Meeting for Sufferings: Diversity and inclusion discussed
Diversity and inclusion was on the agenda at Meeting for Sufferings on 6 April
Quakers were asked if they were ‘up for the challenge’ of addressing the issues of inclusion and diversity at Meeting for Sufferings on 6 April. Speaking about her work as inclusion and diversity coordinator for Britain Yearly Meeting (BYM), Edwina Peart spoke about her diversity and inclusion survey and a national gathering held on the subject at Woodbrooke in January 2019.
Edwina Peart told Friends she was ‘still loving’ her role and said she often heard two comments. The first is that ‘it’s good there is a funded position’ which ‘speaks to the priority’ the issue is being given at BYM; and the second is that ‘often despite good intentions… it’s a struggle to turn these into strategies and work on the ground’. She emphasised that the work has to be ‘owned, embedded and expressed throughout the Quaker community’ and said ’this is your work’, reaffirming that inclusion and diversity came from a minute discerned from Yearly Meeting 2017 and not just due to ‘political correctness or current trends’.
Edwina Peart talked through the findings of the survey, to which 1,693 people responded which is less than ten per cent of the Quaker community. Just over eleven per cent were under forty years old, with over fourteen per cent identifying as gay, lesbian, bisexual, pansexual, asexual, queer and fluid. She said there were ‘many objections to specific questions’. To the question ‘what is your ethnic group?’, ‘the answers were really similar but the approach was wide’.
The majority of respondents were white British/European (with 0.8 per cent identifying as Jewish and roughly 1.5 per cent as mixed race, Black British, British Asian, British Chinese, Black Caribbean and Black African). Some of the responses included: ‘This question is racially divisive’, ‘I am a Quaker that is all you need to know’, and ‘ashamed British’. To the response that some were ‘against the constant labelling’, she said, ‘some [labels] tell a story and are significant’. She said that the answers showed that some people want to speak about their ethnicity and that within the reluctance to discuss she detected ‘fear of being examined’ and found wanting.
Question six about gender also drew lots of comments: Thirty-one (under two per cent) identified as non-binary, transgender, gender, intersex, gender fluid and androgynous. Some said in the survey it was an impertinent and personal question, to which she countered: ‘When we don’t ask, we assume.’
Question eight about class, she had presumed, was ‘standard and uncontentious, but not so’, and reiterated a Friend’s comment that we should be ‘gateways and not gatekeepers’. 128 (7.5 per cent) identified as working class, which some respondents justified by citing housing situation or others prefixed with ‘educated’. She cited the example of one Friend at the diversity gathering who felt her leadership skills were unacknowledged at her Anglican church because of her social class. On privilege, Edwina Peart said that it ‘happens in a moment-by-moment way; it’s the choices we make as we walk through the world’.
After outlining the things she would like to work more on (including access for those with physical disabilities and mental health issues), and plans for ‘moving forwards’ (Quakers are leading the way on trans-inclusion, she said: ‘We’re already embroiled in it, there’s no stepping back’), Friends were divided into groups and asked to consider three questions: ‘Does anybody have a claim on the baseline?’ ‘Do Quakers think that everyone should aspire to become middle class by middle age?’ and: ‘What makes for a welcoming welcome?’
On their return, Friends shared a variety of supportive comments. One had been ‘profoundly moved’ by the talk. Another said harmony could be found: ‘When we start treating people as family and not “other”.’
One group reflected on how some privileges were visible and others not, and, if part of the dominant group, you may ‘not be aware of [your] dominance’.
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