Boris Johnson’s slightly less white cabinet isn’t progress – it’s a PR stunt designed to excuse racism

Marking these appointments as an embrace of equality ignores the fact that it is just as possible to be a brown or black person with regressive, even racist, politics as it is to be a white anti-racist

Like all buzzwords, “diversity” has several uses. Deployed thoughtfully, it can transform shamefully homogeneous institutions for the better. However, it can also be used as a form of nonsensical virtue-signalling that changes very little.

The new Boris Johnson cabinet, which has been lauded for its “record numbers” (four!) of black and minority ethnic (BAME) members is an example of this. Yes, there are two British Asians, Priti Patel and Sajid Javid, in high state office, as well as James Cleverly who is a black Briton. Is their inclusion, along with that of Alok Sharma, in this cabinet really going to change a fundamentally regressive government headed by a prime minister who has a record, not of championing minorities or multiculturalism, but of making unacceptably racist as well as sexist and homophobic pronouncements?

The harsh truth is that diversity-washing Johnson’s regime with a handful of black and brown faces is a way to shore up hierarchical rule and vicious class and race inequalities. It serves the purpose of performing inclusion without changing the exploitative and racist politics of One Nation Conservatism. It is laughable for a cabinet that is two-thirds privately educated and nearly half of whom have Oxbridge degrees to claim to be among the “most diverse” in history.

It is, however, possible to fool some of the people some of the time. Along with a tranche of self-congratulatory white commentators, some BAME pundits have also insisted that the prominence of a handful of non-white faces in cabinet indicates progress for black and Asian communities, empowering them through greater symbolic “visibility”. This would make sense if the record of ministers like Javid and Patel indicated that they would stand up for these communities. Instead, Javid has repeatedly and falsely associated both the sexual “grooming” of young women and “terror” with Islam, while Patel was a prominent face in the xenophobic and anti-immigrant Vote Leave campaign. She has also stated publicly that she has no desire to be identified with ethnic minorities, apparently an “insulting” affiliation rather than a descriptive one.

At the very least, those who claim a victory for “diversity” should ask how often these non-white faces in cabinet have actually challenged racism or discrimination. Carefully chosen for their distance from the communities they supposedly now represent, both Javid and Patel have track records that clearly indicate they will help implement racist and anti-immigrant policies rather than challenge white supremacy, the lifeblood of the 97 per cent white Conservative Party.

Beloved of so many Tories and Brexiteers including Johnson (who has called for Africa to be colonised again), the British empire and its racist hierarchy were historically enabled by a small number of Asian and African elite collaborators. In the appointment of small number of non-white loyalists to the current government, we see this pattern repeat itself.

If diversity is to mean something other than a set of superficial differences, then it is vital not to replicate the homogenising assumptions of racism whereby only skin colour matters or to assume that non-white complexions automatically stand for change. For one thing, it is as possible to be a brown or black person with regressive, even racist, politics as it is to be a white anti-racist. A place at the majority table often comes at the price of silence or active complicity.

Many Asians are, for instance, quite capable of viciously anti-black racism. Some, like newly appointed head of No 10 policy unit, Munira Mirza, deny the existence of such clearly documented phenomena such as “institutional racism”, a move that helps consolidate white supremacy, while Patel supports Hindu extremist groups that are premised on virulent Islamophobia. It is ludicrous to suggest that Asian and black immigrants who suffered violent racism will be soothed by the presence of a handful of darker-skinned faces in cabinet – not least when those faces abet the divisive dog-whistle race rhetoric deployed by their leader and which today poisons British society. A place at the top table means very little if you’re not going to ask tough questions and if you fail to champion the interests of the communities whose painful anti-racist struggles enabled you to get there in the first place.