176. BURN IT DOWN - Why Elitist Institutions Can Never Be Inclusive
I was reading this week about the Royal Society of Literature facing a so-called ‘rebellion’ from longstanding members over supposedly ‘radical’ changes being made by its current President, the author Bernadine Evaristo. The changes threaten to ‘sideline’ these senior members and ignore their views about the pace and scope of change to the society. At least that was the headline. In reality, Evaristo, quite rightly, is seeking to expand the definition of literature and ideas of who is recognised in that field from the historically limited list of straight white males who have tended to dominate. Their domination, of course, includes domination within the Royal Societies they have hitherto built in their own desired image, and Evaristo’s proposed commitment to inclusion requires a speedy recognition that the current way the society works creates barriers, not access, for many. But this desire for change has left those currently recognised by the society under previous rules and used to the way things are fearing a dilution of prestige and a lowering of standards. It is not, they argue, that they are against diversity and inclusion, it is just that they do not want attempts at diversifying and making the society more inclusive changing the norms of the society from those from which they have previously benefitted. And they don’t want the Society no longer feeling the same as it always has for them before. The way it felt in the years where it merrily excluded without concern.
The row is similar to the uproar made by some members of English institution, the National Trust, when the organisation decided to publicly reckon with the role of slavery and colonialism in many of its historical properties. Members of the National Trust, who just enjoyed visiting old houses and walking in beautiful gardens feared this new ‘wokeness’ was ruining their membership with the inclusion of uncomfortable facts and depressing information in hitherto care-free properties. It wasn’t that they were pro-slavery (though many were explicitly pro-colonialism!) but they didn’t think it was the Trust’s place to give grim history lessons. The National Trust, they argued, was an institution of celebration, not of pointing fingers of historical blame. They liked those old days out when they could just reap the rewards of colonialism without having to confront its inherent immorality.
The story is familiar to any teacher (or student) who has fought in recent years for more inclusion in schools. Schools talk a good game about equality, diversity and inclusion, and often have well-meaning committees - both student and staff versions - and policies focusing on improving ‘EDI’. However, when you speak to students and staff from the global majority working in, or attending, those schools, their deeply rooted structural and systemic racism never quite seems to be dealt with. Nor the sexism, or the homophobia, biphobia and transphobia, which makes life for staff and students of certain genders or sexualities more difficult than it is for other cisgender and heteronormative staff and students. We still have schools enforcing gender stereotypes, identity-denying uniforms and unnecessarily gendered language in the classroom every single day. And all these years after Section 28 we still have a significant lack of sex education around LGBTQ+ relationships, and, recently, an ongoing attack by the current government on compassionate inclusion and support for transgender students. Diversity in teaching staff especially in senior roles and positions of authority remains low, and structural disadvantages in wider society that face people of colour continue to be replicated and reinforced in education, from exclusion rates and policing in schools to access to higher education and exam success. But to truly bring equality, diversity and inclusion to our schools would mean fundamentally rethinking not only our approach to education and examination, but the ethos of schools themselves. And too often ideas aimed at inclusion are shot down by longstanding members of staff, as they have been at the Royal Society of Literature, as being a lowering of standards, or change from the sort of schools they have always enjoyed working in.
Fundamentally, standards entrenched in baked-in biases are standards which - if the bias is a problem - need to be transformed. To transform them is not to lower them, it is to reject them completely and start again. It is to acknowledge that the standards are not objectively good, but intentionally constructed barriers to other people’s success. And to truly do that means that those who cling on to the old ways things were need more than an appeal to their personally liking the old standards to maintain them. They need to explain why keeping the bias, and the inequality and lack of inclusion those biased standards cause, is more important to them than making things better.
In the Royal Society of Literature, for example, the old system of waiting for multiple significant publications before offering membership places institutional bias on a constructed concept of ‘significance’ which does not stand up to scrutiny once we know all the biases which exist in publication and gatekeeping surrounding the title of ‘significance’. Likewise, despite the desires of some existing members, maybe the notion of ‘celebrating’ English heritage through the National Trust is, alas, incoherent with the mass of non-celebratory baggage such heritage is inherently entangled with. Maybe it is dishonest and delusional to look only at the good bits. Maybe believing we can ignore the story of how things came to be is a dangerous way to live and, instead, better ways of reconciling past, present and future ideas and attitudes need to be explored, even if they make us feel uncomfortable. Similarly, the current regimented notion of an education based on inherently discriminatory examination, whose tests are prepared for in institutions charged with moulding students into a questionable model of ‘character’ by teachers themselves raised in structurally non-inclusive organisations that have infected them with their own numerous blindspots and biases is, perhaps, not the best way of defining our children's futures?
