alberta Human Rights Act. Estefania Cortes-Vargas, a former office aide to Premier Rachel Notley, had previously been public about being one of the first openly gay MLAs in Alberta history. Tuesday, Cortes-Vargas opened up about gender identity, and started with frustration that assembly Hansard traditionally records members with gender-specific honorifics like Mr. or Ms.

From the Hansard, here is the member recorded simply as Cortes-Vargas:

As I wrote my notes, Speaker, I started off by asking myself why I need to include in that your gender in order to identify you. I asked myself this question before I even came into this Legislature and was asked to identify my gender so Hansard could put that into the transcription.

I have always battled with gender identity, gender expression, and I continue to do so. A lot of the time I don’t have the answers to who I am, why I act this way, why I dress this way, but I do know this: I do know that I’m a person, that I deserve rights, and that anything less than that is unacceptable. Gender, Speaker, plays a role in everyone’s life, but for the trans community and for the gender-variant community it’s magnified to a level that creates high suicide rates, high unemployment rates, high levels of work in the sex trade because people are shunned.

People feel like they cannot be themselves without continuously having to explain to people that, hey, maybe I’m a boy and maybe I’m a girl. It shouldn’t matter. If the way I look confuses people, I love it. I will always continue to challenge that the way I look needs to define anything about me, because at the end of the day, when I look in the mirror, I say: “For the first time in my life, when I cut my hair, when I chose different wardrobes, when I challenged my cultural identity as a Hispanic woman, hey, maybe I don’t need to wear heels, and maybe I don’t need to have long hair just because that’s what is expected and that’s what’s considered beautiful. I think I’m a beautiful person.”

Source: An Alberta MLA on battling gender identity – Macleans.ca

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Liberals say overhaul of patronage appointments to include gender-parity goal

2015/12/01 Leave a comment

No surprise – was clearly implied in the common language in the mandate letters.

The first test, of course, will be the appointment this week (I expect) of parliamentary secretaries:

The federal Liberals say they plan to extend a promise of gender parity in cabinet to ensure the same outcome in the hundreds of appointments the government makes to boards, agencies and Crown corporations.

Just how the process will work is unclear: The Liberals vowed in the election to overhaul an appointment process that now is conducted behind closed doors and was sometimes mired in accusations of political patronage for government donors or failed candidates.

The party has vowed to create an outside body to recommend new senators, a model similar to one used in Britain for government-wide appointments to boards and agencies made by cabinet and ministers.

The Liberals didn’t provide details of how the appointments process, which they now oversee, will work.

“Appointments will be open, transparent and merit-based and we will ensure gender parity and that more indigenous peoples and minority groups are reflected in positions of leadership,” said Olivier Duchesneau, deputy director of communications to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

“This will apply government-wide to everything from the cabinet to the Supreme Court to boards of Crown corporations.”

Duchesneau said the opaque nature of the appointment process has fuelled cynicism about backroom politics.

Source: Liberals say overhaul of patronage appointments to include gender-parity goal | CTV News

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Canada could be corporate diversity leader, says study | Advisor.ca

2015/11/24 Leave a comment

Slow progress:

But this is unlikely, says the CBDC [Canadian Board Diversity Council], because the pace at which corporate diversity is improving is too slow. In fact, the report card reveals women currently hold 19.5% of FP500 organization board seats. That’s up from 17.1% in 2014, but Canada is still behind when it comes to bringing women on board. In the UK, for example, there are no all-male FTSE100 boards, while there are 109 such boards in Canada.

“The pace of change for board diversity is encouraging, but there’s more work that needs to be done,” says CBDC founder Pamela Jeffery. If each organization on the FP500 replaced one retiring male director with one female director, says CBDC, Canada would be among the leading countries for gender board diversity—at 30% female representation.

EFFECT OF PRESSURE FROM OSC 

According to the CBDC’s report card, the OSC’s corporate diversity disclosure requirements are making a difference. When surveyed, almost half (49%) of directors indicated their boards have written diversity policies, up from 25% last year.

