Diversity course at University of Kent

I wonder if sex is covered on this training...

The swearing second hand clothes thing has a major problem.

Women are no where nearly as free to swear as men mostly.

Women are more likely to be clocked in second hand due to the large and frequent changes in fashion for us.

They didn't really think about that properly did they.

To do this properly it should be a thoughtful discussion and have students draw their own conclusions.

Not a bizarre sounding checklist with right or wrong.

Yes discrimination is prevalent. Yes people don't tend to think hard on things that do not apply to them.

It's a nuanced topic and the history is important as well.

SoManyQuestionsHere. Interesting post! It's fascinating the myriad of ways humans signal things about themselves and how other humans interpret these signals. Communication is way more complex and nuanced than just words. Clothes in context tell us lots. Certain clothes can be prescribed or proscribed but unless we all go about naked, the game will morph and continue.

As Dolly says "You would be surprised to know how much it costs to look this cheap".

Is there an environmental group that can weigh in on the second hand clothes? New clothes destroy our planet and these students future. Privilege is buying all new because you’re wealthy enough it will only destroy other peoples future (still sucks for the privileged peoples grandkids though)

I think making a diversity course compulsory for students is wrong. Diversity has become so political and there are different views on the issue. Another example of stamping out independent thought, not everyone has to agree with the new agenda, and they should be free to hold different views

There is something in second hand clothes that I would say is more class based than ethnicity based but the two can align - nice middle class family send kid to nursery in stained clothes - nursery think mum is eco conscious and practical, working class but rough mum sends kid to nursery in stained clothes = social services referral for neglect. You see this with certain populations such as Irish travellers who always are dressed immaculately to avoid being labelled as dirty.
I’m not sure it’s got much to do with white privilege tho

All this bullshit seems to be the modern version of 'know your place' attitudes that have traditionally riddled British society. It is just a novel way for the new secular priesthood to talk down to peoe and tell them they are lucky for what they have got.

The greatest privilege of all is being the person who grades everyone else on their privilege. The greatest act of rebellion is to tell them were to stick it.

I can bet the people who devised this have never worn second hand clothes in their life.

I took DD1 to an open day at Kent (a few years ago, she graduated last year) one of the tutors I was talking to said "if she's got an offer from XX (highly rated uni) she should go there". Wasn't exactly selling it to us. She went to XX needless to say. (Not that they are much better on all this shit.)

Why is the University of Kent doing this? What problems are they attempting to solve? Is this some sort of marketing strategy? Aren't the students arriving at university already beaten into submission with this drivel during their school years? It might be more useful if the university put on HGV licence courses. This is cult like: students paying huge amounts to be berated and insulted.

Load of old ⚾️🥎
Glinner is right. In the video posted on another thread, he referred to the stuff coming out of universities. A first class degree in wokeism

How could you possibly tell if someone's clothes were second-hand or just old?

Are we allowed to keep our favourite jumpers?

Second hand clothes?! This just makes me think of jumble sales in damp church halls and charity shops full of racks of 3 seasons old Per Una. We were solidly white middle class and raised in hand me downs. Second hand clothes could equally be on someone with a vintage look or someone with environmental concerns or someone with money concerns or someone that just doesn’t care.

You should see the gender and sexual harrasment modules ....

Analysing this stuff is interesting - at a class level. However, you can’t then apply it to individuals. Use it to plan, not to demonise.

Okay, so: I'm white! A white, professionally successful, functionally very upper-middle-class but from a very rural working class family woman, actually (and, yes, this all sort of matters):

Here's the thing about the diversity markers situation: SOME of this stuff is actually very valid. Such as, frivolous as it may seem, the "wearing 2nd hand and swearing" thing. You see, I don't sound rural working-class. That'll be because I won a scholarship to a naice school as a child and speak as though I could trace my family tree back to roughly around the 9th century. Which I most certainly can't. It's just that "oh, do fuck off, dear!" out of my mouth, spoken in clipped RP, comes across as a hard but surgical strike of a reprimand. This works neither for my British black working-class subordinate (taken as "uncultured") nor for my much more "cultured" (can actually trace his pedigree) but very German boss (taken as "2nd language speaker who hasn't quite grasped the nuances"). Same goes for dress codes, by the way: in the corporate world, you can turn up in basically anything, so long as you're the sort of person people will assume does it due to individuality or arrogance rather than not knowing any better. My "personal best" happens to be "yoga pants - for a contract negotiation". Underdressing is, genuinely, a way to posture and outwardly signal "power". If you are a person who already has significant power, that is! Nobody will invite you to a negotiation over millions without assuming you own plenty of suits - and you turning up looking casual is an effective way of saying "this is small-fry, I haven't even bothered to dress up for this" and hence: negotiating tactics.

Having said that, I generally tend to agree that it's all a bit silly - and I'm steadfastly refusing to do pronouns on the grounds that I happen to think it's all vapid virtue signalling. But, then again: privilege is real, I have it (except on sex) and that is precisely why I get away with it!

No harm in a little self-awareness here and there!

Yes the people I know who would never buy second hand because it feels too close to the bone are white, working class.

There is a narrative that has black people's love of smart dress and 'bling' as a cultural reaction to having generations of ancestors kept in rags and unable to do anything about it. Dressing sharp is a statement of agency and autonomy. I get that.

What this 'white privilege' shit fails to grasp is that the working-class also have heritage, and we have our generational experience of being looked down on for the way we speak, dress and behave. We decline to wear the costume of our 'betters' as an act of defiance and contempt for them, their privilege and their shiny-shoes values constructed with the specific purpose of excluding us.

To be fair, I do kind of get the second hand clothes as privilege thing. I buy a lot of clothes this way but I'm looking for snatty, high end pieces to pep up my wardrobe - it's effectively a hobby and I can see how that's a privileged position to be in.

....And it's all the ususal "White Privilege" shit. The more than a little racist assumption that all white people are the same, all descend from slave-owners and beneficiaries of slavery and the triangular trade, and all have the same status in society in the eyes of people in power and authority.

No acknowledgement of class, wealth, education or any other social variable.

Fuck This Shit.

I wanna see the males given a male privilege quiz. I could even write it for them.