More Bennetton than barricades? : the politics of diversity in Europe

Diversity, apparently, also claims its victims. In the Financial Times in September 2006, one of them took a stand, using the opportunity of an ‘answers to problems’ column to stubbornly declare, as the headline reads, “I’m not racist, but I had to speak out”. His testimony is as follows: I am a white, British, male MBA student at a US business school. When we had our class picture taken for the school’s brochure all the women and the ethnic minorities were arranged at the front, and the white males were barely visible. Soon afterwards we had a class on diversity, and I mentioned that the photograph was not representative and was immediately attacked by everyone. I am a meritocrat but now I have acquired the undeserved reputation of a racist and sexist. Should I have kept quiet? What are we to make of this complaint, and the urgent imperative to speak out? Beyond illustrating the pronounced tendency of the privileged to seek forms of compensatory victimhood – in defence of their privileges – this snapshot captures ambiguities and tensions in the increasingly prevalent idea of ‘diversity’. In turn, it is the prevalence of this idea, and the implications of these ambiguities and tensions for radical and progressive social politics in Europe, that is the subject of this introduction.