ON THE day Professor Jason Arday died, before I knew he was dead, I was talking about him. I was angry about what I was watching, troubled by whether he was still being treated as a human being.
I remember asking: would they be doing this to him if he were White?
The allegations against him absolutely deserved scrutiny. Nobody should be beyond accountability because of their race, position or achievements.
When scrutiny becomes something else
What disturbed me was the way scrutiny appeared to be turning into the public dismantling of his character.
It no longer seemed to be simply about examining allegations concerning Jason Arday’s academic work.
His achievements, his history, his credibility and ultimately whether he deserved to have reached the position he occupied were all being picked apart.
Then, hours later, I discovered that Jason Arday had been found dead. He was just 41.
I want to be very clear: we should not speculate about the circumstances of his death or make connections we cannot evidence.
But surely his death should make us stop and ask some deeply uncomfortable questions about race, power and the way we treat people when they fall from the pedestal on which society once placed them.
Because Jason Arday wasn’t simply another professor.
When he became a professor at Cambridge aged 37, he was celebrated as the youngest Black person ever appointed to a professorship there.
His Blackness mattered when Britain wanted to celebrate his success. We cannot then pretend race automatically became irrelevant when Britain scrutinised the allegations against him.
There is a pattern here that many Black and other racially minoritised people recognise. When we succeed, our success can become evidence that diversity works.
When allegations are made or things go wrong, our individual circumstances can quickly become ammunition for those who argue that diversity doesn’t.
A White academic accused of wrongdoing is rarely treated as evidence that White academics were given opportunities they didn’t deserve.
The burden of being exceptional
Allegations against a Black academic can very quickly become part of a wider conversation about diversity, standards and whether people like him should have been there in the first place.
That difference matters. White people are generally afforded the luxury of being treated as individuals.
Those of us from Global Ethnic Majority (GEM) communities can find ourselves carrying an entire community into the room with us.
One person’s controversy suddenly becomes bigger than that individual. It becomes about race. Diversity. Immigration. “Woke” institutions. Whether standards have supposedly been lowered. Whether we really earned our place. That isn’t equality. And it creates an enormous, often invisible pressure for GEM people entering institutions where people who look like us remain underrepresented.
Getting through the door isn’t necessarily the end of the battle. Sometimes it is the beginning. You learn that being good might not be enough. You feel you must be exceptional. You prove that you deserve to be there, and then you prove it again.
Can we scrutinise someone without publicly destroying the person? And can we finally afford Black and other racially minoritised people something that should never have been a privilege in the first place? The right to be imperfect and still be human.
And somewhere in the back of your mind sits another question: What happens when I am no longer seen as exceptional?
Will I receive the same grace? The same proportionality? The same presumption of humanity?
Accountability without humiliation
This isn’t an argument against accountability. Equality must include equal accountability. But it must also include equal humanity. There is a difference between investigation and humiliation.
There is a difference between challenging someone’s actions and dismantling their entire identity. And there is a difference between scrutinising allegations and turning someone’s downfall into public entertainment.
We need to recognise those distinctions because racism in modern Britain doesn’t always arrive as an obvious racial slur. Sometimes it lives within systems and cultures.
It can be found in who receives the benefit of the doubt. Who gets a second chance. Whose imperfections are survivable.Who is allowed to be complicated. Who is judged as an individual. And whose controversy becomes evidence against an entire community.
Representation is only the beginning
We spend enormous amounts of time talking about representation. Organisations proudly announce their first Black leader, their first Asian chief executive or their most diverse board.
Photographs are taken. Statements are issued. Progress is celebrated.
But representation cannot simply mean getting racially minoritised people through the door. We must also examine what happens to them once they are inside.
What happens when they struggle? What happens when allegations are made? What happens when they become inconvenient or controversial?
Do the institutions that once celebrated their diversity still insist upon fairness and proportionality when standing beside them becomes difficult?
These questions extend far beyond Jason Arday. They matter to the Black student looking towards academia.
The Asian woman considering leadership. The young person from a GEM community wondering whether those powerful institutions really have space for someone like them. And everyone who has experienced the strange contradiction of being told that representation matters while knowing that being “the first” or “the only” can carry an enormous burden.
The right to be imperfect
That is what stayed with me after hearing Jason had died.
Behind every headline was a human being.
A son. A husband. A father. A friend. A man whose life was bigger than the controversy surrounding him.
Whatever conclusions might ultimately have been reached about his academic work, his humanity should never have depended upon his perfection.
None of ours should.
Perhaps, then, the real test of racial equality in Britain isn’t whether a Black man can become a Cambridge professor.
Jason Arday already proved that he could. The harder test comes afterwards.
Can that same Black man face allegations, be questioned and subjected to legitimate scrutiny without his Blackness becoming part of a wider argument about whether he deserved to be there?
Can we separate allegations concerning an individual from the legitimacy of diversity?
Can we scrutinise someone without publicly destroying the person?
And can we finally afford Black and other racially minoritised people something that should never have been a privilege in the first place?
The right to be imperfect and still be human.
Find the original article published on The Voice here: Why wasn’t Jason Arday allowed simply to be human? – Voice Online
