I wrote here recently about Kim Sengupta, The Independent’s remarkable world affairs editor. He and I were among the first Brits of colour to get into the mainstream print media. We talked about those breakthroughs as part miracle, part luck and part bolshiness.
At his memorial service, Sengupta’s race or ethnicity was not mentioned in the moving and meaningful speeches I heard. The three other non-white journalists at the gathering noticed this, too.
Afterwards, I mentioned this missing bit of Sengupta’s extraordinary journey to a top newspaper chap. He blurted something like, “You don’t mean inclusion and diversity?” The last three words were spat out as if they were bitter and highly poisonous. Which they are, since Donald Trump came to power.
How quickly it all happens. America sneezes, the British establishment rushes to it and its pestilences arrives on these shores. Years ago, it was manufactured panic imported from the US about political correctness: PC gone made!
Now comes Trump and Elon Musk’s crusade against diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). It’s a manifestation of eruptive anger about Black Lives Matter and #MeToo. Trump hates both. Musk too, though it’s worth remembering he is father to 14 children with various women and grew up in a family that got rich in apartheid South Africa.
The soul brothers are hacking and burning equality policies and institutions. Big tech bros joined in with indecent haste. As soon as Trump and Musk got their hands on power and began their assault on DEI, tech companies, in a massive U-turn, are now busily scrapping their initiatives, which they once so earnestly championed.
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Mark Zuckerberg has sounded the death knell for all diversity initiatives
Read MoreAmong the Trump establishment’s latest acts of cultural terrorism was the removal from the US defence website of a page on Jackie Robinson’s army career. Robinson of course is one of America’s greatest baseball players and a man who served in the Second World War. His page was taken down and “dei” added to the URL. The page has now been restored but the message was pretty clear.
American liberals and egalitarians are terrified. My friends and their children have lost jobs, many from the arts and aid sectors. People are spying on each other. The department of education is to be shut down. Universities which embrace diversity are having their funding withdrawn. “There is extraordinary fear across university campuses at the very top level,” Veena Dubal, a law professor and the general counsel of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), told The Guardian.
America, home of the civil rights movement and fierce 20th century feminism, now feels increasingly like a white supremacist, aggressively male nation.
There is some resistance. Shay Stewart-Bouley, 52, executive director of Community Change, an anti-racism organisation, wrote this recently: “I refuse to go to the world from which my family escaped. I refuse to allow my children and grandchildren to ever be seen as ‘less than’ because of the colour of their skin. I refuse to be seen as less than because of my gender and race… Trump’s attacks on DEI represent a clear desire to take us back to the time when uppity Black folks like me were put in our place. He wants white men to be our rulers again and that doesn’t sadden me. It fills me with rage.”
This frenzy is reaching our shores, mostly unnoticed, so far. In the financial sector, the UBS group of banks has dropped all initiatives to get women and minorities up into key jobs.
More concerningly, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has just announced it “will not move forward with its work to improve diversity and inclusion in financial services firms”. In 2023 the FCA believed DEI initiatives support “healthy work cultures, reduce groupthink and unlock talent… [and] improve understanding of diverse consumer needs”.
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Trump could undo everything the UK learnt from Black Lives Matter
Read MoreVictoria Symons, partner at Cripps, the financial law firm, has hit back: “Our public bodies should not be so easily swayed by the prevailing wind from across the Atlantic… that guidance was originally brought in after an enquiry which evidenced sexual harassment and misogyny in the City… Today, women in all industries continue to face pay disparity and unequal access to opportunities. Businesses need greater engagement, not less.”
Trumpist ideological wars are spreading to academia too. Two senior lecturers – both white men, one 44, the other 59 – tell me their universities have quietly told staff to tone down Black History Month and Pride events. I have also heard that vice-chancellors want to step away from DEI and concentrate on discontented and lost white boys and men. Good I say, do that. It is much needed. DEI, when well done, should work for everyone. White working-class males, in particular, have been included in DEI in many London and other universities.
What we don’t need is cowardly obeisance to the will of an American tyrant and his deputy. Wake up. Stand up for DEI.
I posted this on X on Monday: “Memo to Labour’s top table: you won because voters were sick of the Tories, not because they thought you could deliver Tory policies more efficiently. They wanted a fairer country. You have broken their hopes. Unforgiveable.”
More than 180,000 people have viewed this on X; around 10,000 have retweeted, liked, quoted or bookmarked it. This is the biggest response I have ever had to a tweet. On Bluesky, the numbers are lower but the message is gathering support.
Many say it’s the first time they have agreed with me on anything – probably excited Reform voters or Tory right-wingers who enjoy a leftie going for Labour. But the numbers indicate the pain and dismay I wrote about is real and widespread. Cocooned with their pollsters and strategists, Keir Starmer’s team have quite forgotten the people who got them in. Never advisable.
A conversation I had this week
Every March I miss my mum, Jena, terribly. It’s the month she died, many years back. I go to the mosque where she prayed. This time a fellow worshipper said, “Jena could talk to an angry cobra and cool him down”.
She was right. Once, outside Woolworths, some young lads chucked small stones at her. She was alone. In broken English, she asked them to help choose a CD for her grandson. They did. She bought them chocs while they chatted. They walked her home. I was furious with her for befriending them and showing them where she lived.
That Christmas, a card was dropped in her letterbox. “Merry Christmas,” it said, “from Ben and Chris and all.”
Yasmin’s pick
I gave myself David Nicholls’s novel You Are Here for Christmas. I love his writing. He transports me away from the fervid world, into the intimacies of individual lives, love, disappointment, grief and more.
This is about two people, no longer young, tentatively stepping back into a relationship neither expected. It all happens as they walk across the Lake District. I am not into these long walks; my husband is. I just hope that in the beautiful landscapes he wanders, he will not come upon a wistful, lovely divorcee…
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