The BBC again: ‘No whites need apply’

hazemat

One eyed Jack wrote: »

No, their skin colour, or their sex, or their ethnicity or their religious beliefs is where it starts, and depending upon the nature of the role there may be a genuine occupational requirement where one of the above characteristics is fundamental to the role. That’s notwithstanding the idea that an employer may wish to set out in their criteria that first and foremost the ideal candidates have to be women, or men, or black, or white or whatever else provided they can provide a legitimate reason for their criteria in line with equality legislation.

Yes of course a particular role may have a preference for male or female workers. But I honestly can't see where skin colour would make a difference in someone's ability to carry out their job function.


If the goal is achieving a more equitable and fairer society for all I can't see how that is best served by judging people on the colour of their skin.

One eyed Jack

One eyed Jack wrote: »

especially when you’re trying to engender sympathy for working-class white boys as if I’m supposed to buy the idea that you’re being in any way sincere about your concern for working-class white boys.

Yeah, not taking the bait, bucko.

I'm going to follow the good example set by the other poster earlier and remove your ability to contaminate this discussion on my screen.

One eyed Jack

hazemat wrote: »

Yes of course a particular role may have a preference for male or female workers. But I honestly can't see where skin colour would make a difference in someone's ability to carry out their job function.

If the goal is achieving a more equitable and fairer society for all I can't see how that is best served by judging people on the colour of their skin.

Skin colour makes absolutely no difference whatsoever in anyone’s ability to carry out their job function, and yet it’s precisely because of biases based on the colour of a person’s skin that they were discriminated against and not viewed as being of equal value as anyone else. This isn’t exactly chicken and egg stuff - discrimination definitely came first, and equality legislation to address discrimination came afterwards. It’s precisely because people were judged on the colour of their skin that they were denied equal opportunities in employment and in society.

Yes you could make the point that there are white people who are discriminated against in employment too, but it is people who aren’t white who are disproportionately affected by discrimination in employment and have even less opportunities to be able to improve their chances of employment because they are denied opportunities in education, healthcare, housing and so on. It’s precisely because people were judged on the colour of their skin that they live in what is an unfair society, and equality legislation is the means to address those inequalities.

One eyed Jack

[Deleted User] wrote: »

Yeah, not taking the bait, bucko.

I'm going to follow the good example set by the other poster earlier and remove your ability to contaminate this discussion on my screen.

That wasn’t bait, that was you taking something I said out of context while I was responding to your post about how you wanted an honest discussion, in spite of your effort about 51% of sewage workers being women as if that’s equality anyone was campaigning for, or your being critical of the fact that the vast majority of victims of discrimination in your opinion are working-class white boys and the middle classes aren’t on that as part of their drive for diversity and inclusion as if I give a shìt for diversity and inclusion.

Yes, you could do exactly like the other poster and make up shìte and try and attribute it to me as though I’m responsible for it, but putting me on ignore clearly has no effect on my ability to express an opinion about your opinions. The irony of imagining that if you pretend something doesn’t exist, it doesn’t exist, while imagining you’re in a position to school anyone about reality.

hazemat

One eyed Jack wrote: »

Skin colour makes absolutely no difference whatsoever in anyone’s ability to carry out their job function, and yet it’s precisely because of biases based on the colour of a person’s skin that they were discriminated against and not viewed as being of equal value as anyone else. This isn’t exactly chicken and egg stuff - discrimination definitely came first, and equality legislation to address discrimination came afterwards. It’s precisely because people were judged on the colour of their skin that they were denied equal opportunities in employment and in society.

Yes you could make the point that there are white people who are discriminated against in employment too, but it is people who aren’t white who are disproportionately affected by discrimination in employment and have even less opportunities to be able to improve their chances of employment because they are denied opportunities in education, healthcare, housing and so on. It’s precisely because people were judged on the colour of their skin that they live in what is an unfair society, and equality legislation is the means to address those inequalities.

But is the best way to tackle discrimination to simply create more discrimination? If we agree that discrimination for any reason is the cause of many problems then surely it can't also be the solution to the same issues.

One eyed Jack

hazemat wrote: »

But is the best way to tackle discrimination to simply create more discrimination? If we agree that discrimination for any reason is the cause of many problems then surely it can't also be the solution to the same issues.

Well what had happened before was people were unfairly discriminated against, so now what’s happening is that employers and service providers are no longer permitted to unlawfully discriminate against people on the basis of any of the nine grounds in Irish law, and if they do choose to discriminate against people on any ground or grounds, then it is only lawfully permitted so long as it is used as a means of achieving a legitimate aim, such as promoting equality in the workplace, or maintaining an ethos in a school, etc, there are a couple of exceptions where what would be unlawful in other circumstances are lawfully permitted discrimination in some circumstances.

