Tbf there are schemes for getting kids to Oxbridge/medicine/ law/dentistry or even into uni at all. And some of these start early in secondary school, if you have FSM, parents not gone to uni go to underperforming schools etc etc this should be helping. So you may get offered lower grades, get mentored, helped with application forms or interviews etc etc.
I think the point is that if a black person went to White Cross at the same time as you, worked three days a week whilst at uni, was turned down time and time again in interviews down south and then applied for the same job as you, you’d get it. There’s your privilege. You might be worse off than a lot of other white people but put a black person in your exact situation and you have an instant advantage.
Looked at mi post and dunt think I said ya attacked the OP but if it comes across that way way then there was no intention of that and apologies if it does..The main aspect of my reply was where the Beeb going against its own policy would and could lead..also got caught up in the mire of responding without attracting the abuse that occasionally some posts do (got battered on brexit and for not supporting Corbyn). I do appreciate you were expressing your view in a valid manner...
We have all kinds of schemes at work, have had for years, but it’s only very recently that we’ve started to look at socio economic background as a disadvantage to be addressed.
Appreciate there’s help for working class kids there, but that’s mainly aimed at education rather than workplaces. It’s also based on wealth, so helps poor ethnic minorities too. Autonomous employers set their own agenda. There aren’t the centrally funded schemes that are available for educational inequalities. I just hope employers don’t lose sight of other underrepresented groups just because racial disparities have had so much media coverage over the last year. For example, I’m not aware of any roles which only take applicants that were on FSM at school?
That wording could be challenged legally without a doubt. Had it said somewhere in the advertisement words to the effect that 'applications would be welcome from black and minority ethnic people, who are currently under-represented in the Corporation,' it would have got the message across without being legally challengeable. No one would have been excluded from applying on the grounds of their race, or ethnicity. Bad error by the BEEB
The problem here for me is the automatic assumption by the BBC and indeed by the wider authorities and think tanks etc that if you are an ethnic minority you are worse off. Yes that's certainly true in a lot of cases but there are 1.6 MILLION White children living in poverty in this country. Where is their help? Should we really be creating a situation where you are actually disadvantaged if you are a white person in a poor family simply because people of your skin colour have historically been wealthier? Does little Nathan from Kendray (sorry JamDrop) have less of a chance of securing a job at the BBC than Touker Suleyman's millionaire kids just because of their ethnicity? I fully understand why they do things like this but I'm a firm believer that we creating a level playing field and having one team kicking down hill isn't a level playing field and is no more fair than having them kicking up hill. People say that if a black kid and a white kid both struggled in early life and both applied for a job then the white kid gets it because of white privilege. True in a lot of cases, can't and wouldn't argue with that. My issue is that as soon as you say that the black kid HAS to get the job because he's black and the white kid can't have it because he's white that isn't in any way shape or form equality, it's simply changing ends and having the white kid kick up hill for no reason other than other white kids before him were kicking down hill. We haven't created a level playing field, we've just changed who has got privilege. Is privilege suddenly ok just because it's black privilege instead of white privilege? No it's not. Isn't the solution here not to ban people from entering the job race based on their ethnicity but instead to take ethnicity out of the equation completely? The voice has taken looks out of the equation in a TV talent show for singers. Why aren't we promoting a system where we do the same for job applicants? At what point in the process of applying for a job at the BBC do they actually need to know your ethnicity? Age discrimination is a big thing too when it comes to finding a job and so at work we sinply don't have a clue how old an applicant is until the physical interview stage. I've read hundreds of applications where there isn't even the slightest clue about their age. We only ask for job history for the last 5 years so that the most knowledge we have is if they're over 21 or not really, we ask that they don't include their school name or years in the application so that we aren't judging them on where they were educated and can't work out the age from that and basically until they're already shortlisted and seen face to face their age isn't known at all. The next stage we're doing is to ask for no names either so that we don't know if the person is male or female as subconsciously women are given the easier and much nicer jobs in the office whilst men are only considered for the more manual, dirtier, physically harder jobs. Likewise women are subconsciously excluded from these jobs. By removing the name it removes all gender bias and actually also removes any racial bias too. How do you get around the issue of racial or gender bias at the interview stage? Well for a smaller company that's really hard but for a big company like the BBC then surely you can minimise this by having a more diverse interview panel. Changing who gets privilege for jobs isn't equality. Removing the privilege for everyone in the hiring process is.
Excellent post, reading some of the comments it comes across like people are pretty much saying, white people have had their turn now its the black peoples turn, it surely is not the way forward..
