Diversity perversity
Genetics may help expose the ideology behind everyday bureaucratic language
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion policies (DEI) are everywhere across our public institutions and private sectors, but the more you read and compare them, the less sense they seem to make. Take diversity; what exactly does it mean?
By the letter of many formal diversity policies, it is impossible to distinguish diversity from equality defined by legislation such as the UK’s 2010 Equalities Act. That act protects nine characteristics including race, sex, gender reassignment and sexual orientation. Policies like this important one (as it is an Ombusdman’s) seem to simply define diversity as equal treatment under the law. The UK Government’s formal policy does the same thing.Yet the words equality and diversity obviously mean entirely different things.
An organisation complying with all the requirements of UK equalities law might nonetheless not be very diverse. Harris Tweed Hebrides Ltd, for example, looks like it’s stacked with white protestants, quite possibly of the Wee Free variety. I’m going to go out on a limb and say they likely all identify as the gender of the sex they were born as. There doesn’t seem to be much diversity there at all, frankly, unless perhaps a Roman Catholic from Barra has slipped in without being noticed.
That company has, justifiably, the best of reputations. They’re simply not very diverse because they’re a local company in a demographically undiverse locale. I’m sure they conform to equality law in every way, including in respect of religion (only joking above re: RC’s, obv) but this has nothing at all, necessarily, to do with diversity.
Diversity is commonly associated with variety. A diversity policy aimed at maximising diversity would, we might imagine, lay out ways of achieving meaningful diversity amongst people in the organisation.
Race, geneticists inform us, is not based upon a meaningful empirical distinction between people. People are much more different in other ways, such as how they think and act, and what opinions they hold. But many corporate diversity policies appear to stress conformity of thought and opinion. Where they do, they appear to be closer to anti-diversity policies.
In addition, where diversity, rather than equality, is the purpose, it is necessary to have firm categories of diversity. Racial diversity, and indeed diversity of thought, are both surely to be encouraged? Yet the UK Equalities Act has been interpreted by the courts as protecting people who say they are one of infinite non-binary genders and have no intention of changing this.
It is hard to understand diversity where there are no firm categories against which to measure it. Hard, too, to square the need to protect firm categories such as race and sex alongside a category somehow consisting of highly individualised self-descriptions which could, at least in theory, take in everyone.
