Is diversity our strength? An analysis of the facts and fancies of diversity in Toronto

This article presents an analysis of how the concept of diversity used within policy euphemises systemic discrimination and inequality based on race, class and gender. It serves to reveal the mismatch between policy rhetoric on diversity and its materialisation in the daily lives of the inhabitants of a low-income Toronto inner-suburb, by juxtaposing policy discourses with inhabitants' everyday experiences. By illustrating how inhabitants reproduce negative essentialised stereotypes based on diversity markers, the article argues that talking diversity as an alternative to or an escape from problematising the intertwined systems of race, class and gender oppression, could potentially serve to perpetuate them.