Agree 100% with that logic. I regret I wasn't clearer in my post. I'm not questioning (or hoping to mask like a "duh what about White Lives Matter?" troll) the fact that minorities suffer greater discrimination than whites. Also I actually stuffed up my post by becoming distracted and just hitting submit without finishing my point so I could do something else. Consequently the post reads like it is all about me. Me! Me! My original intention was to point out that working class people from Barnsley can be forgiven for wondering what these privileges are that they have apparently had. Yes, there are people worse off than us but to be described as privileged might be hard to take. The word privilege is emotive and carries connotations of being born with a silver spoon in your mouth, not being less discriminated against. We haven't benefited from privilege, we still get overlooked as a best candidate, we've just not been subjected to black levels of discrimination.
There’s some real heartfelt contributions to this thread, and good to see an emotive subject being discussed without any falling out. but this is a good time to put up this quote from Steve Bannon “The longer they talk about identity politics, I got ’em … I want them to talk about race and identity … every day.”
And as if by magic, this is the top news story on the Beeb website today. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-57558746
No such thing as white privilege say tory MP's. Dido Harding wants less "foreigners" in the NHS. Bill to curb protests breaches Human Rights Act. What a c*ntry (sic).
If there are 1.6 million white children living in poverty, out of the total of over 4.3 million children living in poverty (https://www.bigissue.com/latest/chi...-definitions-details-causes-and-consequences/ ) - or over 40% of all children), that implies that 63% of all children in poverty are from a BAME background. Given that the BAME population is about 14% of the UK, that makes you significantly more likely to be raised in poverty if you are from a BAME family.
There is a hierarchy in the UK: (and to be fair many western societies, including USA and Australia) Top Tier: Rich White Men Tier 2: Rich White Women, Rich BAME, Middle Class Men Tier 3: Middle Class Women, Middle Class BAME Tier 4: Working Class White, Middle Class White Immigrant Tier 5: Working Class BAME, Working Class Immigrant (Its more complex than this, but at a high level it will suffice). Most of us are on Tier 4 and its a struggle to move upwards from Tier 4 to Tier 2/3 - but we would be very, very unlikely to make the Top Tier. For many working class BAME/Immigrants, its a struggle to get to the same level we are born on - and they are very unlikely to get to Tier 2. Its one of the reasons that many kicked off about Meghan Markle - as a rich, successful, BAME woman she shouldn't be allowed into the Top Tier. When you break this down, the entire raison d'etre of the capitalists (Tory/Republican/etc) comes into focus - they divide those underneath by focusing their anger at those lower on the ladder. This allows them to keep their place in society and ensure their children and grandchildren get the top jobs and power and nothing ever changes for those at the bottom. Much of their money/power/influence comes from owning slaves, exploiting the workers, and generally having ancestors who were proper ********. It is also underlies a lot of the "Top Tier" backing Brexit (because they were losing power & influence to *gasp* Europeans), and other policies. What you have to remember though, if you are competing (for jobs/opportunities) with someone that went to Eton and Oxford, you are not worse than them - you are probably better because you didn't have the advantage of £40k+ per year of education and you didn't make the "right" contacts but instead went to a crappy state school and lived in a run-down house with barely enough food to eat and you are every bit as food as they are. You have worked a damn sight harder to get where you are. When enough people make these connections, the power will shift in this country. When that happens, expect to see a lot of the historic institutions brushed away - the Royal Family, the House of Lords, public schools, etc - because society in the UK won't change for the better for the majority while these exist.
Usually when measuring educational attainment the Gypsy/Roma/travelling community are separated out (because obviously institutional racism), surprisingly they’re included in the ‘white working class’ in this report. Someone’s definitely pulling chains somewhere.
The answer to all this is free third level education, giving those who grow up in poverty a way out and a ban on unpaid internships which are the preserve of wealthy kids.
We still need something for young poor kids who are falling out of education earlier than they should. It’s a societal problem, parents need to be engaged as much as the kids. (Surestart anyone?) There’s no point making HE free for kids who stop engaging w school at 14 with literacy, numeracy problems.
Sure start was great as were the initiatives such as those running at Barnsley football club after school for catching up with literacy and numeracy.
Yes it does. But knowing there are black kids in poverty doesn't help the white kid who's been brought up in poverty in any way at all does it? Call me old fashioned but I think if we've got two people drowning in a swimming pool we should be trying to save both, we shouldn't stand on one of their heads to save the other
