Representative of what? London is one of the most diverse cities in the world.
Of course, if you measure diversity by the color of people's skin, then that's different. Otherwise, London might be the most diverse city on Earth, sharing the number one spot with New York.
Whiteness in America comes from the unification of caucasians from broad cultural and economic backgrounds against the black slaves that were being raped, tortured and dehumanized systematically over generations. And instead of rectifying the problem by dismantling the concept of whiteness (because it reenforces the power of racial division & hierarchy), it gets promoted as truth and vilified in the name of equality. From an outside perspective, even as close as Canada, this appears regressive.
As for the choice to highlight black and brown people in this project that others in the GP are complaining about.. maybe they’re under represented in these fields in the UK and the government wants to fix that? I have to say if you get upset about minorities being over-represented you need to find a better use of your limited time on Earth.
Or maybe they're not, and this is a representative sample? Academics move around a lot: seemingly half the faculty at my local university are immigrants, and a good chunk of the graduates become emigrants.
You might be right, but I get unreasonably annoyed when people insist that the existence of women or members of minority groups must be a diversity initiative. The mere existence of people is not a political statement.
This is not the real problem here. Black scientists are perfectly okay.
https://www.ethnicity-facts-figures.service.gov.uk/uk-popula...
And diversity means more than just white people.
Bringing this back around to the original topic, none in the photos from the article are from the simple majority category. N is small, so that's not necessarily astounding, but the n=50 photo set also follows a similar pattern.
I don't disagree with it, I think it's more than fine to highlight that the modern split is very different than the typical historical split , but it is there and London is perhaps more bland than the photos suggest.