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Diversity schemes are failing to recognise and accommodate complex identities.
Diversity, equality and inclusion seems to be a universally accepted initiative for most publishing and literary sectors. But “inclusion” can fall short, not because we’re seeing fewer marginalised faces rightfully take leadership positions in the industries, but because we’re failing to see the root causes of inequality as forces to reckon with in their totality. In other words, “inclusion” initiatives are leaving marginalised people behind.
Last year, I joined New Writing North as a Creative Associate Intern. I had just graduated from Northumbria University and was eager to join a literary charity that was committed to uplifting working class marginalised voices in Newcastle. “Northern working class identity” is perennially used to signify people in a neglected city who are proud of their resistance and community spirit against regional inequality. Today, this identifier evokes images of the Miner’s Gala in Durham, or the historic Labour Party stronghold known as the "red wall" that seemed unbreakable.
As a woman of colour living in the North, I have often felt that “Northern” working class is a synonym for white. When I suggested creating a project for women of colour writers with New Writing North, I stumbled across a chicken-and-egg situation – that Northern women of colour writers were few and far between to employ. I wanted to identify creative people of colour in Newcastle who wanted to develop their writing professionally, but it proved increasingly difficult to contact writers who lived in the North to hire for the creative writing workshop itself.
So what do “inclusion” initiatives do for people whose identities are compartmentalised like mine? Northern. Woman. South Asian. Muslim. Pick one at the expense of being excluded from another. It’s easier to find working class women writers in the North and South Asian and Muslim creatives in the South. What happens when we add patriarchal household dynamics to the equation? How much is “inclusion” missing out?
Every BAME/POC creative opportunity that was advertised to me required a three-hour trip to London and a commitment to stay in the city for six months
Brown Girls Write was designed based on my own lived experience. Every BAME/POC creative opportunity that was advertised to me required a three-hour trip to London and a commitment to stay in the city for six months. Penguin internships, ITV apprentice, editorial assistant, they were all fantastic opportunities that I was ready to submerse myself in had I not been restricted by the financial cost of living and travelling to London.
There was a larger taboo topic that no one had considered, which is that I was subject to household complexities.
To put it frankly, young South Asian Muslim women in my community are not particularly encouraged to commit to their creative endeavours for reasons beyond low income. Brown Girls Write was a way to address everything all at once; the primary aim was to encourage working class women of colour in Newcastle to create, who are not as mobile or able to travel to the cultural hub of London for various reasons.
This is not to say that the literary sector should specifically focus on desi patriarchy, because patriarchy is a pervasive cross-cultural system of oppression, which manifests in different ways in different places. A more comprehensive understanding of gender and patriarchy would be more fruitful.
Consider this: white middle-class women’s reach in senior positions in the literary sector (with the assistance of private education and Oxbridge credentials) has often been viewed as a progressive box tick. On the other hand, there is a plethora of research which relays that working class women are more likely to be bogged down with unpaid domestic labour and childcare duties, hindering their work chances. In this instance, white working-class women and South Asian women share a commonality in that they cannot move for opportunities in the way that whiteness and wealth afford it to others. So how does “inclusion” account for this nuance? Either way, the statistics show that more women are being included.
The literary sector would do well to recognise that not everyone can move, and “inclusion” initiatives, no matter how well intentioned, cannot account for this immobility. Steady progress is allegedly being made, publishing houses are making plans to move further North with Hachette offices being set up in Newcastle and Manchester. Charities such as New Writing North have invested time and commitment into making Newcastle a cultural centre as renowned as London.
Nonetheless, progress remains slow. As identities remain fixed to tick boxes and statistical data, so too does opportunity. Rather than insisting that organisations and employers should be more “inclusive”, it may be more conducive to identify issues at a localised and grassroots level, and say: here is a group of women that are discouraged by their communities; they are working class and racialised, so what can we do to change this? The literary sector should resist compartmentalising and hierarchising identities at the risk of immobilising marginalised people. Gender, race and class comprise a totality of experiences.