A quote from Sara Ahmed’s book ‘On being included: Racism and diversity in institutional life’ where she’s doing field research with diversity workers. From universities to private companies, she traces the challenges and tactics of these workers.
Ahmed, S. (2012). On being included: Racism and diversity in institutional life. Duke University Press. p. 163-5.
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Diversity and Repair
One of my aims in this book has been to write about experiences of being included. Inclusion could be read as a technology of governance: not only as a way of bringing those who have been recognized as strangers into the nation, but also of making strangers into subjects, those who in being included are also willing to consent to the terms of inclusion. A national project can also be understood as a project of inclusion—a way others as would-be citizens are asked to submit to and agree with the task of reproducing that nation. [20]
Others have written of the current moment as a time in which the liberal promises of happiness and freedom have been extended to those who were previously excluded. For example, Jasbir Puar elegantly describes how a new class of (affluent, white, male) queer subjects are being “folded into life” (2007: xii, 24, 35, 36). The fold into life is an invitation to live; more than that, it is an invitation to live well, to flourish. The good ethnic as well as the good homosexual might be the ones who choose life, where life means being willing to become worthy of receiving state benevolence. To be included can thus be a way of sustaining and reproducing a politics of exclusion, where a life sentence for some is a death sentence for others.
I think this analysis provides an astute reading of both the politics of the state and those forms of politics premised on being willing to be the recipients of benevolence. If we start from our own experiences as persons of color in the institutions of whiteness, we might also think about how those benevolent acts of giving are not what they seem: being included can be a lesson in “being not” as much as “being in.” The “folding into life of minorities can also be understood as a national fantasy: it can be a “fantasy fold.” We come up against the limits of this fantasy when we encounter the brick wall; we come up against the limits when we refuse to be grateful for what we receive. As Gail Lewis has convincingly shown, the inclusion of racial others by institutions implicit in the creation of the category “ethnic minorities” can mean, in practice, being “managed through a regime of governmentality in which ‘new black subjects’ were formed” (2000: xiii). “Being included” can thus be to experience an increasing proximity to those norms that historically have been exclusive; the extension of the norms might be not only a fantasy but also a way of being made increasingly subject to their violence. [21] We are not then simply or only included by an act of inclusion. In being “folded in,” another story unfolds.
The smile of diversity is a fantasy fold. Diversity is often imagined as a form of repair, a way of mending or fixing histories of being broken. Indeed, diversity enters institutional discourse as a language of reparation; as a way of imagining that those who are divided can work together; as a way of assuming that “to get along” is to right a wrong. Not to be excluded becomes not simply an account of the present (an account of becoming included) but also a way of relating to the past. Racism is framed as a memory of what is no longer, a memory that if it was kept alive would just leave us exhausted. Fanon once commented very wisely how slavery had become “that unpleasant memory” ([1952] 1986: 115). It is almost as if it would be impolite to bring it up. In the book Life in the United Kingdom, on which British citizenship tests are based, there is one reference to slavery and that is to abolitionism (Home Office 2005: 31). The nation is remembered as the liberator of slaves, not as the perpetrator of slavery.
The empire has even been imagined as a history of happiness. In a speech given in 2005, Trevor Phillips describes empire as a good sign of national character: “And we can look at our own history to show that the British people are not by nature bigots. We created something called the empire where we mixed and mingled with people very different from those of this island.” Happiness works powerfully here: the violence of colonial occupation is reimagined as a history of happiness (a story of hybridity, of mixing and mingling). The migrant who insists on speaking about racism becomes a rather ghostly figure. The migrant who remembers other, more painful aspects of such histories threatens to expose too much. The task of politics becomes one of conversion: if racism is preserved only in our memory and consciousness, then racism would “go away” if only we too would declare it gone.
The promise of diversity is the promise of happiness: as if in becoming happy or in wanting “just happiness” we can put racism behind us. We can use as an example here the film Bend It Like Beckham (2002, dir. Gurinder Chadha). [22] The film could be read as offering a narrative of repair. Reading this film in the context of an analysis of institutions is useful—a way of connecting an institutional story with a national story. The film is not only one of the most successful British films at the box o≈ce; it is also marketed as a feel-good comedy. It presents a happy version of multiculturalism. As one critic notes: “Yet we need to turn to the U.K. for the exemplary commercial film about happy, smiling multiculturalism. Bend it like Beck- ham is the most profitable all-British film of all time, appealing to a multi-cultural Britain where Robin Cook, former Foreign Secretary, recently declared Chicken Tikka Masala the most popular national dish. White Brits tend to love Bend it like Beckham because it doesn’t focus on race and racism—after all many are tired of feeling guilty” (D. McNeil 2004). What makes this film “happy” is partly what it conceals or keeps from view. It might o√er a relief from the negative feelings surrounding racism. We can note that these negative feelings are not identified with those who experience racism, but with “white Brits”: the film might be appealing because it allows white guilt to be displaced by good feelings. The subjects for whom the film is appealing are given permission not to feel guilty about racism; instead, they can be uplifted by a story of migrant success.
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