OF CABBAGES AND KINGS | Diversity, inclusion in Trump’s cross-hairs: From a US aircrash to Middle East’s ‘Riveria’ | Farrukh Dhondy

“Idle now, I watch the flocks

Of birds whose name I do not know

Turning sharp right in the sky and so

In perfect formation they mock

The grains of expertly cooked rice

Individual and yet a bunch --

And though the metaphors entice

I suppose I should get on with lunch?”

From The Diary of Hunji: The Nazi Sardar, by Bachchoo

A collision of a passenger plane with a helicopter over the US capital, Washington DC, is a disastrous tragedy. The horrible task of retrieving bodies and salvage begins. There will be investigated reports on how and why the crash happened.

Before any such analysis and conclusion, the President of the United States wades in and declares that the crash was the result of the policies of “diversity” and “inclusion”.

Shameful and outrageous. He didn’t point his nasty fingers at any specific institution but one can, from his openly stated attitudes and nasty opinions, deduce that he meant the recruitment of blacks and women into air traffic control led to the crash.

If some conspiracy theorist on a now-unchecked-for-truth social media platform had made such a claim, it could be ignored as the mutterings of some demented idiot. But, gentle reader, this comes from the elected President of the United States of America!

Since the run-up to the election and during and after it, Donald Trump and his associates, including Elon Musk, have doubled down on attacking “diversity” and “inclusion”. These are safeguarding liberal policies framed to ensure that prejudices, such as racism and misogyny, do not determine the recruitment of blacks and women.

This week, following the ceasefire in the Middle East between Israel and Hamas, among other idiotic manoeuvres and wild statements, Trump has declared that the US is going to “own” the Gaza Strip and redevelop it -- not to rebuild the land which US and UK-supplied missiles, planes and bombs have reduced to a desert of rubble so that the homeless Palestinians can return to some semblance of civilisation, but to “turn it into the Riviera of the Middle East”!

The stated corollary to this ambition is the expulsion of the entire Palestinian population of Gaza to neighbouring countries such as Egypt and Jordan.

The new “Riviera of the Middle East” will then, presumably, be populated by non-Muslim white settlers: Jews and gentiles. It will presumably be devoid of diversity -- with the exception, naturally, of allowing women in. What’s a Riviera without lots of pretty women which this President (appropriately named after a cartoon duck) openly regards as adornments and objects to exploit?

The policy of “inclusion” was forced on certain democracies by the growing and insistent voice of feminism. It hasn’t (yet?) succeeded in countries such as Iran. In the United States, the “diversity” policies are the direct and partially victorious result of the Civil Rights movement, led by Dr Martin Luther King Jr, Malcolm X and the agitation of black activists such as the Black Panther Party.

In Britain, without centuries of having a “diverse” population, the change, quite distinct now, came about after the post-Second World War settlement of immigrant communities from the ex-colonies of the West Indies, Africa and the Indian subcontinent.

It wasn’t labelled “diversity”. In a more characteristically British way, its manifestations were associated with the term “multi-culturalism”.

Without any immodesty, I can factually claim that I was, with so many of my generation from this multi-ethnic section of British society, part of its gestation: I was a member in the late 1960s of the Indian Workers Association in Leicester and then a member of the British Black Panther Movement -- an organisation of mainly West Indian, Asian and African immigrants, some of them of the second generation of black communities.

I wrote, anonymously, in the movement’s newspaper called Freedom News about events at the multi-ethnic school where I taught. It was at the school that I was approached by an editor from Macmillan publishing called Martin Pick who started by saying he’d read these “stories” and that “the demand for multicultural stories or literature exists, but the books don’t”. He commissioned over the next year and a half three of my first published books.

These drew the attention of the pioneering Black Theatre Co-op (BTC) who invited me to write a stage play -- and then a few more.

These and the books drew the attention of TV executives who then commissioned me to write a BBC drama series and then the sit-coms No Problem and Tandoori Nights.

I was then, in 1983 offered the job of commissioning editor at Channel Four TV and worked there for fifteen years, with the assignment of bringing the affairs, stories, politics and culture of the new, now integrating, communities of Britain to the screen. Fun!

The movement, moving officiously from multi-culturalism to legislated “diversity” or its adoption as a principle followed.

Some institutions take the injunction solemnly. Almost every commercial advertisement on TV contains black actors. When we pioneered the Black Theatre Cooperative in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and soon after the Asian Coop Theatre (ACT, geddit?) there were very few black or Asian faces in national drama.

It’s changed. In a TV series about Henry VIII, Ann Boleyn and her family are all played by black actors. The National Theatre presents us with black Julius Caesars….

As yet, no director has ventured to have a white actor playing Othello but… watch this space?

Or is that the wrong theatrical colour-blindness?