Annotation Drawing on his experience as a social scientist, Wood traces the birth and evolution of "diversity," and shows how it sprawls across politics, law, education, business, entertainment, personal aspiration, religion and the arts as an encompassing claim about human identity. It asserts the principle that people are, above all else, members of social groups and products of the historical experiences of those groups. In this sense, Wood shows, diversity is profoundly anti-individualist and at odds with America's older ideals of liberty and equality.