The scale of these flows has waxed and waned, but it is clear cross-border flows of people today are at high levels historically. 7 In London, the fraction of non-UK born residents was almost 3 million or 37% of the population in 2011. And Edinburgh has the largest non-UK born population of any region in Scotland at 16%. Accompanying this co-mingling of ethnicities and cultures has been an evolution, bordering on revolution, in social attitudes. Through the course of several centuries, laws have emerged forbidding discrimination based on race, gender, disability, ethnicity and age. And, during the latter part of the 20th century, there has been rapid growth in a new set of social norms and policies to promote diversity in schools and universities, in the workplace, in sport and leisure activities and in wider society. One interesting window on these changing societal attitudes is provided by looking at the etymological roots and evolution of the word “diversity” itself. These can be traced to the Latin “divertere” meaning “to turn aside” – which in turn led to our word ‘divert’, meaning to change course - and the old French expression “diversite” meaning “difference, uniqueness, oddness”. In other words, the semantic roots of diversity support a dual interpretation, part positive, part negative. 8 That dual interpretation has continued through the ages. Chart 1 plots the incidence of the word diversity in books printed since the 15th Century. 9 Diversity entered the English lexicon in the mid-14th century. At that time, its meaning was broadly neutral.
These biases in behaviour are similar in spirit, but different in form, to those of primitive man. Both generate negative sentiment towards strangers or the “out-group”. In ancient times, biases were based on the physical identity of strangers; they were overt and visible. Today, many biases are based on the social identity of strangers; they are often covert and subtle. Where primitive man had conscious biases, modern man often has unconscious ones too. 14 That these biases are sometimes covert, rather than overt, does not diminish their importance for society. Unconscious biases are likely to be just as prevalent, and sometimes as pernicious, as conscious one. And precisely because they are harder to detect, sometimes even among those exhibiting these behaviours, unconscious biases are more likely to go unnoticed, and thus unchallenged, than conscious ones. As conscious biases were violent and visible, unconscious biases are silent and invisible. The Sneetches is, at one level, a children’s story with a moral message. At another, it is a case study in social identity theory, a parable for modern times. Even in advanced economies with little fear of conflict or infection, with laws against discrimination and with social norms favouring diversity, we all remain Sneetches. Our biased minds are in part a neurological hangover from our hunter-gatherer past and in part a sociological side-effect of our multicultural present. Either way, these biases are embedded in our brains and behaviours. Diversity as a social good Saying that behavioural biases among individuals are understandable is one thing.