The curse of diversity

Is it a coincidence that the latest crop of ethnic-minority stars is neither too dark nor too alien? Black and Asian art must dare to be different, says Yasmin Alibhai-Brown

Monica Ali, a bright new novelist who looks a little like the young Cher, has arrived. She is on the excitedly wagging tongues of the mattering classes. Most white critics have fallen under her spell; inexorable Ali publicity ensures that we, the readers, feel our lives will be dull and bloodless unless we buy her book Brick Lane. Her place is now assured in the world of glittering prizes and puff, just as Zadie Smith's was previously. Here is yet another jewel in our crown, our "multicultural society" that is now so receptive and full of promise.

This latest flurry and commotion will last until the next "ethnic" writer is launched. Maybe it is envy, maybe it is incurable cynicism, but most black and Asian Britons are both delighted and wary - always wary of the system and how skilfully it maintains the status quo.

The arts, the media, the heritage business and popular culture have indeed opened their doors - ask Ali, Meera Syal, Sanjeev Bhaskar, Anish Kapoor, Gurinder Chada et al. These stars don't question the system much any more. It is cool now to adore books about East End Bangladeshis, and the truly smart appear on The Kumars at No 42 or at Notting Hill Carnival. Martin Bashir brings revelations to the living-rooms of Cornwall, and White Teeth is read by the children of earls and by Welsh churchmen. A kurtha is a must this summer, Bombay Dreams mints money, mixed casting is now the norm from Holby City to the RSC. Chris Ofili is representing Britain at the Venice Biennale, an important affirmation. And, lest we forget, Prince William had an "African" theme for his 21st birthday bash. (Who, I wonder, wore the best nose bone?)

Only a bore or pathological depressive would deny that individual black and Asian Britons have become big-time players in British culture, which is itself endlessly shape-shifting now. Demographics, increasing disposable wealth among Britons of colour and globalisation make it imperative that cultural production should appeal to a wide range of cultural consumers.

Ten years back, in spite of pioneers such as Hanif Kureishi, Salman Rushdie and Lenny Henry, black and Asian talent was kept somewhere safely distant where their peculiar noises and choruses would not disturb decent white folk deep in the tidal music of opera or the smoky gossip of Coronation Street. Interestingly, a new, somewhat retrogressive Arts Council initiative showcasing "ethnic" arts is titled "Decibel" - tumultuous, cacophonous, presumably.

Look at us now, say key power-merchants. Our energetic "diversity" policies are bearing fruit, and the nation is happily sucking on the juices. Yes, but for some of us, the juice is sour. This diversity still feels hollow, shallow, sometimes yet another trick to divert us. We may have entered new enclosures with more wily guards.

Ali is a gifted storyteller, and Syal and others say they love the book. But is she part of a new breed of preferred "ethnic" writers? Is it impertinent to ask whether it is a coincidence that Zadie Smith, Hari Kunzru and now Ali are all mixed race, au fait with Oxbridge, not too dark or troublingly alien? They write compellingly because they inhabit and embody spaces between nations, cultures and continents. Countless others with talent who don't have that favoured profile live in the shadows.

The list includes Preethi Nair, an appealing, fresh writer who her first book, Gypsy Masala, herself, then pretended to be a PR agent promoting an excellent new writer; Ruksana Ahmed, a novelist and regular Radio 4 playwright; Suhayl Saadi, the brilliant Scot-Muslim who wrote The Burning Mirror; and Leila Aboulela, whose play The Mystics I chose for "Pick of the Week" on Radio 4.

If Ali was a dark, shy Bangladeshi woman in a sari, her book would have remained in Brick Lane. Diversity is all about boxes, labels, niches, marketing, patronage and trepidation too. If, say, Linda Grant had written about an adulterous Bangladeshi wife, established publishers would have had cold feet, just as they did with Maggie Gee's outstanding novel The White Family, a brave, empathetic exploration of racism in a London family. Sarah Dunant rightly observed on Radio 4's Start the Week recently: "Literary establishments look for authentic voices outside themselves, but because they only live inside themselves they don't quite recognise the authentic other. They can only stereotype what they think it is."

Most critics live on the outside of such books too. Unlike in the US, we have hardly any black and Asian cultural gatekeepers. Effusive reviews of "black" books and shows by white critics are rarely replicated by reviewers intimate with the world being described. Aparisim Ghosh, a British Asian writing in Time magazine, found Brick Lane "as dull as dhal - warm, easily digested and lacking in flavour". He despised the clichés, homilies and aphorisms, and feels free enough to say so. Maybe that is why Ali's publishers vetoed Maya Jaggi - multiple-award-winning literary critic, interviewer of writers such as Umberto Eco, but unfortunately Asian and therefore not good enough to interview Monica Ali, who doesn't want to be seen only as a "coloured person".

Niche provision is another barrier. Greg Dyke gives us a digital Asian radio service, but most network BBC radio is largely untouched by the fluidity and flux of our globalised nation. If you watch enough BBC2, 3 and 4, you could fantasise that the Windrush never arrived. No Asian presents a cookery programme; no Caribbean examines our unkempt houses or tells us how to dress - even though black women are among the sassiest, most gorgeously dressed Britons. Highbrow arts and books programmes are white (Bonnie Greer is the exception) unless there is something "ethnic" to discuss. In my next life, I want to be Mariella Frostrup - so lovely, so clever, now such a literary person.

The Arts Council, the British Council, the V&A and the Museum of London are slowly moving beyond superficial multicultchi projects to link into the creative dynamics of our society, but others remain stuck in the past. At the Hay literary festival, an all-white panel including Baroness Blackstone and Alan Yentob earnestly asked how black people could be encouraged to enter heritage establishments. The whole premise was insulting, assuming that black and Asian Britons are still trainee Brits instead of agents of change.

Here's an idea (copyrighted). These ex-empire museums should have soap boxes where, at agreed times (like the feeding schedules at the zoo), polemicists can address crowds, who can debate with the speakers. Proud British traditionalists could have their say, and anti-colonialists would get their arguments heard. That is the kind of national conversation we are still not having.

Storms would rise out of such a radical shift. They would hate it, purveyors of separate black and/or Asian arts and white establishments which sail on as if it is still the 1950s. But, beyond safe consumer pleasures, lie deep and exciting waters - transgressive ideas, national memories which disturb and re-awaken passions, and are a truer sense of what we are becoming - and themes which arouse. East is East infuriated many Muslims in denial about their mongrel cultures; a black man playing an English king infuriates the Daily Mail. Good, excellent. Let's overthrow killing certainties and knock down presuppositions about singular identities.

The Royal Court makes that happen and Roy William's sharp new play Fallout, about a black policeman, continues that tradition. Stratford East too, with the wonderful show,Da Boyz, a hip hop version of an old Rogers and Hart musical (which, scandalously, the Arts Council did not support).

This is art that dares. It rejects the dogmas of both conservatism and diversity. It challenges, upsets, enlivens - and properly reflects the soul of our restless, imaginative nation.