Diversity: identity versus individual

I was asked what I thought of Oona King’s candidacy for London mayor. Despite not being a Londoner and therefore having no vote, we in the sunny north take an interest in these things. I was a strong Ken supporter in the past. Nowadays I’m not so sure; has the Livingstone approach to politics been superseded by the changing times?

In that mood, I approached a new report from IPPR entitled You Can’t Put Me In A Box: Super-diversity and the end of identity politics in Britain.

Institute for Public Policy Research, January 2010

‘We owe people the duty of accuracy in solving social problems and not the default of assumption.’

What?

Reading on, I found out that the authors argue that the ‘strand-based’ case for equality and diversity is outmoded. Life is more complex than can be expressed by using categories of disabled, female, gay, Asian, older/younger, Jewish etc as we have done for the last 40 years. Creating pressure for change along those lines was useful, but the world has now changed and to a certain extent accommodated – albeit imperfectly – many of our demands. There is still a lot to do, but continuing along this well-worn groove raises the risks of:

• Focusing on barriers and low achievement, thereby unwittingly limiting aspirations and expectations of people because of their race, gender by implying: “Things will never change”
• Providing ammunition for those who advocate the opposite of equality “They will always be bottom of the pile – that’s just how it is”
• Ignoring the reality of achievement amongst British Muslims, women in certain sectors, disabled professionals and so on.
• Misunderstanding the causes of ongoing discrimination and poor prospects. For example, gang culture may be more about location (particular estates) than race; educational under-achievement may have more to do with single-parenthood than being white working class or African-Caribbean.

Using messages from young people as the basis for their research, the authors state

‘An emphasis on identity has … got us a long way in creating visibility and respect of groups of people who have previously experienced wholesale prejudice. It has considerably transformed the ways that they are seen by the rest of society. It has created change. But we are now under an obligation to take that very change into account.’

Social networking and technological change have enabled ‘identity’ to become increasingly fragmented, individualised and fluid. Today I’m a professional lesbian, tomorrow I’m a mother of teenagers, at the weekend I’m a middle-aged sportswoman, next week I’ll be an employed Manchester resident. They’re all relevant in context. Each of us could probably rattle off another twenty self-definitions in the blink of an eye. And for each ‘identity’ I want something different as a consumer, neighbour and public service user.

The last government tried to capture this increased fragmentation by talking (often blandly) about ‘choice’ of school or hospital. The Con-Dem Coalition has committed to continuing ‘personalisation’ of services – technically possible in our technological age, but possibly not in an era of financial squeeze. It will be interesting to see how Oona King and other public leaders take these messages on board.

Read the report. Talk about it. Make the conceptual leap into the Facebook age.

Reference: “You Can’t Put Me In A Box: Super-diversity and the end of identity politics in Britain” by Simon Fanshawe and Dhananjayan Sriskandarajah