Top 35 Diversity & Inclusion Articles of 2015

From race and gender to sexual orientation and disability, there was no shortage of content in 2015 on Diversity and Inclusion facts, figures, and data to move the conversation forward.

The following made the cut as the Top 35 most memorable articles focused on Diversity and Inclusion.

Which are your favorites? What others would you add?

Share Your Thoughts in the Comment Section Below.

1? Why is Gender Diversity In Tech So Much Easier To Solve Than Racial Diversity?

Diversity is a serious problem in the tech industry. In recent months, major companies including Apple, Google, Facebook, and Amazon have released statistics showing the severe lack of women and minorities in their workforces. For one of the most innovative industries, tech's progress on diversity has been depressingly slow.

2? 10 Incredible Women Who Have Fought For Equal Pay

The wage gap may still be hovering around 20 cents per dollar, and even more once you add in race, age, geography, and immigration status, but it has been decreasing, thanks in no small part to the dedicated efforts of female activists, policy makers, and those who have refused to accept unequal pay for equal work over the decades.

3? The America We Live In: A Story Of Black & White

The belief that we, even as children, do not notice differences in race or that some of us are colorblind couldn't be further from the truth. We may not immediately associate the difference in a positive or negative way, but we obtain multiple cues from our parents, neighbors, the media, teachers, and our churches about race and who is considered to be "good" versus who is considered to be "bad.'"

4? If You're Blind, This App Makes Strangers Your Eyes By Building A Bridge Between 2 Communities

The really important thing about this app is the blind person gets the opportunity to get help without "asking."

5? These 8 Scales Reveal Everything You Should Know About Different Cultures

Many people, perhaps especially Americans, underestimate how differently people do things in other countries.

6? 4 Reasons Why You Should Watch MTV's 'White People' Documentary

While many critics pounced on the notion of such a documentary, it proves to be a very well-thought out piece that does not focus on shaming White Americans but instead, engages them where they are on the topic of race.

7? White Men: Four Things You Can Do To Advance Diversity

When the topic of diversity comes up, white men often feel labeled “the bad guys.” We can be so worried about saying the wrong thing that sometimes we default to saying nothing instead. But that is a mistake.

8? The Overlooked Asian-American Glass Ceiling

What’s missing...is any sort of discussion to be more inclusive of Asian-American men and women in the executive pipeline, according to the Ascend Foundation, a nonprofit organization providing objective analysis to address the challenges facing the corporate community.

9? How to Stand Up For Your Muslim Friends

Don't be a passive bystander to Islamophobia...Take action. Sofia Al-Khan, an American Muslim born and raised outlined some tangible action steps friends of the Muslim community can take.

10? Why You Should Still Support Starbucks' "Race Together" Initiative

With every interaction, we obtain first-hand evidence that goes beyond the printed studies and statistics that allow us to simply see the other with the one label our world rarely acknowledges — human.

11? More White Americans Are Noticing A Pattern To The Way Police Treat Black Men

Sixty-eight percent of Americans, including 66 percent of whites, say they can understand why many black Americans are angry about Freddie Gray's death.

12? A Closer Look At Police Killings This Year Debunks A Big Myth About Community Violence

The use of this data won't be limited to people on the ground. Brittany Packnett, who sits on President Barack Obama's Task Force on 21st Century Policing, said she will take the data with her to the White House. She added that it helps provide a cumulative understanding of what the year has been like in terms of police violence. 

13? Here's What Black Lives Matter Activists Want Politicians To Do About Police Violence

The policy platform aims to reform existing structural issues with policing and put in place new systems that will end police violence against black Americans. The campaign, informed by data on the causes and impact of police violence, draws on years of research from other organizations, including the Justice Department's National Institute of Justice.

14? HOLA ESTADOS UNIDOS - There Are Now More Spanish Speakers In The U.S. Than In Spain

By 2050, the U.S. will overtake Mexico as the largest Spanish-speaking country in the world, the report predicts, thanks to increased population growth in Latino communities. More than half of the country’s population growth between 2000 and 2010 came from Latinos.

15? It's Not Rude: These Portraits Of Wounded Vets Are Meant To Be Stared At

You can imagine how many times each of these men and women have heard a parent tell their child, "Don't look. Don't stare at him. That's rude." I take these pictures so that we can look; we can see what we're not supposed to see. And we need to see them because we created them.

16? Why Pixar's New Short Is A Big Deal & A Win For Diversity & Inclusion

Sanjay's Super Team, a seven-minute short, is the first to feature a non-white lead, a director of Indian descent, and to touch on religion—Hinduism, specifically.

17? The Real Face Of Jesus: Forensic Science Reveals The Most Famous Face In History 

For those accustomed to traditional Sunday school portraits of Jesus, the sculpture of the dark and swarthy Middle Eastern man that emerges from Neave's laboratory is a reminder of the roots of their faith. "The fact that He probably looked a great deal more like a darker-skinned Semite than westerners are used to seeing him pictured is a reminder of his universality," says Charles D. Hackett, director of Episcopal studies at the Candler School of Theology in Atlanta. "And [it is] a reminder of our tendency to sinfully appropriate Him in the service of our cultural values."

18? Three Myths About Religious And LGBT Identities...And How To Dispel Them

We hear stories from around the world about ways in which these two identities stand in opposition to each other. In reality, however, there is much more common ground between these identities than most people realize.

19? 10 Meaningful Ways You Can Celebrate LGBT Pride Month

Want to give more meaning to LGBT Pride Month? Check out a few ways you can boost your LGBT advocacy during the month of June.

20? The First Black Trans Model Had Her Face on a Box of Clairol

To be black and from Newark in the mid-1970s and get plucked from a model casting call for Italian Vogue by Irving Penn — it was the kind of success story that was unheard of, especially for someone like her.

