I recently pitched an article to an online publication keen to platform ‘diverse voices’ on higher education policy, including ‘Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion’. My article was coming at it from a different angle to others I’d seen on the website, such as one recommending that we do not arrange chairs in rows where there might be ‘BAME’ staff and students – to be more inclusive (give me a break).
In my article, I made the case against racial eligibility criteria on student opportunities. In response, the editor who reviewed it suggested that I could “argue that these existing schemes [ones targeting individuals based on socioeconomic status rather than race] are insufficient somehow against those for race equality”. I didn’t want to redraft my article to argue for a viewpoint opposite to the one I hold and had written about, and so I left it at that.
But the editor’s response seemed to avoid any acknowledgement of the possibility that there could be a case against racial eligibility criteria on student opportunities. After all (her tone seemed to imply), why would a person not welcome positive discrimination based on race? It’s about ‘race equality’…
Well, why would you – whatever your racial background – not welcome it? Because you want to be treated equally and on merit, not with regard to an irrelevant characteristic like skin colour. You don’t want to be targeted or excluded, or treated more or less favourably, based on that. It seems quite simple to me.
Of course, not everyone shares my perspective on this topic. But we already get ample exposure to the view that we must achieve equal numbers of people from ‘groups’ in every domain of life and at any cost – otherwise there is no equality after all. I don’t have to represent or defend that view here. The uncritical adoption of that view by our institutions is why I’m sitting here and typing this now. I am making a counterargument.
I grew up in what in many ways seemed like post-racial Britain. Not because racism didn’t exist. It did. But a one-sided idea about race was not pushed in your face by the media or other institutions. There was no special training to teach us that people in this racial category are marginalised and think and want this and that, and people in this racial category are this and that and so forth. Race didn’t seem to matter to most people. Even being mixed white and black didn’t seem to matter.
And when race did seem to matter to some people – whatever they could say to undermine your sense of belonging out of ignorance, bigotry or a misguided sense of pity – you knew you had the right to equal treatment under the law. And no one could take that away.
It is more than a small comfort to know that the law of your country protects you in that way, by regarding you as an equal citizen with no special treatment or withholding of rights based on race. And you know something is wrong when it doesn’t.
There are, of course, people who hold the view that the U.K. is racist and that positive discrimination is needed to overcome this. I can respect that as a view, though I do not share it. Some might have their reasons for holding such a view. Experiences and perceptions are real. But the thing is (and I realise I’m stating the obvious here, but that’s where we find ourselves), not everyone has the same experiences or perceives things in the same way.
Two people can thoroughly disagree on just about everything regarding their experiences, though they happen to share a characteristic such as race. And one of them might outright reject the idea that ‘groups’ based on that characteristic even exist as a real category. A specific viewpoint, set of views or ‘lived experience’ is not inherent to a racial ‘group’. That would be racial essentialism by another name.
And so, the ‘lived experience’ of some people shouldn’t be imposed on others or used to undermine something so fundamental and important as equal treatment under the law.
Rejecting race-based positive discrimination isn’t a mad or selfish attempt to disrupt the programme. It’s simply standing up for what you think is right.
This article first appeared on Amber Muhinyi’s Substack. Subscribe here.
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Good article, thanks.
“There are, of course, people who hold the view that the U.K. is racist and that positive discrimination is needed to overcome this. I can respect that as a view, though I do not share it. ”
Well in so far as everywhere is “racist” then the UK would be too. What does “the UK is racist” actually mean? How could we tell when the UK was no longer “racist”? Is eliminating “racism” a realistic or even desirable goal? How can “racism” be eliminated? Sounds a bit like behavioural control. So I am not at all sure that that I can “respect that as a view” because it’s simply so broad as to mean exactly what whoever is advocating it wants it to mean. I think it’s basically in the realms of “everyone should always act towards other people in the best possible way” – unachievable, and not the business of governments or quangos to resolve.
Amen
At my kids school sports day was changed into a non-competitive event. All the kids hated it. The young, all female, new teachers argued it was more inclusive. It went from being the most to the least popular day on the calendar. Kids who were hopeless at sport hated it as much as the sports stars. The kids knew they were being short changed.
