The Essential Diversity Mindset: How to Cultivate a More Inclusive Culture and Environment

“True diversity requires one to become color and label neutral,” argues strategy consultant and executive coach Soo in this impassioned but flat debut. The United States is more polarized than ever, she notes, and argues that this division is due to moral judgments behind such overused accusations as “racist, bigot, sexist, and snowflake.” Inclusivity, Soo argues, comes from mindset shifts and a program that takes into account psychology, emotion, and behavior. This sounds hopeful, but Soo falls back on color blindness as a solution to systemic racism; society should stop “simplifying and dividing humans based on one dimension: race” and instead see people rather than their skin color. Her subsequent rejection of political correctness loses luster when paired with stories of, for instance, condescending to a friend’s views on reparations because “what I wanted most was for Jodie to feel empowered by her own strength and worth as an individual, not to live out the stereotype of her label as a black woman in America.” While Soo calls on leaders to push a different message of diversity, she fails to provide workable ideas on how to do so. This call to action misses the mark. (Mar.)