> Companies in the top quartile for racial and ethnic diversity are 35 percent more likely to have financial returns above their respective national industry medians.

I hope this is right.

But I keep seeing stats like that being thrown around and implying that the cause of those high financial returns are diversity when it is as likely that projections of high financial returns give you the money and time to focus more heavily on diversity. Both can also be symptoms of a common cause such as healthier management.

Again, correlation is not causation.