Breaking in: exploiting the system of diversity on race
A conference on Rethinking Race pushes at the elites’ open door
When I examined the invitation and programme to this conference, Towards the Common Good: Rethinking Race in the 21st Century, I was struck by how pretty much all those who had been chosen to speak about rethinking race at the event were non-white.
Except for the academic Richard Bourke (who helped organise the event) and the Institute for Fiscal Studies man Paul Johnson (who discussed data on ethnic disparities), all were either black, mixed race or of South Asian background, with six of them from the United States.
This didn’t turn me against it. How can you be against something that is feeding and watering and putting you up in a hotel for a couple of nights so that you be a part of things?
But I thought it was an interesting subtext to reflect on. So I parked the thought, kept an open mind and embraced the conference experience, enjoying the excuse to get away from my writing desk.
Impressive panels, strong American presence
The conference was an initiative of The Equiano Project, led by the impressive free speech campaigner and former GB News presenter Inaya Folarin Iman,. It was held at Emmanuel and King’s Colleges in Cambridge. The settings were good, the organisation excellent and hospitality pretty decent too. You can have a look at the conference brochure here.
I guess the first thing to say is that this what you might call the positive discrimination going into speaker selection didn’t detract from the quality of the debates and arguments. Indeed the event felt, perhaps paradoxically, completely normal in a colour-blind sort of way.