Ah the old carbon copy play of every bigot I’ve ever ‘discussed’ race with on twitter.
Reduce a complex and nuanced topic into a series of yes/no questions so they can pull out a big gotcha.
I’ll pass this round.
Anyone else?
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Or as a lad that I used to work with would say “Don’t get a bean in your bucket”. 
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having met you, you could nearly pull that off 
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You don’t want equality. Every thing you post suggests you are desperate to preserve the status quo.
If you really want equality, then you will need to give up some of your privilege. I don’t think you are willing to do that.
To answer your question. Yes I believe in equality, but I also understand - because I’ve bothered to do my reading - that moves towards equality might not feel like moves towards equality from my perspective, because I am the beneficiary of a society that is routinely rigged in my favour, and breaking that down is going to, at times, feel uncomfortable to me.
For example, if I go into the job market now, my chances of waltzing into a great job I want are bit reduced from what they were a decade ago, because more organisations are now aware of unconscious bias, and many will have positive discrimination strategies where marginalised people are fast tracked for interview. One response to that is to rage about unfairness, and rant about merit and that ‘the best person should get the job’. Another response would be to reflect that measures like this are to correct historic discrimination and under-representation, and if it feels unfair, that’s just my own privilege being corrected. Also, us white lads are still doing absolutely fine.
I can’t single handedly put tight the wrongs of the slave trade, sort out historic under-representation in TV and Films, or reform the criminal justice system. But what I can do, at the very least, is whenever an organisation makes a change to some aspect of their work to try to be more inclusive, I can not be a dick about it. That’s a good start for anyone.
This sub-Clarkson, ‘whatever next’ world weary middle-aged white man shit needs to be put in the bin.
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i suppose thats where we start to tap in to the true equality debate.
…seems more like the accepting ‘leveling up’ burden will be paid by again, the masses, the people who apart from a general societal benefit, didnt prosper from the slave trade or keeping minimum wage down
i guess what im trying to say is, the version of leveling up you are discussing, the brunt is born by the people in society who prospered the least from institutionalised racism.
for instance, in the most basic sense, my grandfather was a scilian peasant on one side and a boarding house kid on the other…not sure im the guy who should be paying for the ‘sins of my father’ against the indigeanous population.
tax money should go into indigeanous welfare, acknowledging the original custodians is the correct thing to do…but how about the balliuea’s give back half of portsea (old money/rich area) before im expected to be happy about being overlooked for a job …
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So to paraphrase, you believe in equality and positive discrimination?
Oh and any reference to Clarkson I take as a compliment. Sub is a bit harsh, I’m not a fat git any more.
Thanks to training courses based on the whole critical race theory. It’s a circle, we go round and round.
I believe that positive discrimination is a necessary part of the journey towards an equal society.
And I wouldn’t invite comparisons with Clarkson. The man is a nasty, bigoted, elitist, gobshite.
Coming from you, I take that as an even bigger compliment. Anybody who rubs you up the wrong way is a star in my book!
You know I love you really 
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Mate, everything about you is sound - except this.
Come on. Join us.
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In the words of Seinfeld, you seem to have yada yadaed past the key part.
‘Paid for’ is a bit of a strange phrase to use, and I think that ‘the masses’ ultimately have a lot more to gain from a more equal society than they lose. A job market that doesn’t discriminate against someone one for the colour of their skin, is probably also doing a decent job of not discriminating against people from working class backgrounds. I’ve got a lot more in common with the Indian family down the road, that I have with the billionaire at the top of the hill - yet the billionaire seems to bit doing a great job of pitting us against each other with imagined ‘culture war’ nonsense.
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are you in Switzerland?
not really…the point i was trying to make is whatever advantage my farmin grandfather attained by this uneven situation was not because of design, it was a by product.
whilst im not denying we werent at the end of torid racial abuse which denied us a chance of a decent life, we certainly werent given oppurtunities people wanted to make out…grandfather worked the railways, father the fruit markets then started in the building industry…trust me, there was no leg up in any of it that was tangible… surely mascotts ‘billionaire on the hill’ was the designed recipiant of this unequal society, surely thier children should be footing the bill.
but nope…lets let the plebs squabble it out over a middle management job.
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And people say we’re not changing as a society
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"For example, if I go into the job market now, my chances of waltzing into a great job I want are bit reduced from what they were a decade ago, because more organisations are now aware of unconscious bias, and many will have positive discrimination strategies where marginalised people are fast tracked for interview. One response to that is to rage about unfairness, and rant about merit and that ‘the best person should get the job’. Another response would be to reflect that measures like this are to correct historic discrimination and under-representation, and if it feels unfair, that’s just my own privilege being corrected."
This sounds like positive discrimination, which was tried in the 70s / 80s and failed miserably.
But lets run with it -
According to your rationale Liverpool and all other first teams should be made up along the following racial lines regardless of ability.
Major ethnic -White: 87.17% White British: 81.88% (2011)
Minor ethnic
Asian British: (6.3%)
Black British: (3.0%)
British Mixed: (2.0%) Other: (0.9%)
In rounded terms and in general to roughly comply with the positive discrimination idea
9 of the 11 players should be white.
