The common presumption is that biases like racism, sexism, and homophobia are the chief corrosives of diversity. And the are bad, to be sure. What I’m arguing is that churn is a further corrosive— in many common situations, as corrosive as prejudices themselves. Is the white teacher avoiding a needed conversation with Black parents because she is prejudiced, or because she is worried that a misstep in the conversation could get her seen as racist? Is it prejudice? Or is it churn that makes her hesitate? The point is that reducing churn can sometimes be as important in diverse setting as reducing prejudice itself.

Admittedly, this idea asks for an expansion of our thinking.

But Black students have lived with their racial identity. They know it can matter. They didn’t know that it would matter in this instance. But they knew it could. Thus their predicament. To be safe, not to be misled, they were less trusting. They stayed in churn.

Such caution has its costs. There could be value in that feedback. It might help them with their essay and their writing generally. Trusting less means they’d miss out on that benefit. And this would happen over and over in a diverse school.

But when the letter conveyed a more collective campus culture— a culture better matched to that of working-class students— those students performed the same on the anagram task as students with college-educated parents. The representation of college culture in the president’s welcome letter was enough to immediately affect students’ cognitive functioning!

Welcoming. When we enter a setting that is important to us— a university, a recreational area, a diversity workshop, a workplace— a churn-causing question hangs in the air: How will my identity— who I am— affect my experience here? To build trust in diverse settings, it’s important to give people a welcoming experience that addresses that question.

In my experience, there is something important to understand about tactics: Their effectiveness is often situationally specific. A given tactic may work well in one setting, inspiring hope. But then not work at all in a different setting, or even backfire. Yet when this happens, it may not be the fault of the tactic. It may be a problem of its fit in the setting. A college welcome letter that inspires students in an upper-middle-class high school may alienate students in a working-class high school. Diversity training may work well in a setting that has built a strong culture of trust but backfire in a setting of new or transient employees.