This article is dedicated to the memory of Edward Said, who taught us not to look at things in isolation but to shift our gaze towards the contrapuntal reality of the culture we create.
The Virtue of Diversity
The concept of diversity is, in its modern-day presentation, superficial. A rather brash statement to make, I agree, yet when we think about the word diversity, what instantly comes to mind for many is stark demographic; Race. Gender. Sexuality. And whilst demographic is relevant to our everyday lives, it says very little about anything of any substance.
A while back, as part of a workplace initiative, I was encouraged to complete a ‘diversity, equality and inclusion’ module – one of the many standard and compulsory exercises instilled across institutions within the UK. The first thing that struck me about the training was how painfully visible it all was. The ‘people placement’ (enter smiling Blacks, South and East Asians), the ’ethnic’ names (enter Yusef and Katarzyna) and the laugh out loud scenarios (‘if you spot a man reading the Quran…’).
And whilst on face value these profiles are somewhat reasonable in the fact that they exist, if you consider yourself to be outside the spectrum of inclusion, this heightened sense of visibility only works to caricature and trivialize such training, appearing more of a fashioned front than anything substantial or meaningful. And so as I sat gazing into Jerome’s eyes there appeared something very artificial in this highlight of difference.
The world and its inhabitants are by virtue diverse. Whenever we create a concept, group or institution, by way of giving it definition, we by virtue exclude everything which we fail to define. And so when we look at the idea of diversity there does exist the paradox in that it effectively serves to exclude a great majority of people, namely, white, heterosexual men. And whilst this article aims to neither champion nor grieve for the heterosexual white male it does aim to assess some of the effects of his seeming exclusion.
The Exemption of White
It’s important to make clear my position. My desire to challenge the concept of diversity in no way attempts to discount what I’m choosing to call the ‘superficialities of diversity’ (race, gender, sexuality). The fact that people are discriminated against based on the colour of their skin requires no elucidation, yet what I wish to adopt and put forward (for the purpose of speculation) is the Hegelian reality that all people can be discriminated against. My intention in presenting such speculative arguments are to stress – torture even – the established narrative that minority people have proprietary over disenfranchisement in the West and world at large.
This notion that diversity is working for and serving the minority not only exempts the white heterosexual male but, in an abstruse way, elevates him to superior levels above the conversation, acting as a guardian almost.
Beverly Daniel Tatum explains this phenomenon well in her sociological study, Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria. What she found was that ‘where a person is a member of the dominant or advantageous social group, the category is usually not mentioned. that element of their identity is so taken for granted… because it is taken for granted in the dominant culture’.
Transmitting this phenomenon to the concept of the diversity agenda we can easily see how issues concerning ‘the minority’, take for granted the existence of white people within these notions and effectively serve to exclude them. It’s this notion that serves to perpetually subjugate the ‘minority’, whilst at the same time, elevate the ‘majority’ beyond diversity, beyond even race. In effect, white people stand aloft to curate and facilitate the dialogue yet are rarely an active point of discussion.
And so…Diverse for Who?
The great Guyanese academic and political activist, Walter Rodney, in his lectures on Race and Class, points out the seeming phenomenon that socially conscious movements are rarely to never initiated by those for whom they are supposed to work. His research shows that the most active participants in social movements are often the elite bourgeoisie who, in an act of psychological guilt, attempt to ameliorate themselves whilst protecting their wealth founded upon the toil of their compatriots.
In writing this article I am under no illusion that the diversity agenda has improved access and opportunity to ethnic minorities across the U.K. This article is about observing the offshoot reverberations of such an agenda, and so whilst we can indeed bear witness to increased opportunity for ethnic minorities, we must also be able to see how, in a somewhat insidious manner, it works to reinforce the narrative of the supreme white male.
Margin Page.
Margins Page is a play on its very words. Stories of black people in Britain, both past and present, have often been relegated to the margins of the British canon. This platform attempts to reconfigure this position, serving as a page to help develop, curate and promote black British literature.
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