Benefits of a Diverse Society: Why It’s Important and How To Create It

New York City shares many traits with other great cities of the world. It’s a trade center, a transportation hub, a center of learning.

Diversity, though, is what gives the city its life’s blood.

New York is one of the few cities in the U.S. and one of the very few cities in the world in which four ethnic groups each account for 10 percent or more of the population.

The glue that cements them all together is the city’s penchant for inclusion. As the author Tom Wolfe wrote, “One belongs to New York instantly. One belongs to it as much in five minutes as in five years.”

The rich mix of cultures goes straight to the bottom line.

Gender-diverse companies are 15 percent more likely to outperform their industry peers and ethnically diverse companies are 35 percent more likely to overachieve, according to research done by McKinsey & Company, an international business consultant.

And the benefits of diversity extend well beyond the balance sheets. The smell of ethnic foods wafting from the city’s restaurants and stores, the music of its many languages and the color and vitality of its art all help to make people healthier and happier than they would be in a less diverse society, according to research compiled by the University of Manchester’s Centre on Dynamics of Ethnicity.

Explore New York City’s Cultural Richness with NYXT.nyc

“Diversity may be the hardest thing for a society to live with, and perhaps the most dangerous thing for a society to be without,” the late minister and civil rights activist William Sloane Coffin Jr. once said. Building a diverse society requires constant diligence and work, but it is priceless in the end.

NYXT.nyc is proud to align with content partners Human Rights Watch, Open Society Foundations and the New York Civil Liberties Union who work in different ways to defend the rights of all people to be themselves — a fundamental tenet of diversity and inclusion. NYXT keeps you up to date on all three with video essays and links to their sites.

Beyond the political realm, diversity is not truly “created” until it is shared, and NYXT gives you a wealth of opportunities to explore the diversity of Manhattan’s culture, intellect and art. Ranging from the African-American roots of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater to Asia Society, Korea Society, LGBT Center, Irish Arts Center, Type Media Center, the Roundabout Theater Company and more, NYXT.nyc is your window into the NYXT big thing in New York City.