huh? i've got a feeling i'm going to utterly disagree with you on that unfortunate choice of example...
That's why positive racial discrimination is illegal though...? The reasons they always give for asking the question on the application forms I have filled in have been, as I said, for statistical monitoring purposes. For instance if they discovered that predominantly white people were applying for certain jobs and used that information to change the way they went about recruiting and advertising positions, that would be a legal use of the information. It's unlawful for them to choose to employ or not employ someone on the grounds of race except in the very specific cirumstances outlined under the "Genuine Occupational Requirements" in the Race Relations Act.
I can totally see the point of it but it is the legal exceptions and pigeon holing that prove somewhat hypocritical and therefore don't address the situation properly. EG. If I was to apply for a job in an Indian restaurant they would be quite within their rights to turn me down for being white (regardless of ability) ... however if an Indian dude was to apply for a similar job in a pie 'n' mash shop, selling jellied eels and traditional cockney food, the employer could potentially be branded racist for not considering him. In a care setting, a patient from an ethnic minority has the right to request a carer from the same ethnic background, however a white patient would not be allowed to do this (and rightly so IMHO). This has nothing to do with language barriers and it does happen regularly. I can see where it all has stemmed from, as it does address issues of inequality, however it seems to push things too far in the other direction, which seems unfair and enables people to play the race card to laugh in the face of the community. It also seems to breed resentment from many white people who assume that they are being victimised. I'm starting to think that there is a big difference between an integrated community and a multicultural community. Many of these laws that encourage multiculturalism seem to just keep us divided. I wish I knew what the answer was ~ do we respect and encourage the preservation of all ethnic groups and allow them to exist seperately, keeping them all nicely pigeon holed ... or do we encourage everyone to become more like each other and mix until we are all part of the same big community?
I was thinking of home helps for the elderly etc. There are personal care services that may be better carried out by someone of the same sex.
I was talking to a friend about this, she is a student nurse in the same area as me; I guess this email she sent me sums a lot of it up quite well I suppose that as ethically wrong as creating these divisions might be, you really do have to put the clients before any political cause.
my grandfather used to work for the local council allocating houses. before all these ethnic tick boxes arrived he used to allocate council houses based on need and circumstances. the system then changed and he had to allocate a certain percentage to each ethnic group. the problem with that was that we have such a huge ethnic minority group in our town that it meant they were actually offered less houses than they were before the system came in. how fucked up is that? a system that was introduced to prevent people being turned down for things on the grounds of their race actually resulted in more being turned down so the percentages all added up. peace and love stardust xxx
I set up a "challenging racism" sub group of the equal opps team at the college where I taught for too long a time. The idea behind this equal opps section of an application form is to keep a tab on how recruitment is going, to try to keep checks on whether or not your recruitment is representative of the local population. If it is not then measures can be taken to rectify the problem. The problem is that most equal opps measures end up being just about being seen to do the right thing, not about actually doing the right thing. The idea is there, but as is typical in our society, our action is reacive rather than proactive. As an example, in our college we had good equal opps policies. We had all the tick boxes on recruitment forms. We could collect data. We could then tell, for example, the construction department that they had too few students from ethnic minorities, we could tell them (usually mentioned in senior management meatings and then filtered down) that they had equal opps issues. THAT WAS IT! The only other mention of equal opps when I was there was a memo pre college inspection telling us what was acceptable/unacceptable terminology when speaking about people with disabilities, how sentance structure could be changes to put the person first before the disability. Talk about turning people off to the idea of equal opps! What didn't happen, what should have happened, what is THE ONLY WAY to tackle issues of equal opps in a pro active way is training and education. But that costs time and money. BTW - to all those of you who say "the thing is that your ethnicity doesn't matter" - yeah, in an ideal world. Unfortunately we live in a world dominated by white men where institutional racism is just a natural part of the human psychi, and regardless of what the anti-pc folk would have us believe, people from all ethnic backgrounds are under-represented in almost all areas of employment. Example. Commission for black staff in FE Key findings: · Black staff are under-represented in individual colleges and at local and regional levels compared with learner populations. · Most colleges employ fewer than 5% Black staff. · Black staff are under-represented at management and senior management level. · Only 1% of principals are Black. · Many college corporations have no Black governors or corporation clerks. · Out of 134 colleges with 2178 governors, only 178 are Black. · Black lecturing staff are over-represented in part-time, hourly paid lecturing posts. · Proportionately fewer Black staff are on permanent contracts compared with their White colleagues. · Black staff are disproportionately concentrated in contracted-out services. · Black lecturers are concentrated in certain curriculum areas, particularly continuing education, which includes basic skills and English for Speakers of Other Languages and to a lesser extent in maths and science departments. · More Black staff are educated to at least first degree level than their White counterparts. · There are very few senior and full-time Black inspectors. · The percentage of Black learners has increased in further education over recent years. · Overall Black learners continue to underachieve compared with White learners. · Most colleges have equal opportunity policies, although prior to 31st May 2002, few had developed discrete race equality policies. · Most colleges claim to use ethnic monitoring data, but few set targets for the employment or progression of under-represented groups. Typical. Underrepresentation in important jobs - senior management etc, but over represented in hourly paid no contract temporary posts - and this is in colleges, the places that are supposedly full of PC do-gooders. Yeah right. So, in answer to your original question paul, I see the reasons behind these tick boxes, but the fustration and the offence caused is not by the questions in themselves, just that the whole process highlights just how unequal we are and continue to be, and the knowledge that a few tick boxes does absolutely completely and utterly nothing at all to address the real problems - they just serve to fuel the "people who love to be victims even though they are not" - you now, the mainstream folk who love to think that they are hard done to by left wing politics, who think that these tick boxes are designed to make sure that they don't get a look in at the job. Bollocks!