1 of the 11 should be Black
1 of the 11 should be Asian
That would reflect the ethnic make-up of the UK
But there is a problem here - 43% of PL players are black. Does that mean some will have to lose their jobs to comply with the positive discrimination measures? Or just white players would need to stand aside? Which current Liverpool players for instance?
Another problem is that there are only 12 Asian players in the PL - not enough to go around all the clubs. Other less talented Asian players will have to be drafted in to make up the numbers.
As black players are massively over-represented in the PL according to your racial lines perhaps some of them should stand aside to allow more Asian footballers to have a fair go?
Or looking at it another way - Black players have excelled in the PL, which is a fantastic credit to multi-culturalism. Do you really want to reverse the giant strides that have been made? Do you want to see workplaces that reflect the ethnic diversity of the country or not?
If you apply the strategy to all industries then that includes sport - at all levels. Skin colour not merit is your employment criteria. Zero discrimination, no matter how talented someone may be, they have to step aside?
Are you sure?
- I have been “economical” with the maths - a rough calculation - the exact figures and percentages are not what I am trying to illustrate here but they are broadly correct.
Figures are from 2021 Census.
Your argument makes about as much sense as saying ‘we need more white RnB acts’.
Football is a problematic comparison to draw for a few reasons. Firstly, and most importantly, football still has problems with race. There is an (ineffectual) campaign to address this, players are still subject to racist abuse, and there are still too many players reporting abuse from coaches and other players. Secondly Football has representation problems in other areas where are the gay footballers? Where are the Indian football players. Where are the black managers? - that’s a huge problem in football. Just because football is ‘doing well’ with black representation, doesn’t mean there aren’t problems elsewhere.
Thirdly, and most importantly we should ask why there are so many black professional football players? I can’t remember where I saw an article on this (let’s face it, it was probably the guardian) but there were interesting ideas raised for why black players are over-represented in football. I’ve tried to find it, but I can’t.
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The increase in the numbers of black footballers, also coincides with the explosion in the numbers of foreign imports, so it’s very hard to make sweeping statements about representation. When you are drawing your recruitment pool from across Africa and South America as well as Europe, that’s inevitably going to have an impact of perceived diversity.
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You still get a selection bias in favour of black footballers, because the idea persists that black players are stronger, more aggressive, more physical, have better stamina, which is itself a racist trope (going back to slavery, when ascribing animalistic characteristics to black people was used as justification for treating them as sub-human). You still get coaches who like a ‘big, black lad’ up front, especially from the previous generation.
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A lot of black kids are drawn to football because they see it as their only way out of a poverty trap. They just feel they don’t have the breadth of opportunities, so football becomes the only option. Fewer white kids have to go all in on an escape strategy that has such a small chance of success. It would be like if you noticed the Lottery is mostly won by poorer people, so thinking it positively discriminates for them, rather than noticing that wealthier people don’t feel desperate enough to play it.
You also get a similar thing in music. I remember someone once saying to me that the charts now are dominated by black artists and wondering why that is? Hmm maybe it’s the black kids who are throwing everything at music because it the only chance they think they’ve got?
The obvious problem with this, is that a kids chance of becoming a pro footballer is incredibly small, and 99% of wannabe’s careers fizzle out before they get anywhere. Maybe the right thing to do would be not be to focus on the ones who do make it, but consider the more multitudes more that don’t. Loads of kids don’t make it in football, but how does that break down across racial line. Do the same proportion on white kids make it as black kids? Has it taken ten times the number of black wannabes as white to get 43% figure. We don’t know, so it would be wrong to draw inferences on this.
It would be incredibly churlish to look around at how problematic representation of black people is amongst the vast majority of sectors - CEOs, politics, academia, teaching, NGOs etc etc - but decide to tackle a sector in which black represention is particularly high to give more white kids a chance. That would be the very definition of structural racism, and fail to see this over-representation as a kind of racism in itself. I would expect that if black kids saw more opportunities elsewhere in life, maybe fewer would see a long shot gamble like a pro football career as the only option.
Just as a side point, the FA gets a lot of shit when it comes to their administration of the pro game, but the stuff I’ve been required to engage with at grassroots level is outstanding. The impression you come to is that the organisation genuinely really, really cares about inclusion, and making sure football is accessible to as many people as possible - regardless of whether the go on to have a career in the game. There is a lot to credit there, and I’ve been really impressed.
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They’re mostly too busy playing cricket. And I kid you not, I was biting my tongue one night recently listening to somebody saying we should ban cricket and advertise football massively in India (specifically) as the only reason they play is because of the hideous British empire. Mrs led me away as it was a friend of hers she didn’t want me to murder.
@Mascot I like the line about not enough white RB acts, agree completely. But then if the number is greater than 0, there too many RB acts
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It’s absolutely true that you can track cricket playing nations with our colonial past. But I see this as one of the small number of upside to the British Empire. People in India adore cricket - I’m glad we introduced them to the sport. I’m not sure it fully balances out the evils of our colonial past though .
It quite amusing that your friend (?) hasn’t seen the irony of tackling one form of cultural imposition by aggressively pursuing another.
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No friend of mine, hell, if he likes my wife he must be unbalanced to start with! When I was at lords, I was surprised at the number of Indian fans just there for the cricket.