When it comes to opinions about diversity in the UK today, there’s not much, well, diversity. There is rather an increasingly hard division between “authoritarians” and “libertarians,” as the most recent British Social Attitudes survey labels them. While libertarians are “comfortable with diversity” and “welcome the cultural variety created by a multi-linguistic, multi-racial and multi-religious society,” authoritarians “feel that a degree of commonality across these dimensions is needed, as without them the social cohesion that a society needs to function effectively is lost.”
Authoritarians present a challenge to the idea that diversity is a core British value. From Danny Boyle’s Olympic opening ceremony to the standard photo of coppers having a laugh at the Notting Hill Carnival or Pride, there are plenty of symbols at hand to bolster this comforting self-image. The Department for Education even includes “individual liberty” and “mutual respect for and tolerance of those with different faiths and beliefs and for those without faith” in the four fundamental core British values schools should promote. (The other two are democracy and the rule of law.) However, few can be in any doubt that however much we praise diversity, there is no shortage of people ready to try to bury it. Just look at the tone of British politics today.
All this makes it no surprise that it sometimes feels like Britain is split into two irreconcilable camps: those who favour of diversity and those who do not. But I would argue the truth of the matter is subtler. There is still widespread support for diversity in Britain, just not diversity as the term is often used. It is a core British value, and we can preserve it. But to see this first we must understand how people actually use the term.
Consider an anecdote I was recently told by someone who had come to live in the UK from Europe. What she found most attractive about the country was its embrace of individuality and difference. This is exactly what my better half says, explaining why she settled here in her 20s. She uses the word “eccentricity” to label this British value. In her home country of Italy and in some other parts of Europe there is a much more conformist culture, she says, which many find stifling. I agree completely with this diagnosis. This kind of diversity is part of what makes Britain great.
But this simply is not how most people understand “diversity” today. The diversity agenda is always focused on groups of people imagined as coherent communities based on ethnicity, sexuality or gender, even when they are made up of disparate members. “Diversity” does not celebrate individuals but minorities. It does not refer to individuality and eccentricity but to group differences.
It is very clear that Britons vary enormously in how enthusiastically they embrace this kind of diversity. For every person who celebrates it, others see the “div” in diversity as an undeniable negative. Diversity for them means division.
There is a clear sense in which people are right to see individualism and this kind of diversity as in tension, if not in outright opposition. When we see ourselves as belonging to clearly defined groups with their own interests and values we actually diminish the importance of individuality. We don’t take as our fundamental starting point the fact that everyone is uniquely different but that not everyone belongs to the same group. Individuals are lumped together with whoever shares some broad but salient characteristic, such as ethnic origin or gender self-identification.
The British way, at least in its rose-tinted image of itself, is to embrace idiosyncrasy but to resist any move by a group to set itself apart; to embrace expressions of individual liberty but resist separatist group identities. Sadly, Nigel Farage understands this better than the true friends of minorities. On an LBC interview he spoke in favour of multiculturalism "if it means a diverse society of different people" but not it if means "different communities by religion or race being separated off from the rest of the population." This distorts the contrast by portraying any group identity as inherently separatist, but he's only able to pull out this sleight of hand because there is something to the underlying distinction.
Those of us who want to promote diversity need to understand its real nature better without playing into Farage's divisive hands. We make the mistake of emphasising groups, such as the Muslim, Somali or LBGT+ community etc, too much. We don’t present diversity as people having the right to determine their own values and preferences but as communities asserting their right to set themselves apart from others.
This is not simply a presentational matter of using the right language. The deeper problem is that we have too often approached these issues at the level of the group rather than of the individual. Of course, sometimes you do need to think in group terms. If you have a large number of Sikhs in your local authority area, for example, it would be perverse not to think about the ways in which this creates specific needs for a group of people. But we should never lose sight of the fact that what it is convenient to treat as a group is made up of members who may be very different. When we forget this, the plea for greater diversity actually undercuts itself, as differences within groups become played down in the name of protecting differences between them.
Take the issue of apostasy. There are many people who “belong” to religious communities but who have lost their faith. Often it is very difficult for them to act on this and sometimes the consequences for doing so can be fatal. If we think in terms of the rights of religious communities, we will inevitably find ourselves only thinking about how and if their specific beliefs and practices can be accommodated. If we think about the rights of individuals, however, we will be alert to the fact that the rights of people to practice their religions is no more important than the right of someone not to. We should not therefore be supporting the right of a group to go its own way but the rights of every member of it to make their own choices, ones that might go against those of the majority.
