‘You end up doing the document rather than doing the doing’: Diversity, race equality and the politics of documentation

TLDR

Documents that express a commitment to race equality are now central to equality work, serving as signs of good performance, expressions of commitment, and descriptions of organizational diversity. The article examines how the Race Relations Amendment Act (2000) has created a new politics of documentation that uses diversity and equality as institutional performance measures, and argues that these documents should be followed to assess how they are taken up. The study interrogates this politics by conducting interviews with diversity and equal‑opportunity officers from ten UK universities. The analysis shows that such documents can conceal racism when adopted as performance indicators, yet they also enable practitioners to expose gaps between rhetoric and practice and to use them strategically within organizations.

Abstract

Abstract This article examines how the Race Relations Amendment Act (2000) has shaped a new politics of documentation, which takes diversity and equality as measures of institutional performance. Writing documents that express a commitment to promoting race equality is now a central part of equality work. Rather than assuming such documents do what they say, this article suggests we need to follow such documents around, examining how they get taken up. This article will interrogate the politics of documentation, by drawing on interviews with diversity and equal opportunities officers from ten universities in the UK. It focuses on how documents are taken up as signs of good performance, as expressions of commitment and as descriptions of organizations as “being” diverse. It concludes that such documents work to conceal forms of racism when they get taken up in this way. And yet, by allowing practitioners to expose the gaps between words and deeds, these documents can be used strategically within organizations.