'Boxed In', a new Manifesto Club provocation essay by artist Sonya Dyer, argues that diversity schemes and targets are pigeonholing black and Asian artists. She calls for an honest debate within the sector, and for artistic quality to be placed at the centre of arts funding.

This is a comment page, to discuss the implications of the report. If you have comments or views you would like to contribute, please email them to josie.appleton@manifestoclub.com

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NEW: Arts Council England releases an official response to 'Boxed In'. Sonya Dyer replies to Arts Council England.

Absolutely spot on. I've been thinking about this for years and always suspected that people running these arts institutions don't want to ask the really tricky question of why noone can afford to work for them. Carrie Sentamu

I think this raises some interesting points but I don't think these diversity plans are always a bad thing. I have a good friend who got their foot in the door of a local museum because he was working on outreach stufff. True, he thought he'd be doing something else by now but that's better than nothing. Maybe they could have targets but encourage museums to put staff in other places? Anonymous

It is hard to see Dyer's essay as a positive contribution to the debate over how to overcome racism and national chauvinism. Rather it fits right in with the pattern of ongoing attacks on any notion of "affirmative action" whatsoever. The problem is not so much with Dyer's criticisms, many of which seem plausible to me, even if they are one-sided. But instead of suggesting how to improve diversity-programmes, she proposes to abolish them altogether, even though she acknowledges (in a grudging sort of way) that racism "still" exists and affirmative action has done some good. Does this differ from what the Bush crowd has been pushing for years in the U.S? Two further comments. (i) Dyer's implicit assumption that there exists a universal measure of absolute artistic quality is laughable. (ii) Dyer proposes affirmative action to overcome class barriers. Good idea, but why counterpose it to diversity? Not "either or" but "both and". Rafael D Sorkin

I believe its an interesting contribution to the debate, but seems to miss addressing the points that the 'other side', e.g. Decibel makes in their defence. In fact I was recently invited to a lunch where they invited us to talk about their upcoming programmes, and we almost entirely discussed this issue later. There are a lots of salient points here about liberal racism, lowering of standards and ghettoisation. But it barely begins to address why, before Decibel gave black and Asian artists some money to showcase their stuff and become more professional, the industry completely ignored such art. I would love to do away with Decibel tomorrow if only the middle class white people who commission such stuff were more outward looking. That is not to say Decibel funds crap... they've cut funding from lots of projects I know of because they couldn't get the audiences. Sunny Hundal

A friend of mine read this article and said 'now I understand why you don't go for opportunities geared at ethnic minority artists'. Sonya has put into words what I have been thinking for years. I look forward to the ensueing discussion. Savinder Bual

I support Sonya's thoughtful critiques of 'diversity funding' and pigeonholing artists as 'black' or 'asian'. Such approaches are profoundly contrary to the spirit of art which is to transform one's own (inevitably local) experience into something that speaks to all women and men. It begins with the benign universalist assumption that, underneath our different experiences, there is the common condition of being human beings, of being creatures that, uniquely, try to make deeper, richer, more enduring sense of being alive. The greater the artist, the less she or he is a member of a particular, narrowly defined group. Yes, Mozart was an Austrian petit bourgeois and Derek Walcott is a native of St Lucia and a descendant of slaves, and Chekhov was a working class Russian - but this matters less than the fact that they are very great artists and great artists are citizens of the world. The suggestion that artists from ethnic minorities are so incompetent that they must be protected from competition for funds with the majority is, of course, insulting. Anyway, if they are no good, they should not be funded. Raymond Tallis

As (politically) black art workers, we shall know that equality of opportunity has been achieved when our opportunities cease to be circumscribed by powerful preconceptions about our interests and capabilities. While the government initiatives that Dyer critiques have emerged from what I think is a genuine desire to redress historical injustices, they often fail to deliver equality of opportunity because, by foregrounding race and ethnicity, by framing them as black art workers' chief interests and areas of expertise, they inadvertently reinforce the damaging preconceptions that they set out to destroy. (Marginality repackaged as 'specialism', etc.) Meanwhile, the dominant structures of power (social, economic, political, cultural) remain intact. Anonymous