Widespread suspicion and even hostility to diversity ought to make us rethink what it really means. Our problem is not that we have too much diversity but that we don’t have enough. The groups into which we divide our communities are too broad and not sufficiently fine-grained. True friends of diversity and of the British values of eccentricity and difference need to realise that every time we privilege the group we disadvantage the unique individual.
Authoritarians present a challenge to the idea that diversity is a core British value. From Danny Boyle’s Olympic opening ceremony to the standard photo of coppers having a laugh at the Notting Hill Carnival or Pride, there are plenty of symbols at hand to bolster this comforting self-image. The Department for Education even includes “individual liberty” and “mutual respect for and tolerance of those with different faiths and beliefs and for those without faith” in the four fundamental core British values schools should promote. (The other two are democracy and the rule of law.) However, few can be in any doubt that however much we praise diversity, there is no shortage of people ready to try to bury it. Just look at the tone of British politics today.
All this makes it no surprise that it sometimes feels like Britain is split into two irreconcilable camps: those who favour of diversity and those who do not. But I would argue the truth of the matter is subtler. There is still widespread support for diversity in Britain, just not diversity as the term is often used. It is a core British value, and we can preserve it. But to see this first we must understand how people actually use the term.
Consider an anecdote I was recently told by someone who had come to live in the UK from Europe. What she found most attractive about the country was its embrace of individuality and difference. This is exactly what my better half says, explaining why she settled here in her 20s. She uses the word “eccentricity” to label this British value. In her home country of Italy and in some other parts of Europe there is a much more conformist culture, she says, which many find stifling. I agree completely with this diagnosis. This kind of diversity is part of what makes Britain great.
But this simply is not how most people understand “diversity” today. The diversity agenda is always focused on groups of people imagined as coherent communities based on ethnicity, sexuality or gender, even when they are made up of disparate members. “Diversity” does not celebrate individuals but minorities. It does not refer to individuality and eccentricity but to group differences.
It is very clear that Britons vary enormously in how enthusiastically they embrace this kind of diversity. For every person who celebrates it, others see the “div” in diversity as an undeniable negative. Diversity for them means division.
There is a clear sense in which people are right to see individualism and this kind of diversity as in tension, if not in outright opposition. When we see ourselves as belonging to clearly defined groups with their own interests and values we actually diminish the importance of individuality. We don’t take as our fundamental starting point the fact that everyone is uniquely different but that not everyone belongs to the same group. Individuals are lumped together with whoever shares some broad but salient characteristic, such as ethnic origin or gender self-identification.
The British way, at least in its rose-tinted image of itself, is to embrace idiosyncrasy but to resist any move by a group to set itself apart; to embrace expressions of individual liberty but resist separatist group identities. Sadly, Nigel Farage understands this better than the true friends of minorities. On an LBC interview he spoke in favour of multiculturalism "if it means a diverse society of different people" but not it if means "different communities by religion or race being separated off from the rest of the population." This distorts the contrast by portraying any group identity as inherently separatist, but he's only able to pull out this sleight of hand because there is something to the underlying distinction.
Those of us who want to promote diversity need to understand its real nature better without playing into Farage's divisive hands. We make the mistake of emphasising groups, such as the Muslim, Somali or LBGT+ community etc, too much. We don’t present diversity as people having the right to determine their own values and preferences but as communities asserting their right to set themselves apart from others.
This is not simply a presentational matter of using the right language. The deeper problem is that we have too often approached these issues at the level of the group rather than of the individual. Of course, sometimes you do need to think in group terms. If you have a large number of Sikhs in your local authority area, for example, it would be perverse not to think about the ways in which this creates specific needs for a group of people. But we should never lose sight of the fact that what it is convenient to treat as a group is made up of members who may be very different. When we forget this, the plea for greater diversity actually undercuts itself, as differences within groups become played down in the name of protecting differences between them.
Take the issue of apostasy. There are many people who “belong” to religious communities but who have lost their faith. Often it is very difficult for them to act on this and sometimes the consequences for doing so can be fatal. If we think in terms of the rights of religious communities, we will inevitably find ourselves only thinking about how and if their specific beliefs and practices can be accommodated. If we think about the rights of individuals, however, we will be alert to the fact that the rights of people to practice their religions is no more important than the right of someone not to. We should not therefore be supporting the right of a group to go its own way but the rights of every member of it to make their own choices, ones that might go against those of the majority.
Widespread suspicion and even hostility to diversity ought to make us rethink what it really means. Our problem is not that we have too much diversity but that we don’t have enough. The groups into which we divide our communities are too broad and not sufficiently fine-grained. True friends of diversity and of the British values of eccentricity and difference need to realise that every time we privilege the group we disadvantage the unique individual.
