When I lived in London for a short time at the end of the 1990s, I only entered one of London’s famous gentlemen’s clubs on two occasions. The first was to have lunch with a member of the Reform Club, which was honestly the worst meal I ever ate in London. The clubs, I later learnt, honed their cuisine to mimic the kind of feed you’d get at boys’ boarding schools for the very obvious reason that the fondest memories of most of their members were invariably of said boys’ boarding schools. 

I’m proud to say I maintained the South African habit of being completely inept, non-conformist and generally uncouth by – and you might find this hard to believe – ANSWERING MY CELLULAR TELEPHONE IN THE CLUB. The result was that several hundred of the club’s employees came galloping towards me with a distinct “Good God! Turn that stupid, intrusive, modern contraption off immediately!” look on their faces. 

Since that day, when I broke the rules, presumably because of my lapse, members are now permitted to look at their cellphones, but not answer or make calls in the club. History truly does progress at a hectic pace.    

My second invitation into the hallowed inner halls was attending a wedding at the Liberal Club and it was equally shocking to the waitstaff. I’m not sure whether the club owners knew it, but the wedding was between a Ugandan and a Trinidadian. Nothing particularly unusual in that, except Joel had brought his entire extended family from Uganda and Jai an entire steel drum band, and there was dancing. Everywhere. And ceremonial foot washing!

Seeing the inside of British gentlemen’s clubs was a treat, but it didn’t particularly endear me to them. You could sense the fustiness portrayed as “tradition” imbued in everything from the dusty wooden staircases, frayed “good” carpets and the busts of politicians long forgotten. 

Still, I was thrilled to read that the Garrick Club has now voted to accept female members for the first time. 

The Garrick is perhaps the most renowned of the clubs and boasts the most star-studded membership, which includes the likes of Benedict Cumberbatch, Stephen Fry, Sting and Mark Knopfler. King Charles is an honorary member.  

The debate about women as members has been going on for decades, and it was finally decided by a pretty large (for such a club) margin of around 60/40. 

I had to wonder what shaped the argument made by the 40%. The majority presumably argued that the current year is, in fact, 2024, the country has actually had female prime ministers, and so on. 

Women have been allowed as guests for years, but were not allowed in the cigar-smoking area called “Under the Stairs”. These club types are just absolutely, side-splittingly hilarious. 

Apparently, the 40% contended essentially that men and women socialise differently. Men 🙄. Women, according to this argument, socialise emotionally and men transactionally and, therefore, it makes sense they should socialise separately. This is, of course, nonsense. 

There are differences between the groups, naturally, but men and women have far more traits in common than not. It’s no accident that these antediluvian ideas have lasted longest in antediluvian institutions. 

But having made this choice, I find myself in something of a predicament when it comes to other social differentiators; for South Africans, the obvious one is race. Like many liberals in SA, I instinctively dislike racial classification, though I reluctantly and sadly acknowledge its importance in South Africa today. But I do think it should be a categorisation on its way out and we should at least aim for the non-racialism our Constitution notionally upholds. 

So, why is it that I celebrate the decision of the Garrick Club but support, to some extent, racial presuppositions when it comes to SA? Obviously, history plays a part, but I sense a contradiction here.     

There is a fascinating debate taking place in the US at the moment following the decision of well-known black blogger, policy analyst and jazz player Coleman Hughes to give a TED talk defending colour blindness – the idea that we should acknowledge people without regard to race in our personal lives, but more particularly in public policy. He has subsequently written a book on the topic. 

To say this is an unpopular idea would be a massive understatement. 

But the surprising thing is that the TED institution initially refused to publish the talk after a staff group complained. Hughes’ general idea is that colour blindness needs to be loosened from the “jaws of disdain” because it is wrongly viewed as a Trojan horse for white supremacy. 

Instead, we ought to get race out of public policy and, wherever plausible, use socioeconomics where we want to deal with issues of disadvantage. I guess this is pretty much the DA’s position.

I don’t agree or disagree with his view necessarily, but interestingly he said that when the TED organisation refused to publish his talk, it cited a study in the 2020 Journal of Applied Psychology which TED claimed found that, whereas colour-conscious models reduce prejudice and discrimination, colour-blind approaches often fail to help and sometimes backfire. 

The article is “On Melting Pots and Salad Bowls: A Meta-Analysis of the Effects of Identity-Blind and Identity-Conscious Diversity Ideologies”. 

Hughes read the paper and discovered it said the complete opposite and its conclusion was pretty close to his position. The paper found “colorblindness is negatively related to stereotyping” and “is also negatively related to prejudice.” They also found that “meritocracy is negatively related to discrimination”. This is all interesting. 

“I was shocked,” he wrote in a blog post. He wrote back to Chris Anderson, the head of TED, saying, “Far from a refutation of my talk, this meta-analysis is closer to an endorsement of it. I feel it would be unjustified not to release my talk simply because many people disagree with my philosophical perspective. By that standard, most TED talks would never get released.”

Eventually, the TED organisation suggested to him that they publish the talk and simultaneously publish a discussion on the topic with someone taking the opposite view. The talk could only be published with a palate-cleansing chaser, he said. 

Ultimately, they agreed to post the video and a few weeks later publish the debate. TED deliberately did not promote either, so the talk and the debate got only 10% of the normal exposure of TED talks. 

It’s when you read this that you wonder whether our institutions are in fact “captured” by the new progressive orthodoxy, as Hughes puts it. 

“TED’s leadership must decide whether it wants to do something about it – or let the organisation become yet another echo chamber.” 

Hard not to agree with that. Harder still to imagine that TED is dangerously close to upholding the same antique beliefs of 40% of the Garrick Club. DM