Leicester University has a ‘Research Centre for Museums and Galleries’ (RCMG).

Last week it was announced that they have advised the London Museum on the question of ‘embedded whiteness’. It made excellent fodder for certain newspapers. This is what their web-site says about it:

Since October 2020, RCMG has collaborated with staff at London Museum, alongside external partners, to explore forms of embedded whiteness at London Museum. ‘Embedded whiteness’, refers to the ideas, systems, ways of working and normative values that can support, directly or indirectly, the continuation of racial inequities and a lack of racial diversity in the workforce and audience of heritage and cultural institutions. Their research has brought together leading-edge research in museums, race and whiteness and thinking and practice around the potential for museums to forge new relationships and ways of working which take up and contribute to anti-racist thinking and practice and explore new professional and social realities conducive to equity and inclusive transformation. As part of the process London Museum became a site for collaborative research, reflection, experimentation and sharing. RCMG worked with a range of staff across the organisation, alongside experts in the field, to develop new insights around embedded whiteness in heritage and cultural institutions and practical techniques for both challenging whiteness and working towards the production of a museum reality, a place to work in and visit, where equity is experienced and felt.

https://le.ac.uk/rcmg/research-archive/challenging-embedded-whiteness

RCMG presumes, therefore, that in heritage and cultural institutions there are ‘racial inequities and a lack of racial diversity’ both in their workforce and in their audience. But the London Museum is in London, the most diverse city in the UK, and so I rather doubt that there is a significant lack of racial diversity in their workforce. Maybe there is, but in their audience? Their audience consists of tourists. Are they only attracting white supremacists? What about all the Japanese, African, Chinese or Indian tourists? Do they not count?

Helpfully, RCMG explains the basis of their research project. They say: “The project addressed the following research questions:

1. How is whiteness reproduced in the practices, policies, organisational cultures, exhibitionary formats and everyday actions of museums, and in particular London Museum?

2. How can whiteness be seen, understood and disrupted in the museum context?

3. How can people at all levels of a museum organisation understand whiteness as a form of power, and be empowered to disinvest in whiteness?

4. Recognising that many individuals, organisations and wider stakeholders employ tactics to address racism that can actually serve to inhibit, block and contain change, what strategies and actions can we identify to support the redesign of policies, practices and cultures in ways that ensure greater inclusivity for all at the Museum of London?”

So then, there is no attempt to find out if there is actually racism at London Museum. It is a given: there is an assumption of embedded whiteness in the workings of that and all other museums.

It is not therefore really a research project in any meaningful sense.

But surely research into the existence of racism and, if so, its extent would, in turn, tell the researchers how it manifests itself. It could lead to actual solutions if it were a significant problem.

But it might also reveal if the history told by the London Museum itself needs to have the whiteness of its displays ‘seen, understood and disrupted’. The clue is perhaps in the name. The museum is there to tell the story of London. And if we are to be true to our history then, although it was always a diverse city, its citizens were in fact mainly those born in London and so would have had paler skin.

The reason for the University’s involvement is that it is a part of the Museum’s equity, diversity and inclusion strategy in order to earn the label of 'genuinely anti-racist'. So then the lack of clarity may be because clarity might undermine the whole project.

But it still leaves unanswered the question of why we have a fixation on ‘white’ and not other colours. And what we mean by race.

I don’t think it very likely that there is the equivalent for humans of dog-breeders with their creation of handbag dogs, greyhounds and mastiffs. We do though have natural selection, and so the visible differences between our various features are reflective of our respective environments in the widest sense. There are though many myths about those differences.

There is a general acceptance, for instance, that particular “races” have an advantage in certain sports, but evolutionary anthropologist Herman Pontzer in his book ‘Adaptable’ explains: “The racial divide in swimming and track comes down to culture, environment and opportunity. Skin colour varies continuously from dark to light, with no clear dividing point and if we categorised people on other traits, like height, we would end up with very different groups.”.

And intelligence? Very conveniently, Afro-Americans used to be regarded by the other Americans as less intelligent. In fact there is no overall difference and the effect of genetics on intelligence is a lot less than used to be thought in any event. And why would we expect there to be differences in any event? Selection pressures for intelligence have been the same everywhere. The chances that “melanin-challenged pseudo-intellectuals coddled by modern technology hold any unique alleles for intelligence” seems remote, Pontzer writes.

Which is why, he explains, the concept of race makes no biological sense.

But race is still embedded in our social thinking. Right wing politicians get themselves very confused over it as they all profess to be in favour of their own nation, a concept which they conflate with race. Which makes cooperation between different nations problematic, even when governed by other right-wing governments.

But, as we see with Leicester University, academics can get themselves just as confused. There is after all no white race. It’s simply a Humpty Dumpty phrase used to express whatever the speaker wishes to imply. Skin colour varies continuously, based on the amount of sunlight our ancestors benefitted from.

So then Scandinavians are likely on average to be paler that Brits. Does that mean that we should be looking to excise Scandinavian influence from our museums? Perhaps take out all the Ikea furniture?

Picking on ‘white’ as a shorthand for being racist ignores the fact that racism exists around the world and the failure to acknowledge this is racist in itself.

In the pamphlet examples are given of steps to be taken to extirpate ‘embedded whiteness’. It asks: “Am I making space and time for important conversations about race equity? How are we continuing to challenge embedded whiteness?' It goes on to say that the museum’s 'culture and ways of working' support 'institutional forms of racism’. And so they call for its staff to 'work differently' and 'promote less hierarchical working', in order to 'challenge inequity'. They should also 'encourage everyone to bring their whole selves to work'.

There does seem to be rather a lot of sociological waffle and dogma in the solutions proposed.

I’m sure that public institutions generally have too many layers of bureaucracy, but I’m not sure that’s what is meant by the promotion of ‘less hierarchical working’.

Neither, where the layers of management are justified, do I think that their abolition would challenge inequity. Expertise is actually needed and so its absence is more likely to result in inefficiency and, with it, a loss of people’s jobs.

I’m also quite sure that I never wanted to ‘bring my whole self to work’. I was quite content to leave my wish to listen to classical music for when I got home, and I never really expected to indulge an interest in museums during my working hours.

I went to work to do work. How very silly of me.

30 March 2025

Paul Buckingham