But visibility also has a price often left out of conversations about diversity. The more visible a person’s presence becomes at an institution, the more unusual that presence is thought to be, the easier it is for that person to become symbolic of that institution. Jason Arday was no longer just Jason Arday the scholar, researcher, and teacher. His presence on that faculty was used as proof that Cambridge was changing. It can also be used as proof, by those against such changes, that Cambridge has reduced its standards or changed them. This is what I called the “representational burden”. Representational burden occurs when a scholar becomes more than just themselves in the eyes of an institution. Their success is now symbolic of a whole group of people. And if they fail, they also fail as that representative body. The burden starts when we value or deplore a scholar not only for their own actions and successes, but for what their presence means about the wider institution. Do universities praise that scholar’s success as a successful scholar or as proof of diversity? Do critics judge that scholar as an individual or as a “representational body”?
When a black scholar becomes a symbol: The Jason Arday controversy, By Toyin Falola
