Let me share with you some things that I have learned and hopefully it helps.

Forget for a moment about race. If you view diversity simply as including more minorities into a workplace, for example, you will miss the point. Instead, when I think about diversity, I learned to think "people who are not like myself". That includes a lot of things.

A good friend of mine taught me "we can learn the most from people who are not like us."

AND that includes diversity of thought.

We have all heard the expression Group-Think before. You put together a committee of people who have pretty much the same views. And they come to a quick conclusion. And they probably feel pretty good about it, like they got something done. But, often, they're overlooking critical details that someone who thinks differently would have noticed.

A good example that comes to my mind is with George W. Bush. Bush did a lot of things right and he did a lot of things wrong. His cabinet wasn't very diverse. I know you're going to say, well he had a black woman, a black man, a Jewish man, etc. and that's missing the point. The point is that practically everyone in his cabinet thought pretty much the same way he did. When they started building the case for war in Iraq,

they all told him what a great idea it was. Of course, people outside of his cabinet were complaining, but Bush had no one close to him that could say "maybe you should look a little closer". And so, we rushed into war before it was truly justified. Again, it wasn't about skin color. It was about people thinking differently.

So, it really goes into a lot of different areas. People who are not like you can see you a lot different than you see yourself.

I am a white man, but usually whenever I ask another white man for an opinion, he tells me what he thinks I want to hear. They worry more about not offending me than being strait with me. When I approach my black friends for an opinion, they are able to give me this whole other level of perspective and a level of honesty that I don't get from my white friends. I don't think it's that my white friends are being dishonest. It's just a cultural thing. Go alone to get along, etc.

I also get from my minority friends a feeling like they actually like me as a person, without any strings attached. It seems almost everyone (save for a few of my closes white friends) are more interested in what I can do for them. Can they sell me something? Am I a potential customer? How can I enhance their social network? What kind of a resource am I? I sometimes find myself resenting that.

Diversity isn't a strength or weakness, its just... well, diversity.