I seem to have been ‘minoritized’

The rise and future fall of 'Global Majority'

In the seminal, mega-bestselling White Fragility, Robin DiAngelo described how ‘Whiteness rests upon a foundational premise: the definition of whites as the norm or standard for human, and people of color as a deviation from that norm. Whiteness is not acknowledged by white people, and the white reference point is assumed to be universal and is imposed on everyone. White people find it very difficult to think about whiteness as a specific state of being that could have an impact on one’s life and perceptions.’ It goes on in this vein for a good 200 pages.

Within this Little Red Book of the Great Awokening, there was captured an unspoken assumption many progressives have about race. They see a world defined by them, or I should say us: white people.

While the hubristic European racial narcissism of the 19th century has been inverted into a form of masochism, it still centres the world on whiteness [shudder], and that in part explains the rise of the current neologism, ‘global majority’. It is a phrase that has become suddenly ubiquitous, and reached a critical mass of public awareness after Kemi Badenoch recently criticised it as ‘anti-white’; this, after the National Trust announced plans to train 100 new walk leaders from ‘global majority communities’ because apparently ‘people from the global majority are widely under-represented in the outdoors’.

The Cambridge Dictionary defines global majority as ‘the group of people in the world who do not consider themselves or are not considered to be white’, and it’s a phrase that has suddenly become ubiquitous across state-funded bodies. Charlotte Gill has made a thread of organisations using the phrase, all of them funded by taxpayers. Among these are ‘Devon’s first Global Majority theatre company’; there is the Soho Theatre, actively welcoming applicants who identify as LGBTQ+, disabled, and people of the ‘Global Majority’; an organisation seeking trans and drag performers from ‘POC/ Global Majority’ backgrounds; a humanities award encouraging applicants who identify as People of Colour, BAME and/or part of Black and Global Majority racial and ethnic groups’; and a midwifery symposium called ‘Disrupting the Status Quo’ for Global Majority therapists; a theatre led by Global Majority artists (African, South Asian, and Latin American Diasporas); and the Royal Opera House who ‘are looking for young people from throughout the UK who identify as being from the global majority background or from another underrepresented group, who play the following instruments.’

It’s notable how this trend has in particular spread through some of the most august and seemingly conservative institutions in the country, but then these are the very institutions which have been captured and have often abandoned long-established political neutrality.

The Church of England also recently advertised for a job suitable for people with ‘a global majority heritage’. But the phrase is everywhere - Westminster Council also recently used it. Comic Relief runs a Global Majority Fund (the link has since gone dead), which was a ‘Covid-19 response fund for communities experiencing racial inequality’, ‘experiencing’ being another of those popular phrases.

King’s College, London organised free tai chi classes to ‘tackle chronic stress  experienced in the body as a result of racism and systemic oppression’, and excluded white lecturers because it was only available for ‘for staff who identify as black/people of colour/global majority’.