Optimism is scarce when it’s not my first ride on the faux-acceptance bus
With my Crafted For Action panel discussion on DEI burnout in the beer industry coming up this Friday I should be excited to finally be presenting on a topic which, challenging and frustrating as it is, I’ve been working so hard to bring into focus for such a long time, and to be working with so many brilliant, talented people who understand what is at stake.
But I’m not.
For people from marginalised groups, recently stuffed a diet of solidarity and equality, the contradictory messaging and advice we’ve received has been nothing more or less than an abuse of trust. We’re told to be our authentic selves. Yet when other people don’t like our authentic selves, it’s our fault for being too authentic, for not sugar-coating and code-switching to taste. We’re supposed to know by magic just how authentic we can be. And if we make a mistake it’s totally socially acceptable for other people to walk away, to go back to their safe lands of homogenous privilege. We’re encouraged to stand up for ourselves – assert ourselves and be proactive in positivising our identities, fight our own battles. But not too much – in case we come across as too confident, too aggressive, frightening, or worse – suggesting entitlement. Because entitlement only belongs to one group and should we dare to declare that we aren’t asking, we are telling, we are uppity, ungrateful and arrogant. We are told we are beautiful – then fashions we have no power over shift and we are told we are not.
Most of all, we have been told we are deserving – that our efforts are to finally be justly rewarded. That we have earned our seat at the table and can play with the big boys. Now we’re discovering our bench at the kiddie table leaves us closed out of any significant dialogue – that the silent serpent of superiority has woken and is poised to pounce, lashing its venomous tail against any semblance of equality we had been promised, laughing a slick smile that we were gullible enough to be fooled again.
And suddenly we’re back in the dust, shaking ourselves off ruefully. It was nice while it lasted, that breath of inclusion.
I can’t see any positives to take. Trying to engage with a rigged system is like being in an abusive relationship. You fight so hard for recognition, to be acknowledged, appreciated, loved, accepted. The promises come when you have something to offer and you take them at face value because you have no other choice, nowhere else to go. A part of you always knows the shoe is on the other foot, but you let it slide because there’s no other route to the heart of the system of power and accepting the reality that each gesture of acceptance is a sham feels like a personal failure, something someone else could get right, will get right, but you’re just not good enough.
That’s how it works. Eroding confidence. Chipping away at self-esteem. Bending until breaking point. By holding out the carrot that lies that there really is a way to win – a way to be seen, a way to be equal, a way to be loved – only you just haven’t found it yet because you’re not good enough. You’re not worthy.
The power to decide what is worthy, who is worthy. That is what has been reasserted with a vengeance – the heavy WASP heel stamping down its authority. And here we are again – demoted to the fringes of acquired taste, tokenised and told to like it. Told there is no other choice.
For them, business as usual has recommenced. No more calls for diverse voices, no more stories highlighting marginalised groups. Safe hands, otherwise known as nepotism and unconscious bias, are back in business, opportunities have disappeared and we’re segued back into irrelevance and silence.
Of course, the stage dressing tells a different story. We hear that we’ve been spoiled, pampered, offered too much, and this is merely a balancing of the scale of overcorrective privilege we’ve been misguidedly allowed to tip in our favour. We’re told whatever gains we made were unearned, unjust – that we were given unfair advantages that must now be reclaimed in the name of true equality. No mention is made of irony or hypocrisy. Faux-allies breathe a quiet sigh of relief as their position is restored, closing the door behind them.
I am tired. I am tired and I don’t know what to tell you. I’m not managing the burnout. I’m not managing the lies and tangled bullshit koolaid of fake acceptance we’re now choking on. I’m not okay with how the system has turned our positivity and trust against us – played its nastiest, most cruel card by undermining any successes we’re had as mere DEI hires. How it raised our confidence then stripped us down in one fell swoop, pulling back an Oz-like curtain on the true machinations at work behind the scenes the entire time, playing to the gallery at our expense and leaving us in the knowledge we were never anything but costumed entertainers, toys to be played with then discarded.
For someone like me who has most always been treated as a performing curiosity, a creature in a zoo to be goggled, poked and prodded for amusement, this blow feels like one too many. The knowledge that, not for the first time, savvy unscrupulous careerists have capitalised on my pain, our pain, to advance themselves by appearing on-trend only to smirk as they pull up the ladder behind them fills me with a burning combination of rage and helplessness. How many more times will I do this dance in this lifetime? I don’t know. I hope I will have better answers for you by Friday and I’m sure my brilliant panel will buoy us all with their stoicism and resistance.
But in the meantime, I remain reeling from my latest trip round the hamster wheel of exploitative tokenism.
17th June 2025
Cultural Cuckoo 