Skip to main content

A Twitter Thread: 'empty diversity'

27.09.2018

So I got some thoughts. After reading the James Beard Awards efforts to find ways to combat inequality and inequity (and reading about another award that has said they want diversity but clearly had no time t say how/ have a mission statement). Let's talk about 'empty diversity'


*firstly, empty diversity is a term brought to my attention by Chryssy Hunter, who's PhD title used it - and she will be much better than I to explain it fully, but I'm going to adopt it in terms of food and accolade.

Awards are important. They validate work. Awards currently are problematic, as I bang on about, hugely because they rely on criteria that confirms status quo and that understands value in very narrow terms. So yes, we need to widen our concept of what makes something 'excellent'

But. Awards are like tick boxes. They're really useful for people to feel like they're doing good. But they mean sweet fuck all if you don't assist with helping winners capitalise on their success.

You can say 'oh look. Top 5 best restaurants are diverse. There's no problem in the industry'. And disregard the full list. Or, the following year revert back to non-diverse. For example. This doesn't take away from the wonderful 5, but it's not diversity.

Also. Creating diverse spaces is something we have to work to, together. It's not up to a 'saviour' of an awarding body, or the voices of marginalised people. It's a dialogue. One where everyone will get shit wrong.

What I really liked and value is that the James Beard Awards is asking for advice. Reaching out. Knowing it's not gonna know the answers. Trying to find practical, *structural* changes. Structural changes is how a system can change.

I'm doing a lot of thinking on this, so may add to it later. But, my thinking on practicalities is that, those often unheard of voices, when they get awards they need to be supported to capitalise on those awards. They are less likely to have had opp / experience with platforms

Diversity comes when diverse faces and voices are being paid. Earning incomes off their expertise, just like the status quo. Ppl love to clap at award ceremony, but still give jobs to familiar faces.

 


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Body Eats

When I first saw Pina Bausch’s The Rite of Spring (1975) I remember feeling a deep hunger. My belly rumbled, my torso tightened and the muscles sucked into my belly button as my body concaved in on itself. I could feel my arms wanting to desperately reach out and seek things to fill me up, to bring close to me, to suck up and consume. I wanted to devour the world. I watched it the first year of my Performing Arts undergraduate, where I thought I would major in dance and movement. In the end I didn’t, switching in the final semester to acting, after struggling to feel fully comfortable with my body moving through space for people to watch. I decided I preferred to hide behind words. Dance has always been a space of thirst, for cravings, for desire – a way to seek out and pursue, a way to rampage through ideas. Moving to be sated. Finishing dance exams growing up I would always be hungry, never being able to eat when nervous. Navigating how to feel in leotards, in front of mirrors, o
Post a Comment
Read more

A restaurant review: of Instagram Stories

With the importance of ‘brand’, of storytelling and the prolific use of social media to attract customers, it seems appropriate to me that restaurants can be judged through the prism of Instagram and the fleeting tool of Stories. It is after all, a curated space for the business to tell their story. This is a piece of writing that was difficult to write because it hit emotional points that are sometimes hard to articulate, so this is a string of thoughts.  Food is the focal point of a restaurant, to be examined and appraised. It is often thought. In communities which have a robust food culture the dissection of dishes is an act of bonding, of creating memory and building connection to space and time and place. “We eat to remember place” anthropologist David Sutton writes, in his work reflecting the Greek island of Kalymnos.  Restaurants have a history and an anchor in the idea of being spaces of restorative-ness, of gathering and of being with people, of nourishment.  In the capitalist
Post a Comment
Read more

The undoing and redoing of me

I am often thinking about the line between public and private, the way it wavers, blurs, disappears. In a world of social media it is a question for everyone, and not just for the stars, royalty, politicians. For me the question broadens into the realm of work. Where do I begin, and where do ‘I’ end. The ‘I’ must interrogate my place within power structures, within cultural narratives, within relatability.  My academic research was about a community I am part of, through my father. It was an ‘objective’ approach to examine storytelling, but because it was not a culture I participated in on a daily basis I was constantly negotiating my position in the work, my lens in the re-telling, my biases, my outside-ness and my inside-ness. The story of me became integral to the condition of the research. And, as my professional career has progressed, my approximation to this culture, one that is less known in the wider world, means I have become a tool to crack into these spheres - I have the con
Post a Comment
Read more