All-inclusive

How anti-gatekeeping became all the rage

There’s a long-form journalism style where you take an abstract word that’s been trending lately, pick it apart, give its history, and come to some kind of satisfying conclusion. It is X words long, it is impressive, and it becomes the thing that people link to on the topic. I’m remembering I have written this sort of thing, although mainly for a site that’s no longer hosting them and may not exist at all anymore.

I have also, once, slightly lost my mind over one such thing, wherein someone had the audacity to do one of these on “privilege” before my book on that topic appeared, but after I was already officially writing it. I remember being Not Mad about this at the time.

Anyway if I were going to do one of those abstract-word deep-dives now, I would do it on the word “inclusive.” Specifically, on how “inclusive” took over from “exclusive” and wound up conveying the same thing.

Here is where, in a magazine article, one would put the history of “inclusive.” Etymology also. Data demonstrating when the term began to trend.

Here is where, in this blog post, I will instead first backtrack to digress about “exclusive.” See, the etymology of the word “exclusive” is that the “ex-” comes from… just kidding. Allow me to continue.

“Exclusive” lives in “Frasier” land. It’s that episode (frustratingly not yet popping up in the streaming) where the brothers Crane try to join the platinum level of a health club. It is of a piece with gourmet. It’s from a moment when it was simply understood that people wanted to be richer and thinner than they were. From a time when parents openly spoke about wanting to be in good school districts (if deigning to use public schools to begin with), without flinching or disclaimerizing.

It’s Hyacinth Bucket, needing everything to be very exclusive, even husband Richard’s athlete’s foot. But it’s also the SATC ladies, who will only be seen at the hip restaurants. It is It bags and designer labels. Or it is eschewing designer labels so as to be even classier.

I could, here, explain how “inclusive” took over, but I will opt to show, not tell.

There was a NYT article about the rise and fall of a literary scene operating out of “a run-down townhouse in the West Village of Manhattan.” Within the article and beyond, a tension/debate emerged over whether this was an inclusive gathering of outsiders, of people the art world gatekeepers rejected, or whether it was in fact the opposite of that.

Much was made of a paragraph about how this was “a downtown sanctuary for the city’s creative underclass” also included, moments later, a name-drop of attendee “Fernanda Amis (the daughter of the novelist Martin Amis).” (Could have gone further and noted that Martin Amis is also a son-of, but anyhow.) Writers called this out. Others called out the call-outs.

Everyone—that is, both the people attending this West Village townhouse art party, and the big-name writers rolling their eyes at the article—was doing so in the name of inclusivity. It’s those other people, there, who are being exclusive. They have their little clique, their insular coterie.

Being pro-inclusivity is not just the new hotness but the new exclusivity. It’s at this point widely understood that much of so-called “wokeness” has become elite manners, indicating paradoxically that you went to the right schools or whatever. We have seen the #BLM yard signs in posh all-white neighborhoods. We have heard the pleas to let heroin addicts shoot up on the bus, from people who’ve never ridden a public bus. On this I have no new insights, not now, at any rate.

But what I’m pointing out is how “inclusive” has itself become a buzzword. A sign not that a space will be genuinely welcoming to all (remember we do still live in a world where everything, even the bus, has a cost), but that it will be of-the-moment in how it does its exclusions.