Our obsession with ‘diversity’ has made Britain more divided than ever

A theatre has landed itself in hot water after mixing Victorian-style social descriptions and American-inspired identitarian terminology in a job advert seeking a chief executive.

In an incredibly insulting advertisement, it ridiculously lumped together “working class, benefit class, criminal class and/or underclass” in one category, alongside another appealing for “global majority candidates” – a catch-all for groups ranging from Black Caribbeans and Arabs through to “Latinx, Jewish, Romany and Irish Traveller” people.

Leaving aside the deep unpopularity of the term “Latinx” with many of those the term supposedly describes, the text is incredibly revealing. The arts and culture sector, along with other spheres of British life, is increasingly characterised by a toxic combination of old-fashioned class-based snobbery and contemporary US-inspired racial identity politics.

It is beyond unacceptable that working-class people who have a firm respect for the rule of law can be placed in the same category as convicted criminals. In a desperate bid to be inclusive, the Theatre has used language that most would consider unbelievably alienating.

Similarly, the term “global majority” is deeply unhelpful. While it may well be a well-meant attempt to replace the thoroughly discredited Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic “Bame” acronym – taken to task by the Sewell report – it is no less ludicrous.

The term “global majority” was originally created to describe underprivileged populations in the global South – which is itself a crudely homogenising concept which ignores considerable variance in economic development and quality of governance among such countries.

However, over time, it was repurposed in the United States and integrated into domestic conversations on institutional discrimination and systemic racism – bringing together those living on Native American reservations and African-Americans based in inner-city projects. Hispanic-Americans – a section of the US population which is super-diverse in terms of country of origin, migratory background, socio-economic status, and religious affiliation – are all grouped together and chucked into this so-called “global majority”. The usage of the term accelerated with the nationwide BLM demonstrations in the aftermath of George Floyd’s killing by the police in Minnesota.

Cobbling together the UK’s ethnic minorities under the “global majority” term deprives them of their unique ancestries and heritages. Ethnic-minority Britons may have local, national, ethnic, and religious identities – but the idea they derive a sense of belonging from being a member of the “global majority” is a silly one indeed.

The arts sector should be especially conscious and sensitive to the diversity portrait of modern Britain and the potential richness it provides in terms of culture – not treating Britain’s ethnic minorities as an undifferentiated mass. There is no harm in organisations looking to benefit themselves by exploring untapped potential in different communities – but bunching together different groups into singular categories is not the way forward.

As is too often the case, this DEI initiative is doing more harm than good. Rather than promoting diversity, equality, and inclusion, it risks alienating many by homogenising various groups in society, and reveals a neo-Victorian snobbery.