You are allowed to directly discriminate if you can show an objective justification for doing so. Trying to ensure that your organisation has a diverse demographic in proportion to the general population is theoretically permissible - each situation is judged on its own merits.
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One aspect of gender identity that is also topical today is the scrapping of gender neutral terms in the Maternity Bill that’s just gone through Parliament. Sorry, but that was going too far and I’m delighted that words such as mother and woman will now be used.
Not if you’re from a poor working class background, they’re not.
And you wonder why the Red Wall collapsed.
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I think that one is quite an easy one to solve.
When registering with the midwives, people can easy request that they are not referred to as ‘mother’ or ‘father’ if they wish. I’d expect midwives and clinic staff to be accommodating of that.
It doesn’t need the legislation.
Eh? Firstly, I’m not right-wing, nor is my agenda. Secondly, I’m not sure that facts have an agenda, do they?
Is that image supposed to be a screenshot of an email or a mock up because that looks fake. The source also doesn’t mention where they got it from and a quick scroll through their twitter page looks like they just tweet things to rile people up.
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I don’t know. I did search to see if I could find a better source and the only thing that came up was Guido and I’m not a massive fan of that account. Guido said the source was Peter Lowe directly. I went to Peter Lowe’s twitter feed and there’s no comment from him. I’m guessing he would say if it was false but maybe he hasn’t yet seen it.
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That’s a different form of discrimination. Both need tackling. But as @kopstar said direct discrimination is justifiable if there is a good reason to do so.
I’m from a working class background. Single parent, council estate. I don’t need a lecture in the difficulties of coming from that background.
The issue you raise in that tweet is nothing to do with Sky’s recruitment policies. It’s about boys from working class communities getting an education and going on to Uni.
I’m a big fan of getting education standards raised to the point where everyone can compete on merit. And that includes working class kids, and black kids (who are far more likely that white kids to be from a poor family).
The point of unconscious bias processes is to remove the tendency of recruiters to choose someone like themselves, and that’s as true for socio-economic background as it is for skin colour, sexuality or gender.
The historic issue at the BBC was never any kind of ‘ism’ - it was they tended to recruit from an old boy network from select universities.
I’m not a bit fan of broad brush approaches like that in the Sky tweet, but I completely understand why it’s a step that done employers still feel is necessary, especially when they are really struggling to raise diversity in the workplace. It’s a bit harder to recognise a deficit of socio-economic diversity in a workplace, but by all means let’s have that conversation.
But let’s try and have it without putting white kids and black kids in conflict with each other. That is really unhelpful and just avoids confronting the actual underlying problem.
And I don’t wonder why the red wall collapsed. I’m absolutely clear on that.
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I think we’ve mostly been having a decent conversation without being unpleasant, but I suppose that couldn’t last.
I thought so too but…sigh
Ignoring the ad hominem stuff…your complaint/observation seems to be that the population of the UK is predominantly of white ethnicity. You’re right, it is. Not sure that’s a new dawn though, most people know it’s been that way for a while. More than 30 years at least, I reckon.
Yeah it seems like a classic lie based on a truth. Take the well known concept of increasing ethnic minority and female representation and turn that into a fake email saying no more white males. InfoWars, Breitbart and Fox News have been doing that for a long time.
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Although the source linked in this article does show that white FSM student going to university is increasing which I suppose could be taken as both good and bad.
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Where in my post did I suggest that it was “immigrants,black people, women and see them as the enemy holding them back”?
I was simply reacting to the statement that “white boys needn’t worry because the odds are stacked in their favour”, when clearly, for a white boys from a poor working class background, they are not.
Figures from the Department for Education last year reported that “male white British free school meal pupils are the least likely of all the main ethnic groups to progress to higher education”.
- Across all pupils eligible for free meals 26% went on to university by the age of 19, but for white pupils on free meals the figure was 16% - and only 13% for boys.
- In comparison, 59% of youngsters from black African families on free meals went to university and 32% of black Caribbean youngsters eligible for free meals.
- Among youngsters from Indian families on free meals, 57% went to university and 47% among Pakistani youngsters on free meals.
It is not a question of wanting to hold anyone or any group back, but of ensuring that everyone gets the same opportunities. That initiatives to encourage disadvantaged groups should include this particular disadvantaged group as well.
This is not a new phenomenon, it has been going on for decades. And it is the failure to address the issue, with glib comments about “white privilege”, that provide a ready recruiting ground for the extreme right.
We ignore the problem at our peril.
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I disagree with your observations regarding the justification for some forms of discrimination.
All discrimination is wrong. Positive discrimination just means you still discriminate, but you choose a different set of victims. It is still discrimination.
I agree about improving education for all, and enabling anyone, on their merits, to go onto higher education. It is not about holding anyone back.
Where have I placed white and black in conflict?
It was you who made the generalisation about white boys having the odds stacked in their favour, not me.
I simply pointed out that isn’t true for white boys on free school meals, who are proportionally the least likely to go to university.
I’m pleased to hear it. How do you propose to rebuild it?
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The white working class is definitely at risk of being further disadvantaged by the inadvertent consequences of what are otherwise good intentions towards equality. Being disadvantaged socio-economically (regardless of any other characteristic) is not a protected characteristic, but it should be.
For the most part they are.
On the game of life, if you are white, you get a few squares head start on black people. If you are from a poor back ground, you start a few squares back as well.
If you are white you are not going to face discrimination because of the colour of your skin. You might face discrimination for other reasons, but it won’t be because you are white.
On the hand if you are black, you are also far more likely to be from a poor background, so you getting a double does of discrimination.
You can easily sort the problem of white working class boys struggling by making sure they have every chance to get a good education. If you are black a good education does not eradicate the discrimination you experience - we have to somehow stop 1 in 8 Brits (from the survey I posted early) thinking black people are mentally deficient, inherently lazy or lacking motivation.
That’s a much harder issue, and why positive discrimination is unfortunately a necessary measure in some cases.
I don’t have answer. But I’m fairly sure we don’t pander to the worst prejudices of communities who have been drop fed poisonous shit about immigrants and Europe for years.
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I couldn’t find your graph (can you post a link?), but I did come across this data here:
https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/widening-participation-in-higher-education:
which was published on 30th July 2020, and claims to be the latest data:
I have no idea why the two sets of data don’t appear to agree.
is the survey 1 in 8 brits?
or 1 in 8 white british people?
if its the former, it would be very interesting to know how many in 8 people in britain are white
not interesting enough for me to, yknow, look it up or anything…
I don’t really agree with this.
The thing that holds back working class people from achieving is lack of education and positive investment in those communities. That’s a problem that is easily mitigated by government policy choices. I am not sure discrimination on the basis of being originally from a working class community is that big a thing - lasting embedded prejudice experienced because of your origins, regardless of the qualities you now possess.
I am pretty sure I would have experienced it if that were the case, and I don’t think I have.
However if you are black, you can have the best education and all the experience in the world, and you still face discrimination, because it’s still quite likely that the person interviewing you is thinking, even at the back of their mind, I don’t want to employ one of them.