It seems that Sonya's view on meritocracy and ethnicity is embedded in over a century-old's contemplation. Here's the thoughts of the African American, educationalist Booker T. Washington of a visit to a Paris art gallery in 1899: ’While in Paris we saw a good deal of the now famous American Negro painter, Mr. Henry C. Tanner, whom we had formerly known in America. It was very satisfactory to find how well known Mr. Tanner was in the field of art, and to note the high standing which all classes accorded to him. When we told some Americans that we were going to the Luxembourg Palace to see a painting by an American Negro, it was hard to convince them that a Negro had been thus honoured. I do not believe that they were really convinced of the fact until they saw the picture for themselves. My acquaintance with Mr. Tanner reinforced in my mind the truth which I am constantly trying to impress upon our students at Tuskegee - and on our people throughout the country, as far as I can reach them with my voice - that any man, regardless of colour, will be recognized and rewarded just in proportion as he learns to do something well - learns to do it better than some one else - however humble the thing may be. As I have said, I believe that my race will succeed in proportion as it learns to do a common thing in an uncommon manner; learns to do a thing so thoroughly that no one can improve upon what it has done; learns to make its services of indispensable value. This was the spirit that inspired me in my first effort at Hampton, when I was given the opportunity to sweep and dust that schoolroom. In a degree I felt that my whole future life depended upon the thoroughness with which I cleaned that room, and I was determined to do it so well that no one could find any fault with the job. Few people ever stopped, I found when looking at his pictures, to inquire whether Mr. Tanner was a Negro painter, a French painter, or a German painter. They simply knew that he was able to produce something which the world wanted - a great painting - and the matter of his colour did not enter into their minds.’ (Up from Slavery, 1901) Asif Khan

Whilst I welcome Dyer's contribution to the ongoing debate around cultural diversity policy in the visual arts (indeed I was happy to be interviewed and quoted on the record) I am a bit disappointed in the thinness of her arguments. Her analysis of the history of cultural diversity policy suffers from ahistoricism (a criticism she directs towards ACE) - there is no overt awareness of the shift in the debate from multiculturalism (70s/Khan), to anti-racism (Black Arts/GLC) through to cultural diversity (ACE post 86), through internationalism of the 90s through to the specific response to Macpherson (Decibel - yes flawed, but so were most responses to Macpherson) through to the decision to direct energy towards the mainstream rather than the margins (Inspire - through locating it in the National Museums sector). Whilst Decibel was flawed in ways which I have already discussed (see Spike Island text) Inspire aimed to take the model of positive action and locate it within mainstream institutions (such as Tate and the National). Most of Dyer's criticisms of Inspire are standard oppositional arguments to positive action and they are much better made elsewhere (see Matt Cavanagh's 'Against Equality of Opportunity' for the best discussion on this); and as another commentator has noticed her views on meritocracy and autonomy are naive at best (again see Cavanagh on for a consistent demolition of meritocracy). The link between class and race is hardly new - Tariq Modood has been consistently arguing this since the late 1980s) but again is uninformed - because there is no way of collecting data on class on the census as its stands there is no legal basis for offering positive action schemes or bursaries on the basis of class or how much money one has. My main concern with Inspire, as I am quoted on, is the a common one with all positive action schemes - to what extent is the scheme embedded within the institutions, as opposed to parachuted in from above. This is the challenge that faces all positive action schemes - how to follow-up the initial short-term impact effects with longer-term structural changes. As a last point, I do fully support the Manifesto Club but with its denunciations of everything from environmentalism to positive action, its turning into a bit like reading the Spectator or with its bandying around of that hoary old chestnut beloved of all moneyed undergraduates 'artistic autonomy', my old pal Clem Greenberg. Get a grip! Niru Ratnam (former Inspire Programme Manager)

The term "BME" has outlived its usefulness and needs to be reconfigured by us - those to whom the term is applied. This re-configuration will not involve just the usual: journalists, politicians or sociologists, but also and on an equal standing, those who understand and work with notions of complexity: scientists, mathematicians, urbanists, ecologists, philosophers and artists. Unless this reconfiguration begins as a matter of urgency, literature, art, and society in general will continue to be behind an ever-widening curve. Bonnie Greer, playwright