In 2010, the UK government passed the Equality Act.
In it, it defined the ‘nine protected characteristics’: age, gender reassignment, being married or in a civil partnership, being pregnant or on maternity leave, disability, race including colour, nationality, ethnic or national origin, religion or belief, sex, and sexual orientation.
If you’re reading this in the UK, you probably recognise these from a form you’ve filled out at some point - whether applying for a job, giving feedback, or completing the last census. There are suggested categories for people to answer within (which is helpful in many ways, as it allows easy comparison between survey responses, rather than having to guess whether the responses “white”, “white British”, and “British” all refer to the same ethnic group).
By law, these are reasons for discrimination that get more attention than others. Notably, it doesn’t include social class, despite its centrality to British culture (something often corrected for by workplaces, arts organisations and so on when doing this sort of research).
I do wonder whether the cultural impact was anticipated.
In particular, I’m fascinated by the way it’s changed how people describe themselves. When processing feedback forms for culture events, people respond to “how would you describe your ethnicity?” within the categories from the census form. I am “mixed white and Asian”, not any other description of my background - whether White British/British Pakistani, mixed race, British, or otherwise.
While it’s not a formal piece of research, I’d estimate that (excluding those people who simply put ‘white’), 90% of people who fill out such forms (that I’ve processed) follow this pattern. That is to say, people who experience marginalisation on the grounds of the Nine Protected Characteristics learn how to articulate that within the language of the bureaucracy around it.
Rather than their own language.
Similarly, in conversation, when people describe someone (at least in lefty arts spaces), they often focus on these categories, especially the more visible ones. “I’m a white 50-something man”, “I’m a mixed-race genderqueer person.”
I suspect there’s the chance for a Grand Theory here - that such categories are inherently tied to the bureaucracy around them; that they are inherently constructed and artificial; that governments have as much power to impose identity as protect it.
But mostly, I simply find it interesting that a 2010 law changed the way people talk about themselves.
What if it had chosen other areas to protect - whether class, intersectional identities, neurodivergence, subcultures, level of education, musical ability, coordination, or otherwise? It’s interesting thinking about how different our culture might have been.
Comments