However, this data contradicts findings from OSC, adds CBDC. In a recent report, the regulator found that only “14% [of boards] clearly disclosed the adoption of a written policy, whereas 65% disclosed that they had decided not to adopt a written policy.”

“The findings of this year’s Annual Report Card show board disclosure requirements on diversity are having a positive impact,” says Michael Bloom, vice president of Industry and Business Strategy for The Conference Board of Canada. “However, achieving the goal of truly diverse boards with representation from women, Aboriginal peoples, visible minorities and people with disabilities will require much more of a leadership focus.”

ADDITIONAL HIGHLIGHTS

  • Since 2014, there has been a significant increase in the number of directors who self-report to be a visible minority, nearly tripling to 7.3% from 2% last year.

  • The number of Aboriginal board members rose from 0.8% in 2014 to 1.3% in 2015.

  • Nearly all FP500 corporate board respondents (96%) say board diversity is very important or somewhat important, and that’s a substantial increase from 85% in 2010.

  • In the Utilities and Finance sector, representation of women stands at 27.1%. Meanwhile, women are represented at 27% in the Insurance sector.

  • In the Mining/Oil/Gas sector, representation of women lags behind at 12.2%. Same goes for the Construction sector at 9.3%.

  • Despite the higher-than-average rates of female directors on TSX60 boards (22.6%, up from 20.1% in 2014), there are only 20 visible minority directors, two Aboriginal directors and one person with a disability among the 31 organizations that completed the 2015 TSX60 survey.

Source: Canada could be corporate diversity leader, says study | Advisor.ca

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Our Favorite Word — ‘Diversity’ — Is Under The Microscope At Mizzou And Yale 

2015/11/13 Leave a comment

More on some of the US debates on diversity:

The Yale debate plugs directly into the bigger, more meta conversation we’re seeing around “diversity.” One group argues that their right to free speech is infringed upon; another says the school promised them — and they’re paying for — a welcoming, inclusive environment.

As Yale made headlines for these incidents, its officials announced something that received far less attention last week: The school will spend $50 million in the next five years to increase diversity of its faculty. That money will go toward recruitment, implicit bias training for employees involved in faculty searches and tenure decisions, and fellowships for graduate students aimed at expanding the pipeline into academia. It’s a tall order; in the 2014-15 academic year, just 22.5 percent of the university’s 4,410 faculty members were minorities, according to CNN Money, while almost 43 percent of the students enrolled at Yale are minorities.

But the conversation about diversity initiatives in corporate culture and Hollywood — and Holmes’ and Harris’ convincing arguments that existing tactics aren’t working — raises the question: Will a browner, more diverse faculty lead to a better atmosphere for college students hungering for more inclusion?

Part of the problem seems to be that institutions — tech companies, media organizations, TV networks, schools — often frame their pursuit of diversity as an achievement in itself. They unveil breathless new initiatives and pat themselves on the back without investigating how existing internal cultures — and their own attitudes — are getting in the way of authentic inclusion.

As Gene wrote last week, diversity “can’t be productive unless there’s real thought about how to invite and productively metabolize pushback against accepted norms, because that pushback is going to come.”

Yale and Missouri are struggling to find their feet under enormous waves of pushback right now. We’ll have to wait and see whether Yale’s new plan to diversify its staff and the turnover at the top at Mizzou will actually do anything to chip away at the tensions they’re seeing on campus.

Source: Our Favorite Word — ‘Diversity’ — Is Under The Microscope At Mizzou And Yale : Code Switch : NPR

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Why #Diversity Is Difficult | Re/code

2015/11/09 Leave a comment

An account by Leslie Miley on her challenges in increasing diversity at Twitter:

But then, in August 2015, Jack Dorsey returned to Twitter, and during a company meeting, responded to my question about committing Twitter to a measurable diversity goal. He publicly committed to diversity in front of every Twitter employee in attendance, and a few short weeks later, Twitter publishes this. And in a profoundly emotional moment, Jack Dorsey played the video seen below at the next company meeting:

This epitomizes the best of Twitter, and I left the meeting inspired and ready to drive the bus of diversity in engineering.

