Personally, as a term in general usage it has always bothered me, although I’m pretty sanguine about the whole idea in the sense that this is surely someone else’s business and not mine. My unending and lifetime lack of concern about the colour of someone’s skin makes me that way, whether I like it or not and so classification and categorisation has never interested me much at all.
The only categorisations that matter to me are the ones that take place in my own mind, from my own perspective. No, the bothersome thing is that people feel a need to engage in such things as a public imperative in the first place.
It’s that public imperative aspect that bothers me. I did idly look up the term “public imperative” as it came to my mind while writing this article and was astounded to find that I hadn’t made it up. AI had it down as an actual thing. Apparently it is, “A reference referring to something that is a necessary or essential duty or obligation for society as a whole, often involving public health or social issues. It's a strong call to action, implying a collective responsibility and a need for immediate attention” Fancy. Who knew? Certainly not I.
My lack of concern for the public imperative relating to the acronym BAME and all it represents as a matter for social action could then, it turns out, be more likely a signifier pointing to my undesirably selfish attitude in not concerning myself with the essentials of political or public discourse. Citizens in common I am sure must be much more cognizant, painfully so, of that which matters most in life than I. Had I been a more frequent visitor to my local public house, then I’m certain that given the public imperative in question the irredeemably surly denizens who skulk there while imbibing overly expensive beer and potato-based snacks, would have picked me out as the sort of troublemaking reprobate thoroughly deserving of my status of social pariah. In my defence I suppose I could argue that at least I had about me a mild irritation concerning said imperative, but all in vain. I’m forever marked out it seems as the sort of I’m Alright Jack type who cares nothing for others.
I do recognize too that despite my feckless attitude there are those out there who are not only bothered by the BAME-ness of things, having as they do a public conscience oft taken up as a cudgel on behalf of the weak and defenceless among us, but to whom the very term causes them offence. A quick scout around t’Internet reveals that over the past few years many organisations, including the UK government it seems, have felt it necessary to drop the term. As an initial observation I’d say that organisations such as governments, especially UK ones and their followers such as the very sniffy BBC would be better getting on with their day jobs, but still. You cannot legislate for random busy-bodying, can you.
It does raise the issue all the same of why the great, good and generally powerful have made such a thing of this at all. After all, if there’s a need to drop a term why do they find themselves in that position in the first place? It’s almost as if they themselves caused the mess and that as usual “something must be done” to remedy the problem that they, it seems, created while the feckless ones such as me were just minding their own business all along.
And I guess it must feel highly offensive to be herded into some metaphorical pen or other by those with power. I mean to say, what if you aren’t part of the BAME fold as defined by those with the most monumentally large social concern for their fellow citizens and you happen to actually care for such status? You might feel even less included and more excluded than you already are. Perhaps ‘the powers’ should have thought things through properly before they went around plastering their websites with feel good statements designed to include people?
Then there’s the other problem, well rehearsed I’m sure, which is that if you go around lumping people together in such a broad categorisation then even those remarkable souls granted a position inside the pen might start feeling that being included is all very well, but it hardly emphasizes their differences, or enriching uniqueness as they sometimes put it. After all, am I Black, or am I Asian according to that overall category? Am I even a person for whom a distinction is necessary?
At times like this when a false dichotomy has been pedalled rather ineptly by ‘the powers’ what surely is needed would be someone right inside the field of culturally situated “public imperative.”
An expert, maybe. Someone who has studied these things in depth and really understands what culture is all about. Step forward then, Rosemary Campbell Stephens, an educator and anti-racist activist.
She it was who brought to prominence the term “Global Majority” when she expertly, as an expert in the field you understand, guided a project to diversify leadership at London schools. The National Council of Voluntary Organisations had apparently started getting feedback that BAME, Bipoc (black, Indigenous, and people of colour) and ethnic minorities as descriptively stereotypical terms were somewhat “problematic” due to them being imposed by government. Don’t you see?
What was needed was a term that arose from the community itself. You know, The Global Majority.
Well I’m sorry to appear a tad cynical, but I really do doubt that any real majority stakeholder in anything decides anything at all of consequence in relation to the public imperative. Careful marginalisation of contrary viewpoints by those with the whip hand is my experience. How I address the surly denizens down at the local is something I and the denizens in question come to negotiate through our social interactions resulting typically in the form of some sort of unspoken contract. We end up rubbing along famously. Similarly for those members of the supposed global majority, I suspect. As to the notion that a Global Majority, by force majeure, demanded the end of BAME and a more representative descriptor be dreamed up to replace it? Well, I’ll leave the reader to guess by what democratic interaction such a term was actually coined.
So then, as feckless noncombatant in the culture wars I have had yet another irritation placed before me for consideration. It’s like the one where I’m implored by unkind people to become kind.
Or the one where the lawless tell me what laws I ought to obey, all in pursuit of the public imperative acting as it does in this particular instance like a manual of good multicultural adhesion in a well-ordered society.
The thing is though, I’m finding it somewhat difficult to understand where the difference is from Global Majority and BAME, or Bipoc, or whatever else there is. If I were within the commonly understood definition for Global Majority, which I’m obviously not, at least the feckless ones in it I mean who think like me, then I’d too be shrugging my shoulders. Hang on, how am I different as an Inuit or whatever from an Aborigine I might observe, for example? I’m situated within a greater pool and even more amorphous than previously, surely? No doubt someone of that sorry white liberal breed who we’ve grown to love so much over the years, and of whom we have much to be grateful for might very well wring his soft hands exposing his carefully manicured and cared for nails, and in a pained tone remark, ‘well yes, you have an excellent point and I do so wish race weren’t even a thing at all but there it is; we must do our bit to stand up for you people’.
No more ethnic minority then; just more ethnic majority. "Global Majority" is I read, a term referring to the majority of the world's population who are not white. Ah well, at risk of seeing the dimming of my privilege, my Eurocentric power being swept aside and the white supremacy I’ve grown up with overwhelmed by some sort of uniform Borg-like hive mind emanating from a collective which is out there and intent on a single common purpose over this, since I’m as uninvolved as ever, I’ll ‘get me coat’, as they used to say.