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**Identity and Polarization: Implications for our ability to live well together**

3-4 October 2008

Calgary, Alberta, Canada

The symposium addresses the following questions: “How do we identify ourselves? Why is identity of ethical importance? And what does this all mean for public policy and good governance?”

For further information please see the website of the conference at http://www.chumirethicsfoundation.ca/main/page.php?page_id=160.

**Critical Race Studies in Education 2009 Conference**

May 14-16, 2009

Chicago, USA

“This conference is designed to bring together scholars, activists, educators, students and community members who use critical race theory as a tool to frame, examine, document, understand and transform racial inequalities in education and in the broader society. The conference organizers invite papers that document scholarship, teaching, activist work at the local level, and community organizing efforts aimed at transforming racist practices, policies and systems in schools and in the broader society.”

For further information please see the website of the conference at http://education.uic.edu/events/criticalrace/index.cfm .

**International Conference on Gender and Diversity in Organizations**

Paris, January 15, 2009

“The “Gender and Diversity in Organizations" conference is an initiative from the AGRH “diversity and equality” special interest group, to be held at ESCP-EAP European Management School, Paris, France, on January 15th, 2009.”

For further information please see the website of the conference at http://www.escp-eap.eu/campus/paris/colloquia-escp-eap-paris-campus/colloque-genre-et-diversite-2009-a-escp-eap-paris/gender-and-diversity-2009-general-information/.

This will be my last message for about three weeks.

I am finishing my Fellowship here at the University of Salford, UK at the end of next week, and returning to Australia where I usually live.

You may recall my first message when I arrived here in the UK sometime at the end of 2007 or the start of 2008.

I have been interested in how my embodied self has a complex identity-category of 'blackness' which differs between the UK and in Australia.

As a Eurasian woman whose physical body is marked as 'different from' 'white' bodies (for example, I have brown skin, black hair, dark brown eyes) I was especially alerted to this complexity when I arrived at the University of Salford at the end of 2007.

I suddenly had acquired a particular, spoken identity of 'black, Asian' which are the formal categories used here in the UK to differentiate and identify racial and ethnic affiliations.

I was suddenly fully visible - as embodied and through a category that affirmed my physical presence within the social group.

This was a surprise to me as in my experience in Australia, there is a particular cultural context that influences who can claim an identity of 'black'.

It is possible that there is a particular association of the 'white'/'black' dichotomy related to colonisation that conflates race with ethnicity.

That is, people are either 'Aboriginal' or 'non Aboriginal' with an implicit assumption that associates 'Aboriginal' with 'black' and 'non Aboriginal' with 'white'

Those of us who are 'people of colour' AND 'Non Aboriginal' have no way of further differentiating our identities within the non Aboriginal category.

(I suspect those who would categorise themselves as 'white' 'non Aboriginal' would also want to differentiate themselves according to ethnicities - for example, Italian, Greek or Yugoslav.

These groups of immigrants categorised as 'non Aboriginal' 'white' have also suffered discriminatory practices due to their differences from the 'Anglo' 'white' population during the waves of post war immigration.

In my observation, there is also a particular set of assumptions about the legitimacy of 'black' identity claims, associated with bodily markers, name, clothing, English-language and accent of spoken English, which almost operates as a 'tally' system - the more of these markers of difference, the more legitimate are your claims.

I have no systematic evidence for any of these observations and assertions, and do not wish to suggest conspiracies - but there is probably a time and place for furthering such reflections.

If we can give words to the silences - not only as the deep wells into which our words fall and disappear, but also the 'sense' that something is not quite right, but for which we do not have words to express - and so we keep silent.

I hope these reflections will be of interest and generate some discussion from others.

7th European Feminist Research Conference

June 4-7 2009 Utrecht, The Netherlands

The 7th European Feminist Research Conference "Gendered Cultures" focuses on Europe and European perspectives, combining the Humanities with (inter)disciplinary research from other scientific traditions. It actively seeks cutting-edge scholarship by working with papers organized around intersecting themes. Cutting-edge comes to mean "inclusive" rather than "new" research on gender, women, and feminism at the crossroads of different practices of imagination, knowledge and politics. Both young and established researchers are invited to present papers that accept this challenge for the future. European Women's Studies Associations are explicitly invited to have their annual meetings at the 7th European Feminist Research Conference. Contact the organization for more information at 7thfeminist@let.uu.nl.