Yeah, without quoting everything you said I agree in priciple with most of that ... in my uni, the staff are nearly all white, but in Newham, where the campus is based, the ethnic minority population is over 50% (possibly closer to 80%). I may be wrong, but what the system seems to fail to do is look at local averages rather than national averages. Either way this proves that any ethnic monitoring just fails to solve the problem. To me ethnic monitoring goes too far to seperate people into nice little pigeonholes without looking at other factors such as class. It seems that it is mainly white working class people who get disgruntled at this 'pc' stuff because they feel that they too are being under-represented. In some circles now the working class aren't even considered to exist. The obvious danger with this is that far right groups like the BNP use this to forward their own sick agenda. Remember that it was mainly the white working class who fought off the Blackshirts and Nazis. The truth is that the deprived working class areas at one time probably integrated more with ethnic minority groups than anywhere else in the country ... After all, you rarely see mass immigration happening in affluent middle class neighbourhoods. In normal employment situations you can totally see the aims behind it, it just seems to fail to address the problems at a grassroots level. I guess the aims are slightly different on our course, we are asked to put ethnicity down to help our learning needs. For instance, there is a Moroccan girl on my course who fears that if she puts that she is Moroccan then she will end up working with other Moroccans when she want's to work in more 'mainstream' social work. My own gripe is that I do not want to just be working with white kids, I don't want being white to hold me back from situations where I might learn something about other ethnicities.
I heard an interesting interview with an RCMP spokeswoman a couple of years ago, and she had callers to the radio show who were irate that they were hiring on the basis of ethnicity. She pointed out that in the year previous 66% of all hirings were white males, and overall 77% of all officers were white males. Yet these callers were furious cuz they perceived white males as being discriminated against. Vancouver City Police also has hired on the basis of ethnicity. They had to. Vancouver has a huge asian population, and if a crime occurs in Vancouver's Chinatown, 'white' cops are not going to find out squat. For practical purposes of efficient law enforcement, the Vancouver Police needed more asian officers. I don't like it, it's not fair, but what do you do? Either continue with the status quo, which we all know historically has favoured hiring whites, or try to make it a 'little' more balanced at the expense of some qualified individuals not getting hired strictly cuz they are white?
If I lost a job to someone becuz I am white, to someone who is a member of a group that my country's majority have traditionally looked down on, made jokes about, and discriminated against, I would not lose a wink of sleep. So be it. It would actually make me feel good. What is the deal with people? The laws were enacted decades ago to make it unlawful to deny those traditionally discriminated against jobs based on their ethnicity. Has it made a dent? No. So I support the 'biased' and 'unfair' way that it is now being addressed. There appears to be no other way. I read that not too long ago, the deans of all the major Canadian Universities were white males. Not sure if that is still the case. I balk at the excuse that they all were the best applicant. It may be so, but I have a really hard time accepting that on faith. Every single one of those institutions had not had even one applicant that was a woman or non-white, who was as or more qualified? Very doubtful in my view. PS, whoever anonymously repped me for that last post, thanks.
Its like a balance. sometimes you might see the balance tipping the other way in the battle to reach equilibrium. but don't believe it happens as much as some would have you believe. Paul, you made me think there. You are right - all action towards equality seems to have almost as much negative effect of turning folk off than positive effects, but I had never really equated it to a class thing. I shall mulch that one for a while. Cheers!