I would be willing to agree with you that what was once discrimination permissible by law did create all sorts of problems for people who were unfairly discriminated against, and so when initiatives like those in the opening post are tried with the aim of promoting racial equality, I can’t see that form of discrimination as a bad thing because there is a legitimate aim and a legitimate argument can be made for discriminating on the basis of skin colour and socioeconomic factors. I’m not gone on the whole BAME moniker myself tbh, as it often does amount to nothing more than tokenism, but I’m glad the opportunities are being created for people to gain equal opportunities for employment in areas which wouldn’t previously have been available to them, and I can only hope that the BBC follow through on their efforts, that it isn’t just tokenistic virtue signaling.

hazemat

One eyed Jack wrote: »

Well what had happened before was people were unfairly discriminated against, so now what’s happening is that employers and service providers are no longer permitted to unlawfully discriminate against people on the basis of any of the nine grounds in Irish law, and if they do choose to discriminate against people on any ground or grounds, then it is only lawfully permitted so long as it is used as a means of achieving a legitimate aim, such as promoting equality in the workplace, or maintaining an ethos in a school, etc, there are a couple of exceptions where what would be unlawful in other circumstances are lawfully permitted discrimination in some circumstances.

I would be willing to agree with you that what was once discrimination permissible by law did create all sorts of problems for people who were unfairly discriminated against, and so when initiatives like those in the opening post are tried with the aim of promoting racial equality, I can’t see that form of discrimination as a bad thing because there is a legitimate aim and a legitimate argument can be made for discriminating on the basis of skin colour and socioeconomic factors. I’m not gone on the whole BAME moniker myself tbh, as it often does amount to nothing more than tokenism, but I’m glad the opportunities are being created for people to gain equal opportunities for employment in areas which wouldn’t previously have been available to them, and I can only hope that the BBC follow through on their efforts, that it isn’t just tokenistic virtue signaling.

I just think that it's an artificial way of massaging numbers so that the organisations can hit the quotas and of course it's the cheapest way of being seen to do the right thing. The core issue across all of these things IMHO is poverty and education but tackling those requires serious political will and a lot of money.

One eyed Jack

hazemat wrote: »

I just think that it's an artificial way of massaging numbers so that the organisations can hit the quotas and of course it's the cheapest way of being seen to do the right thing.

That’s certainly one way of looking at it, and I’m not saying you’re entirely wrong either, there absolutely is a degree of corporate virtue signalling involved in organisations clamouring to portray themselves as diverse and inclusive places to work and all the rest of it, because they know that’s what they have to do in order to attract people with the skills and experience they need who are only interested in working within organisations which value diversity and inclusion and all the rest of it. There’s plenty of evidence available to show that these policies are profitable for an organisations bottom line and I’m not so naive that I imagine their efforts are entirely altruistic

More Evidence That Company Diversity Leads To Better Profits

hazemat wrote: »

The core issue across all of these things IMHO is poverty and education but tackling those requires serious political will and a lot of money.

True that at the core of all these issues is indeed poverty and education, but I disagree that tackling these issues requires serious political will and a lot of money. To give you an example, the reason Cymro’s “working-class white boys” effort irked me as much as it did is because I was only off the phone to the Principal of a school who has agreed to take on one of these “working-class white boys” from another school where he wasn’t doing so well, and the school he’s going to will be much more suitably tailored to address his specific needs. A phone call. That’s all it took, no politics, no money, and no will to break the lads balls either like he needed to learn about the “value” of not taking advantage of an opportunity or “principles” when an opportunity presented itself and people were willing to help him. It takes considerably more effort, political will and money to maintain unfair discrimination and keep people in their place, than it does to lift people out of poverty through education and employment.

donaghs

One eyed Jack wrote: »

That’s certainly one way of looking at it, and I’m not saying you’re entirely wrong either, there absolutely is a degree of corporate virtue signalling involved in organisations clamouring to portray themselves as diverse and inclusive places to work and all the rest of it, because they know that’s what they have to do in order to attract people with the skills and experience they need who are only interested in working within organisations which value diversity and inclusion and all the rest of it. There’s plenty of evidence available to show that these policies are profitable for an organisations bottom line and I’m not so naive that I imagine their efforts are entirely altruistic

More Evidence That Company Diversity Leads To Better Profits
.

Looking at the arguments you've made in favour of quotas, how far do you want to extend this logic?
e.g
(1) there's not enough black people in tech in the US
13% of population, 7% of tech workforce.

(2) there's too much bias towards Asian Americans in tech?
6% of population, 14% of tech workforce.

Any one who thinks this is nonsense, should look at this controversy over "diversity" programs denying Asian Americans entry to US universities.
Where are all these quota driven "corrections" leading us?

One eyed Jack

donaghs wrote: »

Looking at the arguments you've made in favour of quotas…

I’ve made no arguments in favour of quotas? The only argument I make is that I see no issue whatsoever with giving people opportunities that wouldn’t normally be open to them. I admitted that I’m biased towards helping people with disabilities, but that doesn’t mean I’m in favour of quotas. I don’t need statistics to know how people with disabilities are unfairly discriminated against in employment and education.

Helping people with disabilities does not constitute unfair treatment of anyone else. The OP is suggesting that it does, in the context of race or ethnicity, because the scheme is aimed at a specific demographic. US and UK identity politics doesn’t really apply to Ireland, and claims of discrimination against white people in the UK on the basis of a scheme being offered to people who aren’t white is just petty and looking for something to be offended by instead of attempting to understand the purpose of the scheme or why the people offering it felt it was needed.

323

OMM 0000 wrote: »

If I were black I'd be highly insulted they think they have to artificially hold back whites to give me a chance.

Been to South Africa lately?