For further information, please visit http://www.genderstudies.nl/efrc/index.php?pageid=169

The 6th International Conference on Gender Studies (SAMA 6)

Cititel, Georgetown, Penang 29-30 November 2008

The conference will address the following questions: How do we stay connected and yet celebrate our differences? How do we find a sense of balance between the push and pull factors that affect us? How do we negotiate diversity? How do we manage interconnectivity? What strategies are employed to manage diversity and interconnectivity? For further information see: http://www.geocities.com/sama_ukm/.

Jock's reflections on the 8th International Conference on Diversity in Communities, Organisations and Nations

The 8th International Conference on Diversity in Communities, Organisations and Nations was held in Montréal, Canada, June 17-20 2008 at the École des Hautes Études Commerciales Montréal (HEC Montréal). The conference attracted 250 delegates from 25 countries: Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Grenada, Hong Kong, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Korea, Latvia, Malaysia, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, South Africa, Sweden, UAE, UK and the USA (including the Virgin Islands).

The conference was a great success. Plenary speakers included key Canadian politicians - Jacques Robert (Assistant Deputy Minister, Integration, Regionalisation and Intercultural Relations, Québec Ministry of Immigration and Cultural Communities) and Lucille Roch (Deputy Minister, Ministry of Community and Social Services. Government of Ontario) – and academics (Dr Robert Latham, Director, Centre for International and Security Studies, York University, Canada; Dr Susan Bridges, Faculty of Dentistry, University of Hong Kong; Dr Cristina Poyatos Matas, Griffith University, Australia).

Many papers were delivered on the main conference themes: Identity and Belonging; The Politics of Diversity; Globalisation and Organisations; Race and Racism, Disability and Health; Learning, Education and Training; Immigration and Refugees; Media, Communications; Arts and Literature; First Nations and Indigenous Peoples; Gender and Sexuality. The papers covered both academic and policy issues, with a key strength of the conference the interchange between academics from a broad range of disciplines and policymakers in charge of diversity issues in public and private sector organisations. Talking Circles enabled broader discussions of the conference themes and of future directions. Garden sessions provided the opportunity for delegates to have informal discussions with plenary speakers.

The conference was held in a great spirit of conviviality, conversation and dialogue. The conference arrangements went off without a hitch, with the conference running to time across the four days. The conference dinner allowed delegates to experience the wonderful cooking of student chefs and student hospitality trainees and to taste Quebec wines.

I would like to congratulate the excellent Common Ground Conference organizing team at the conference (Helen Agans, Amy France, Garett Gietzen and Tarnjeet Kang) and the other Common Ground team who provided the pre-conference organisation (Bill Cope, Tamsyn Gilbert, Andy Jeakins, Phillip Kalantzis-Cope, Anouk Liautaud and Homer (Tony) Stavely). I would like to thank Sébastien Arcand of HEC Montréal, for his invaluable assistance in providing us with perfect facilities and a warm welcome to Montréal. The next International Diversity Conference will be held in Riga, Latvia, 15-18 June 2009.

Jock Collins, University of Technology, Sydney, Australia.

There were two articles next to each other on page 10 of The Guardian, 26 May 2008. The weblinks for these articles are pasted in this blog.

They offer two interesting examples of understanding structural inequalities by examining statistical patterns.

The first pattern is the percentage of complaints about ethnic minority solicitors investigated (63%) by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) in the UK, compared with the percentage of solicitors from ethnic minorities (21%).

For white solicitors, who make up nearly 79% of solicitors, the percentage of complaints investigated is 37%.

See the article Solicitor accuses regulator of racial bias in £10m claim, Clare Dyer, The Guardian, Law, May 26, 2008, http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/may/26/law.discriminationatwork, accessed 2 June 2008

The second pattern refers to the inequalities in pay between men and women solicitors, and white and ethnic minority solicitors.