After several weeks of meetings and guidance acceptance from executive staff, I pitched a job proposal to focus on increasing diversity in engineering to the senior vice president of engineering. In the course of the meeting, he suggested that we begin tracking the ethnicity of potential candidates in the pipeline to understand better where candidates are falling out. I agreed that this is an important metric to track, and conveyed that the current data we had indicated that the problem is not just the pipeline. While ethnic and gender data early in the pipeline is incomplete, we do know that in 2013, 4.5 percent of computer science graduates from the top 25 schools were African-American, and 6.5 percent were Hispanic/Latino.

As we continued the discussion, he suggested that I create a tool to analyze candidates last names to classify their ethnicity. His rationale was to track candidates through the pipeline to understand where they were falling out. He made the argument that the last name “Nguyen,” for example, has an extremely high likelihood of being Vietnamese. As an engineer, I understand this suggestion, and why it may seem logical. However, classifying ethnicities by name is problematic, as evidenced by my name (Leslie Miley).

With my departure, Twitter no longer has any managers, directors, or VPs of color in engineering or product management. From this position, Twitter may find it difficult to make the changes to culture and product.

What I also found disconcerting is this otherwise highly sophisticated thinker could posit that an issue this complex could be addressed by name analysis. (For reference, here is a tool that attempts to do that. With Jewish or African/African Americans, this classifier scored 0 percent on identifying these groups in Twitter engineering). While not intentional, his idea underscored the unconscious tendency to ignore the complex forces of history, colonization, slavery and identity.

I left that meeting wondering how I could, in good conscience, continue to work in an organization where the senior vice president of engineering could see himself as a technology visionary and be so unaware of this blind spot in his understanding of diversity. Leadership keeps citing “the pipeline,” when the data does not support it. They continue to churn out ethnic and racial minorities and women, but still claim a commitment to diversity.

This is the last meeting of any consequence I had at Twitter. My time at Twitter is over. And I end it very conflicted. Twitter as a platform has empowered underserved and underrepresented people. It has fomented social movements and brought to the forefront of American media and politics issues that affect me personally and professionally.

Source: Why Diversity Is Difficult | Re/code

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There’s ‘diversity,’ then there’s ‘super-diversity,’ Burnaby style

2015/11/02 Leave a comment

Good in-depth article on diversity in British Columbia:

One of the most authentic ways to measure the intensity of ethnic diversity is to test the chances that two people, chosen at random from a certain area, will be of a different ethnic background.

Which is exactly what Sun data journalist Chad Skelton did: He’s given each part of Metro Vancouver a “diversity index.”

Burnaby prevails. There is a 73 per cent chance two randomly chosen people from Burnaby will be of a different ethnicity.

In Richmond, the chances of two random people being of a different ethnicity goes down to 68 per cent, which is the same diversity index rate for the city of Vancouver.

Sprawling Surrey, with its strong South Asian population, comes in next on Metro Vancouver’s diversity index, at 67 per cent. Coquitlam’s rate is 64 per cent. New Westminster comes in at 55 per cent on the diversity index. North and West Vancouver, Port Moody, Delta and Port Coquitlam all settle in at about 48 per cent.

Even though some people think of Richmond as the most “diverse” city in Canada because its population is 62 per cent foreign-born, its diversity index is not as intense as that of Burnaby because Richmond is dominated by two major ethnic groups, Chinese and whites.

Burnaby is different. It has a wide range of ethnic groups. And they’re spread more evenly, with none dominating.

While Burnaby has a significant number of whites and ethnic Chinese, it also contains solid portions of Filipinos, South Asians (mostly Indians and Pakistanis), South Koreans, West Asians (mostly Iranians), followed by smaller groups of Vietnamese, Malaysians, Africans, Japanese, Latin Americans and Arabs.

The Sun’s diversity index shows Burnaby has two of the five most intensely diverse neighbourhoods in Metro Vancouver.

In the GTA, Mississauga would be the closest equivalent in terms of the greater mix of groups compared to Markham (largely Chinese Canadian) and Brampton (largely Indo-Canadian).

Source: There’s ‘diversity,’ then there’s ‘super-diversity,’ Burnaby style

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