21? 5 Truths I Learned About Trump After Interviewing To Be His Apprentice

In the years that followed, I would often find myself wondering what it would have been like to have continued in the interviewing process to be Trump's Apprentice. I began to compare what I found to be great qualities in the leaders I admired to the qualities I saw in Donald Trump.

22? How To Recognize (And Overcome) Your Unconscious Biases In Hiring

Initiatives to strengthen the pipeline of diverse applicants are a sensible place to start, but the pipeline won’t help you if you can’t get diverse workers to stay. And that is a problem you can’t fix until you understand the way bias works and how our brains see people who are different.

23? Want to Work in Hollywood? Only Straight, White Men Need Apply

The study from the Media, Diversity, & Social Change Initiative at USC Annenberg is the most comprehensive analysis of diversity in recent popular films ever conducted, bringing together data assessing gender, race/ethnicity and LGBT status in movies. The study reveals, for the first time, a complete picture of Hollywood's indisputable bias against featuring females, people of color, and LGBT characters on screen.

24? People with Disabilities Deserve a Minimum Wage

There is a powerful movement in the United States to increase the minimum wage to $15 an hour. That's the amount necessary for a family of four to live just above the national poverty line. But there are hundreds of thousands of workers in this country who have been left out of this fight, who will never benefit no matter how much the minimum wage is raised, and who share one characteristic. They have a disability.

25? 3 Ways to Make Less Biased Decisions. Awareness Isn't Enough

Unconscious bias not only results in lack of equity in organizations, but in poor talent management practices. How can we hire, retain, and develop the best people — regardless of race — if we are not even aware of the forces that dominate the choices we make?

26? Black Kids Receive Less Pain Medication Than White Kids in ER

If there is no physiological explanation for differing treatment of the same phenomena, we are left with the notion that subtle biases, implicit and explicit, conscious and unconscious, influence the clinician's judgment.

27? Most Black Millennials Say They Know Or Have Been Victims Of Police Abuse, Report Says

Millennials have been called America’s most racially diverse generation, but African Americans say they are doing worse than their generational peers in other racial groups when dealing with police violence, poverty and the legal system. In what is likely the most comprehensive look at black millennials, researchers found that more than half said they or someone they knew had been harassed or treated violently by police.

28? What’s Wrong With ‘All Lives Matter’? 

When some people rejoin with “All Lives Matter' they misunderstand the problem, but not because their message is untrue. It is true that all lives matter, but it is equally true that not all lives are understood to matter which is precisely why it is most important to name the lives that have not mattered, and are struggling to matter in the way they deserve. Claiming that 'all lives matter' does not immediately mark or enable black lives only because they have not been fully recognized as having lives that matter...If we jump too quickly to the universal formulation, "all lives matter," we miss the fact that black people have not yet been included in the idea of "all lives."

29? 5 Things To Tell Anyone Who Blames Black Lives Matter For Violence Against Cops

The argument that the Black Lives Matter movement is driving individuals to kill cops is specious, and if someone brings it up, here are five things you can tell them.

30? Millennials Are Less Racially Tolerant Than You Think

Those who claim that the rise of the millennials will usher in a new age of racial harmony are cherry-picking or misreading statistics. They’re doing so primarily in two ways: by lumping together all millennials when they report survey findings rather than breaking out white millennials views on racial issues, or by focusing narrowly on a small set of questions about explicit racial beliefs that don’t tell the full story.

31? How To Build And Sustain A Diverse Team

Your PR teammates aren’t the only people who should care about workplace diversity. Studies show multicultural teams are more innovative than their uniform counterparts. A 2006 study found that decision-making groups with racial diversity outperformed more homogenous groups by a significant margin. When your team is filled with similar people, it leads group members to think they have the same information and the same perspective. But this mindset squelches innovation and creativity.

32? Often Employees, Rarely CEOs: Challenges Asian-Americans Face In Tech

A new report on diversity in Silicon Valley shows that Asians and Asian-Americans are well-represented in lower-level positions — but, in comparison, severely underrepresented at the management and executive levels at five large, established tech companies.

33? Former Googler On The Challenges Of Being "Double Minority" In Tech

No one ever overtly said they didn’t support diversity. 'But culturally, when it comes up, people don’t know how to deal with it.' People do tend to seek out others like themselves, even when we know that diverse teams are more innovative and productive.

34? East Of Palo Alto’s Eden: Race And The Formation Of Silicon Valley

The questions being asked today about why the tech industry lacks racial diversity, and what the long-term consequences of gentrification are in the U.S.’s most economically vibrant regions like the San Francisco Bay Area are deeply intertwined in a way that is hard to perceive unless you step back. This is a story of how two neighboring communities followed entirely different trajectories in post-war California — one of enormous wealth and power, and the other of resilience amid deprivation. It’s about how seemingly small policy choices can have enduring, multi-generational consequences.

35? Watch The Rapid Decline Of “White America” Over Three Decades

It's no secret that America is becoming less white. According to Brookings Institution demographer William Frey, whites are on track to lose their majority status by 2042 or thereabouts. Driving this trend are immigration and intermarriage: the white share of the population is projected to shrink by 6 percent between 2010 and 2050. But the Hispanic population will grow by 102 percent, and the share of people identifying as two or more races will see a nearly 200 percent increase.

Honorable Mention? Thoughts on Diversity Part 2. Why Diversity is Difficult.

I left that meeting wondering how I could, in good conscience, continue to work in an organization where the Sr. VP of Engineering could see himself as a technology visionary and be so unaware of this blind spot in his understanding of diversity. Leadership keeps citing the pipeline when the data does not support it. They continue to churn out ethnic and racial minorities and women but still claim a commitment to diversity.

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