In an article, Pay gap is all too black and white, Marcel Berlins, The Guardian, Writ Large, 26 May, 2008, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/may/26/law.discriminationatwork, accessed 2 June 2008, Berlins states that the median income for white solicitors was £50,000, and for ethnic minorities, £40,000.

‘Even when variables … such as experience, region, size of firm and area of law practised, the average gap was still 17%.’

When comparing the gender pay gap amongst solicitors, median pay for men was £60,000, and £41,000 for women, ‘a gap of 32%, although the difference was only 7.6% after applying [the relevant] variables.’

There are to be inquiries into the reasons for these pay gaps.

‘Ethnic minority lawyers are loth to attribute inferior earnings to straightforward racial discrimination. But most feel it exists, starting with the difficulties they’ve always encountered in getting jobs with the larger, more prestigious firms, thus forcing them into smaller, lower-paying firms.’

The pay disparity for men and women is explained by Katherine Rake, of the Fawcett Society, as ‘the paucity of senior flexible roles, long working hours culture, and plain old-fashioned discrimination.’

How do these patterns compare in your country or society?

Do you know the statistical patterns?

Sometime ago I placed a blog or two in this site that discussed the White series of programmes on BBC2 (UK).

These programmes purported to examine the loss of political voice and place of the white working class in a multi-racial and multi-cultural Britain.

I also discussed the advertising of the series.

In the Comment and Debate section of The Guardian on 30 May, 2008, Lynsey Hanley wrote This white working class stuff is a media invention, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/may/30/thefarright, accessed 2 June 2008.

In it she comments on how the claim that the apparent feelings of disenfranchisement of the white working class has ‘driven’ them to vote for the British Nationalist Party (BNP).

She criticises the ways in which the ‘white working class’ is represented as a homogeneous group, lacking in agency of thought and action, and therefore excused for voting for the far right BNP and its ‘blame the immigrants’ agenda.

Hanley asks whether white middle class or upper class people would be similarly excused.

She also asks whether this association of class, whiteness and nationalism ‘lets middle-class BNP voters off the hook.’

Is there a similar pattern that links class and race with right wing politics in your country or society?

When I was at university as a social work undergraduate in the mid-1970s, in our Sociology classes, we studied an article by Herbert Gans titled, The Positive Functions of Poverty.

This article was a tongue-in-cheek structuralist-functionalist analysis of how poverty serves positive functions in a society.

It was a very clever critique of structuralist-functionalism as a sociological theory.

The basic gist of the article was that many people benefit from poverty – no less than social workers and clergy who have jobs because they attend to people who are poor – so that is why we need poor people in a society.

I was strongly reminded of this article when I read an article on ‘Caste protesters seeking to be downgraded blockade Delhi’, by Randeep Ramesh, The Guardian, International, 30 May, 2008, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/may/30/india.equality, accessed 2 June 2008.

In Ramesh's article, it seems that it is now a positive to claim low caste status in India, where the Indian government has ‘the world’s largest affirmative action programme, reserving half of government jobs and university places to those socially disadvantaged by centuries of caste oppression.’

All of a sudden, the positive functions of being of lower caste and ‘backward’ have become apparent.

A traditional nomadic tribe of farmers, the Gujjars, ‘themselves say they are not backward enough. […] A Gujjar famers’ leader told a local television channel that they ‘needed the appropriate status. We cannot be placed too high.’

But seriously, the Indian government is to be congratulated for its affirmative action programme that seeks to transcend the inequalities of caste by a quota system.

However the pitfalls of such a system are also apparent where a particular version of identity politics is generated as some groups feel their entitlements are being lost to those of lower status and therefore less deserving.

Others feel they are not categorised as being of sufficiently low status to qualify for such benefits.

This story offers a particular example of the difficulties of distributive justice where the basic structural inequalities that place identities in a hierarchy associated with entitled benefits are not addressed.

Is it too much to hope for dismantling of hierarchies of identity that then bestow or remove benefits simply due to accidents of birth?