It’s similar with positive racial discrimination, everyone feels short changed.
Some years ago when I was employed in the Civil Service a ‘rapid progression’ or some such nonsense scheme was announced. Applications were invited ONLY from people of colour, or coloured people, or whatever the term is. I remember talking to one of my staff, who was a native of Thailand, although he told me he was of Chinese extraction, and asking did he want to go for it? Crikey, his reaction. He was livid. Effing and jeffing.
He said that under no circumstances would he be applying.
‘I don’t want to be promoted because of the colour of my skin. I want to be promoted because I am good enough. They can stick their scheme it’s a F#ckin insult.’
He was ordinarily a really easy-going and placid guy but this form of racism angered and upset him. He really went up in my estimation after this – and of course that reflects badly on me but too many were only too keen to take advantage of warped promotion schemes such as this.
I’m not surprised he was annoyed, a horrendous way to treat people. And if this reflects the sort of thing the “United States” Democrat Party is up to are up to, it’s no wonder that cities under their control are divided places.
Incidentally, I remember a story from Private Eye (under London Calling, funnily enough) about red Ken’s London from 4th May 1984 (“May the Fourth be with you…”) where Richard Branson’s Virgin Clubs Ltd was given a grant (“guarantee against loss”) of £40,000 for a series of concerts of African music (groups like “Kando-Bongo Man”!) as part of GLC’s “Anti-Racist Year” programme, representing a subsidy of £6.90 per seat against their expected thumping loss. I suppose at least it wasn’t blacks only. I dare say Richard spent Londoner’s money wisely… This sort of stuff has been going on a long time.
That reminds me, a Lithuanian acquaintance told me how at his son’s nursery there was a welcoming message in many languages – but not in his mother tongue, Russian. Some really are more equal than others…
You can have the same in England: There’s a sizable German minority living here. But multilingual signs almost never include German.
Or in the USA: The 2014 album from Ted Nugent (Shutup & Jam!)
includes a song I Love My BBQ mocking so-called animal rights activists. Part of the text is an enumeration of various ethnicities of the population of the USA which all love their barbecue as well. As sung, there’s a That’s what the Germans do clearly audible. But that’s obviously not in the printed lyrics.
The left have a habit of pushing through incredibly insane, harmful, disruptive policies by cloaking them in a mantle of supposedly good intentions that insulates them from all pushback and criticism.
On the matter of race, their solution is to solve a problem of racism (which most of the time only they see) with… racism. Solve racism towards black people with racism towards white people. Brilliant.
The fundamental problem, of course, is the concept of equality. Society has been brainwashed by over a hundred years of socialist policies into accepting that equality is a noble goal. It isn’t it’s the foundations of the kind of tyranny we now live under. The tyranny of the self-appointed arbiters of equality of which there are more every day.
Equality of outcome, equality of opportunity, it’s all the same nonsense. Sound good, but who says what is equal? And why should it be equal?
Thomas Sowell:
“If you believe in equal rights, then what do “women’s rights,” “gay rights,” etc., mean? Either they are redundant or they are violations of the principle of equal rights for all.”
Racial eligibility criteria would seem to violate the principle of equal rights for all, so should be redundant.
Sowell is great
A practical problem with race-based positive discrimination for those supposedly able to benefit from it is that is just another form of informal favoritism: There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch, ie, people in power handing out favours will want something back for that. At least unquestioning loyalty, as this will be relatively powerful people and they’ll be handing out favours to relatively powerless people. If you get some position on merit, ie, (example) as result of an objective test, you can always at least claim that you rightfully earned. If it happened because some upper echelon person felt like favouring you, you’re in a much weaker position.
This highlights many people’s challenge imho. It requires mental dexterity to distinguish between two similar, but subtly nuanced views.
A: “All people should be treated equally.”
A true/false proposition.
B: “Because there are more white people than otherwise in these positions, we can discriminate in order to be ‘fair’ ”
This sounds ‘fluffy’ but ignores the background statistics entirely. Many if not most will not get the difference.
The media voices argue A+B. We argue against B. Then we’re accused of disagreeing with A.
