Queering Diversity?

Jane Ward's ethnographic investigation of three L.A.-based lesbian and gay organizations provides an empirically grounded critique of neoliberal diversity politics and the corporatization of queer activism. Rather than simply ask whether activists acknowledge "cultural" differences, she questions the public relations tactics and financial incentives contributing to the decision to "celebrate" the intersection of multiple identities. Drawing on her fieldwork at Christopher Street West, the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center, and Bienestar between 2000 and 2002, Ward illustrates how staged performances of respectable diversity enable organizations to enhance their professional image and ensure their fundability. She is careful not to ignore the positive outcomes resulting from calculated investments in diversification (such as programs for homeless queer youth), but she is critical of how "diversity culture" leaves existing hierarchies of class, race, and gender intact and further marginalizes unmanageable forms of difference. At the same time, however, Ward demonstrates how the strategies her informants devise for contesting and negotiating diversity initiatives might disrupt the rise of homonormativity.

Ward aims to bring queer theories of identity to bear on sociological studies of intersectionality and social movements. She breaks from the tendency of sociologists to outline steps that organizations should take to address intersecting identities; instead, she argues that these approaches to diversity simply co-opt intersectional models for instrumental purposes. Ward rehearses critiques of intersectionality's reliance on "systems of categorization" that benefit the interests of the state and the market, and she provides evidence from her participant observation and formal interviews that reveals diversity rhetoric's failure to challenge the middle-classness, whiteness, and masculinity of (homo)normativity (43). Still, Ward remains invested in the very analytic and semantic framework she criticizes and calls for a "queer" form of intersectionality that makes possible a "defiant" version of diversity (17). She highlights specific instances where she sees activists resisting the normalization of difference and moving toward a more ethical approach to multi-identity and multi-issue politics. While Ward's claim that the practice of "queer intersectional critique" can "remake diversity into a more substantive form of resistance" is ultimately unconvincing, I appreciate her refusal to dismiss these organizations as simply complicit with a homonormative agenda and her willingness to look for the "hopeful and unexpected effects" of diversification (2).

Ward's first site of analysis is Christopher Street West (CSW), the organization responsible for L.A.'s gay pride festival. Shortly after Ward joined the board of directors, the gay press attacked the working-class organizers at CSW for their lack of corporate experience in event planning and diversity management and declared the organization unqualified to coordinate such a profitable endeavor. Ward analyzes the clash between the press's call for a respectable and diverse festival and CSW's desire to throw a "fun" and "hot" party (60) to demonstrate how diversity projects privilege professional middle-class values and mask class inequalities within queer communities. Ward contends that the board's insistent (and sometimes accidental) "antiprofessionality" interrupted the mainstreaming of queer politics (75), and she encourages other activists to "rebel" against corporate logics and professional norms (139).

The L.A. Gay and Lesbian Center, a long-established resource center in West Hollywood, is Ward's second site of analysis. Although the center has a reputation for employing a multicultural staff and for offering programs geared to queers of color, Ward argues that the management's "bureaucratic race consciousness" reduces diversity to a matter of statistical data and, in effect, perpetuates an organizational culture of whiteness. As the center's director of corporate and foundational funding, Ward spoke with several employees who were frustrated with how rarely "diversity talk" translated into structural change and who advocated for a "just do it" approach to diversifying the center (100). Ward believes that organizations should model the "antidiscursivity" of her informants by refusing to engage corporate diversity rhetoric and by supporting employees of color (141).

Ward's third site of analysis is Bienestar, an HIV-focused organization for Latino communities. She attended meetings and events as the...