Engaging Melamed
For this E-Response, respond to at least two of the questions below. Your combined answers should total approximately 400-500 words. You can and should quote and paraphrase from Melamed’s texts; when you do so, please be sure to use in-text citations following MLA format or another recognized academic style.
Professor Jodi Melamed’s keyword essay on “Diversity” takes up many issues and problems with the way Diversity discourses circulate.
· From the excerpt we read, what work does official or capital-D “Diversity” do, according to Melamed? (There are several possible answers to this question.)
· She begins by claiming that “diversity discourses are a form of crisis management” (85). What is the initial “crisis” she is describing? How/why is “management” so central to “Diversity discourses”?
· How are the “histories of the keywords ‘diversity’ and ‘race’” linked or “intertwined,” according to Melamed? Why is this important for understanding discourses of diversity? (See page 85.)
· What does she mean by the different uses of “good diversity” and “bad diversity” in the post-World War II United States? (See page 86, column one.)
· How does she use the term “corporate diversity” (87) and what’s wrong with it?