Those who cry ‘protect our traditions’ or ‘too much change’ when people start to transform historical institutions need to be probed further on what, exactly, they are seeking to protect or leave unchanged. To protect an immoral tradition, or refuse changes that address deep-rooted problems just in the name of nostalgia, familiarity and ‘this is how it’s always been done’ is intellectually moribund. There is no argument there.
Consider, for example, a world where it has always been the case that the second child in every family is murdered. Or a world where all blond haired people have always been refused an education. Our independent arguments for the protection of people from murder, or the right to an education, make such practices, despite their historical precedent, unjustifiable and in need of elimination, regardless of the warm and fuzzy feelings towards them from those who may have benefitted from their historical existence. I am sure in such worlds there will be first-born children furious that there might now be a competitor for family affection and resources that wouldn’t have existed under the previous system, or dark and red haired people complaining about the jobs they are sure to lose to the newly educated group of blondes soon to join them on the job market - but we can see such arguments carry no weight beyond their self-serving desire for things to stay as they were.
An appeal to tradition is simply not a good enough argument if the very thing being questioned is the tradition itself. And the fact that change makes those currently comfortable with the way things are uncomfortable is besides the point if their comfort is coming at an unfair and undeserved cost to others. It might well upset someone, for example, who feels good about their privileged education at an Oxbridge university to tell them that, perhaps, their skin colour, cultural and socio-economic background might have had more to do with their success than anything else - but if it’s true then that points to a fundamental problem with Oxbridge entry that might need us getting rid entirely of the current system rather than worrying about the sad feelings which might be experienced by those who previously thrived in the biased system and benefitted from its inequalities.
The argument might be taken further. The very existence of such elite universities rests on the perpetuation of their own unfair privilege at the cost of a better quality of education for all. Oxford or Cambridge wouldn’t be seen as ‘elite’ places if everyone got the same sort of education wherever they went. There is therefore an argument that perhaps it is more than the entrance system which needs changing. Perhaps such elite universities ought to be eliminated entirely? Again - such a proposal will likely upset those graduates of Oxford and Cambridge who benefitted from their unfair advantages over others. But their outrage carries no moral weight and should not influence any moral argument we might make about the need to shut both institutions down.
Another example might be the sport of rugby - or my own personal favourite pseudo-sport, professional wrestling. Both activities have lots of evidence gathered that show the athletes involved are putting themselves at significant risk of serious head trauma and brain injury. Were changes made to protect those heads - causing significant transformations of what happens and is allowed in a match or performance than has historically been the case - I am sure fans and athletes alike would be furious. ‘That’s not rugby’ they might say. ‘That’s not wrestling’. But if the sort of rugby and wrestling we have hitherto had is harmful then the changes might well be necessary. And if the sport can’t survive such necessary change, then perhaps the sport doesn’t deserve to survive?
If the cost of having a Royal Society of Literature, in Evaristo’s words, ‘for all writers, rather than traditionally writers who are white and middle class’ is for some of those white, middle class writers who enjoyed their un-diverse club to leave it, then so be it. But perhaps we might also start to ask why there is a club for some writers and not all in the first place?
This is the real problem with any elitist organisation making claims about inclusion. A morally necessary change certainly should trump any appeal to tradition, but if inclusivity is the value we seek (and there is much to say that it should be) then perhaps the problem is that you simply cannot make an inherently non-inclusive institution inclusive. Rather than trying to white-wash non-inclusive organisations with a few additional token members, policy proposals, and lots of weighty promises, maybe we might have to look at the possibility that the problem is the institution itself? That’s its aims intrinsically work against any notion of inclusion and therefore, if inclusion is our goal, such an institution cannot exist?
Single sex schools, private schools, elite universities, even paid for memberships to organisations which allow access to sites of outstanding natural beauty and historical heritage only to those who can afford it, or state schools which offer strong educational outcomes only to some and not to all. These are all organisations whose very purpose is to exclude some and include only a selected few. Perhaps the real problem is not that the members are wrong to protest proposed changes to modernise and make them more inclusive, but that there is no fixing the inclusiveness of any institution which is explicitly built on perpetuating inequality and keeping some people out?
Author: DaN McKee (he/him)
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