Diversity Doesn't Work

Cabin 20

Diversity doesn’t work.
Not unless you’re willing to do the heavy lifting.

I learned this the hard way, in two and a half years of National Service in Singapore. There were three thousand recruits: Chinese, Malays, Indians, and me, half Caucasian, looking very white.

When the pressure was on, people pulled into corners. Words got sharp, and fists sometimes followed.

I became a scapegoat that bonded the different races. Mocked daily. Attacked in "blanket parties" where my head was pinned in a blanket so I couldn't see, while others kicked and punched. Once, nearly suffocated. It was not because of something I did, but because of how I looked.

Lying awake after night duty, too wired to sleep, I realized: diversity without safety is brutal.

That said, I’ve also seen the other side.

I had two Navy bunkmates, one Indian and one Chinese. At first, it was awkward. Then, endless 3AM guard shifts, dumb jokes just to stay awake, and food shared from home, and trust crept in. By the end, if my life were on the line, I’d think of them.

Years later, I found the research that explained it. Amy Edmondson at Harvard showed that diverse teams with psychological safety outperform homogenous ones by a full standard deviation. Without that safety, they typically underperform.

So yes, diversity has big downsides. I lived some of them. But the upsides are enormous if you’re willing to do the work.

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In memory of my bunkmate Garrett Lim, five years gone this week.