Is elitism ethical when it seeks to portray itself as favoring racial diversity after having been accused from within of being racist against black people—and even a multiracial member of the leadership cadre? Moreover, can elitism itself be ethical? Furthermore, can it be Christian? By elitist, I have in mind the motive to exclude. In attending Yale University, I was surprised when I discovered that exclusion was practiced within the university among and by the students. It was not enough to have been selected to attend the highly-selective university; some students felt the instinctual urge once within to exclude other students. I discovered this when the chairman of the political party in the Yale Political Union that I had joined lied to me that if I would come to a Friday night party held in the Yale clock tower that I would be tapped to join the secret society owned by the party. That chairman and his surrounding inner cadre misled party members into coming. After all, what good is tapping friends if there are not other people watching and thus to be excluded? Regarding the coronation of King Charles (Winsor) in Britain in 2023, I contend that at the very least, the royal planners can be charted with multiple levels of exclusion in Westminster Abbey. Furthermore, I strongly believe that “the Palace” employed a public relations firm, a significant part of whose strategy it was to combat Prince Harry’s charges of racism. This can be inferred from extent of “photo ops” highlighting good “product placement.” Specifically, people of the “Black” race were, intentionally, I submit, situated around the royal family both in the coronation itself and at the related concert in the royal box. This tactic played off the commonly mistaken inference that if someone is seen next to people of a given group, he or she could not possibly harbor ill-feelings toward that group. Although beyond the argument covered here, I suspect that this cognitive fallacy is commonly taken advantage of by public-relations firms the world over. As applied to leadership, the tactic is geared to softening the hard corners of elitism as evinced in leadership roles. I turn first to the blatant, yet strangely unspoken layers of exclusion permitted and exasperated in the coronation itself, then I shall turn to the matter of ideological product placement, which, by the way, can be distinguished from the ethic of diversity in terms of participation. Claims of encouraging diversity can easily be used as a subterfuge to cover the real motive—that of product placement used to redress any hits to a person’s or institution’s reputation (i.e., reputational capital). I come to the conclusion beyond the ethical dimension that the passive aggression of exclusion is antithetical to Christian leadership, such as could be expected from the titular head of the Anglican Church.
The full essay is at "Elitist Leadership."