Sneaky
B: “Because there are more white people than otherwise in these positions, we can discriminate in order to be ‘fair’ ”
This is just nonsense: The fact that my skin may look pretty similar to someone else’s skin who’s in position X doesn’t mean it’s fair to treat me worse than other applicants (example) because the fact that the skin of someone who’s in position … looks somewhat similar to mine doesn’t convey any benefits to me. He may have profited from unfair discrimination. But I didn’t. Punishing me because someone else allegedly profited from something in the past is a definition of unfair.
Nice rant, but did my tone not make it clear how nonsensical I consider this viewpoint?
Sheesh, nuanced phrasing really isn’t appreciated. Clue: picking the logic apart implies a careful examination of the subject.
The msm headlines operate at the “all people are wonderful” (A) while the on-the-ground objections are at the level of “but what about pertinent aspects x,y,z?” (B), which are dismissed as ‘evil’ because of disagreement with (A)
We’re being played by those hoping to bait us. Eyes open troops…
This was an argument and not a rant and your assumption that I must have misunderstood your standpoint regarding this statement is wrong.
What you gave as B is principally identical to In the past, we had a policy of hiring only black-haired people. This was obviously unfair to people with hair colours other than black, hence, our new fair policy is we’ll hire only people whose hair is not black! But in reality, this just means we keep our unfair general hiring policies (based on hair colours) and just change mistreated and preferentially treated groups. It’s not possibly to rectify past wrongs by more wrongdoing because the people negatively affected by that are not the people who benefitted from it in the past.
There’s an underlying notion that there’s a superpersona race-of-the-black-haired-people here which benefitted unfairly in the past and hence, if we now stop being nice to the race-of-the-black-haired-people, that’s only fair. But this superpersona is a theoretical concept which doesn’t really exist: It’s all individuals, regardless of their hair colours and In the past, we mistreated people because of their hair colour. In order to rectify that, we’ll keep doing so! is something only a lunatic could take seriously.
NB: This is still an just argument against the B-proposition your formulated. It can’t hurt (IMHO) to have one here.
But I don’t see your argument as relevant in the above. I have no axe to grind on the validity or not of “B” and used it as an example of the guff we are fed constantly.
The tactics I described exist and are being used. Argue the details, be labelled as against “equality” or “diversity” intentionally trying to put you on the back-foot. Or question climate hysteria and get called a denier etc. Most people would do anything to avoid some of these labels, so it’s also an effective tactic.
Many of the world’s elite sports seem to be a domain of a certain type of athlete and as an overweight, old, white man I feel really excluded.
If ”sports” such as rifle shooting, archery and curling can be an Olympic event then I think in the spirit of inclusivity indoor bowls should be allowed to be included. I mean, squash isn’t an Olympic sport but firing a gun is? Which mentalist makes up these nonsensical rules??
” Why would a person not welcome positive discrimination based on race? It’s about ‘race equality’…”
Or to put it another way, “why would a person not welcome… discrimination…?” So not very equal. Do some really believe that we will help “BAME” people (I thought they weren’t going to use that term any more?) by discriminating against their non-“BAME” friends and colleagues? Or for that matter that we will “protect” the elderly by locking them up and making their lives miserable? There are some right nut jobs out there!
As somebody once said, there is no such thing as positive discrimination, just discrimination.
And speaking of equality, Mark Steyn is back!!
https://www.steynonline.com/13216/back-from-the-dead
Oh brilliant.
You don’t want to treat races differently?
So stunning & brave.
That’s sarcasm by the way.
Any argument that dignifies aspects of such hateful, divisive and insulting theory is a mistake.
Makes me think of a variant of the old joke (https://users.cs.northwestern.edu/~riesbeck/mathphyseng.html – Sheep in Scotland), only this time the punchline is like:
“Moderate, intelligent person after seeing an act of racism”: Britain contains at least one person, at least one of whom is a racist”
Woke liberal, on seeing exactly the same thing: “Britain is completely racist”
How could any be proud if they are positively discriminated? I would only ever want to achieve on my own merits.
Sorry to go off at a tangent from the article but I see the media are being very quite about the latest “police officers in America kill a person of colour who they stopped for a traffic offence”.
I don’t suppose that’s got anything to do with all the officers also being ‘of colour’ would it?