Kemi Badenoch: Diversity policies should not "come at the expense of white men"

How are you going to shape your environment? By forcing white men out of your town, city or country? By bringing forcefully people of colour once again from other continents?? - you are dellusional and anti-social

That's my point, we are not penalised, but realistically it is very hard for both partners to get to senior levels with children so one of them has to take a step back. Because of biology this is likely to be the woman so in a meritocracy there should always be more men at the top. I would argue that inadequate women have been overpromoted to get around this (see Paula Vennells) and yes I know that there are crap men running organisations but more likely to be inadequate if you promote on anything other than merit. As others have said the main issue is class - the lack of opportunities for working class people has visibly got worse in my lifetime.

For whatever reason white men rule the world, created all the western types of countries ( imagine all English speaking also). So white, English and men. There is nothing you can do about it, despite the many daily fashion political waves, which come and go.

You still make a baby with a man and a woman, you still need food to survive and a house to live in. All the best to the rest of those who have spare time to engage in endless fruitless debates

“Given that it seems unfair for women to continue to be penalised because we are the sex that can give birth. I'd quite like our women and Equalities minister to focus on that, but the impression I get is she's far more concerned about winning the "anti-woke" vote than she is about doing her job.”

Or perhaps , like you, she cares about both and doesn’t see it as an either or?

Yes as regards race. I am abit older than you (55) and when I started work there were hardly any ethnic minorities in my workplace as much fewer in the country. So stands to reason that there will be fewer ethnic minorities in Board positions as they are my contemporaries who worked their way up (unless professionals who immigrated since then). I have a professional qualification and know I could have done much more with my career but instead took time out to raise 4 children (which I was lucky to be able to do with a higher earning husband and house prices being more affordable then). I have got much more out of raising my family than career - why do you think working in the rat race is the only thing that matters? Maybe you should value other things more?

I’m absolutely not ok with the dominance of older white men.
But being careful about how we address and discuss that seems reasonable.

Being unable to discuss things because of accusations of racism etc doesn’t help.

Whether white working class lads are over implicated in hate crime and under represented in education, or black working class lads, then we need to be able to talk about it.

And without a doubt women are succeeding in some areas and not in others and are massively impacted by having children. Far more so than men. Sometimes that impact is from the workplace, but not always.

Just to muddy the waters: in advance of the Hate Crime Act going live in Scotland on (I joke not) 1st April, Police Scotland say on their website, https://www.scotland.police.uk/what-s-happening/campaigns/2023/hate-crime/

"We know that young men aged 18-30 are most likely to commit hate crime, particularly those from socially excluded communities who are heavily influenced by their peers. They may have deep-rooted feelings of being socially and economically disadvantaged, combined with ideas about white-male entitlement." [my emphasis]

In this context, I find it hard to fathom who is at (and where is) the bottom of the pack. What does diversity and inclusion mean?

Why is it permissible to point a finger at this particular ethnic/economic/age and sex group as being somehow problematic? WTF is going on?

I'm a feminist and absolutely in favour of ensuring that both sexes, all ethnicities and sexualities are included at every level of the workplace, according to merit, not by tickbox - but why the fuck does everyone ignore class as the ultimate barrier to participation?

Stop with the diversity and inclusion training - it's cart before horses. Put the all of that money and more into things like Sure Start and literacy and numeracy in primary schools, where you can reach every child (without fear of favour) and make a difference to their lives. Then the workplace will be transformed in ways we can't imagine now.

It's really so important to break down data.

Even in the US, supposedly the home of deep unconcious bias to anyone black, if you break that group down, what you see is that there are really significant differences.

Break down ethnicity - those who have immigrated from Africa, or the Caribbean, aren't anything like the "average" American black experience. They are typically more educated and better employed and have a lot more money. In the case of some Africans, they are among the highest achieving and most educated in the nation. Clearly they are getting admitted to universities and hired to good employment.

Or you can break it down by class. If you look at working class vs middle class black families, what you see is that the working class families are almost indistinguishable from the white working class families, and the middle class ones similarly are very much like white middle class families.

Importantly, those families who really struggle will generally continue to do so intergenerationally, whatever race they are.

The idea that it's bias in admitting members of certain minorities to universities or hiring that is causing these disparities just doesn't seem that plausible when it suddenly disappears for some of those people when you look at the data more closely.

That's not what I'm saying Adam.

I'm saying it's multifaceted and discrimination in employment isn't the answer.

But you seem to think it's uni factorial and the problem is discrimination and the answer is more discrimination.

Women are seriously over-represented in higher education. And they do as well or better in the workplace too, generally.

What changes things is having children. Nothing else creates such a radical differentiation between the life choices made by men and women.

Unsurprisingly. It's the fundamental physiological divider between males and females.

The data has been available foy many years to show that is a very significant component of differences between men and women in the workforce, so I am surprised to see anyone who cares about it a lot being unaware that this is the case.

I suspect that when people talk about unconscious bias in reference to EDI stuff, the mean the research that is often referenced and even the basis of a lot of diversity training initiatives.

Totally apart from the initiatives not having any actual research to back their effectiveness, the research about unconscious bias is pretty flimsy - what it is, what the things they tested were actually measuring, and what the results mean, how to analyze it given no one really knows what the numbers represent - is pretty questionable too. And right from the start, two of the three researchers said that using their work to look at individuals in the way diversity training and policy initiatives does isn't a legitimate use of the data.

I'm not sure I've ever met any adult who doesn't realize that people can be unaware of their own personal biases.

I think it’s a bit more complex than that. I think parental expectations will have a heavy bearing on whether kids go to university. If you have wealthy well educated parents there will be a lot of pressure (and help) to get into a university. If you have a genetic predisposition to academics but your parents are not wealthy there may not be pressure to go to university. It would be interesting to see if there was a group that were well educated and also lower income and what happened to their kids.

Then there are immigrant diasporas Indian and Chinese for example who despite not having been wealthy or well educated themselves at the time they moved to the UK are highly aspirational for their kids. If it was as simple as low income dictating levels of education you wouldn’t see specific groups making rapid progress in terms of education and income level. Of course immigrants are self selecting groups and only the quite motivated would have turned up in the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s to start new lives.

I’m not convinced it’s as linear as the paper makes it sound. The paper doesn’t say whether the kids with genetic academic potential actually fulfil it at gcse and a-level to be able to apply and obtain a place at uni. Or if they even applied at all.

Genetics is the biggest advantage I agree.

But family stability and aspiration is more predictive than family wealth.
That is well known.

Cultural values: interesting you presumed I meant white families. Asian and African cultures are actually out performing 'white' culture in many ways.

Cultural cache means world experience and connection. Cultural capital. The white middle class have had an advantage with this but that is going to disappear within a generation I think.

Yes I do think that there will still be differences at a population level between the interests and choices of men and women even if we had no discrimination or socialisation.

Obviously there are skills men have more of. Anything to do with strength. More inclined to risk.

Biology - if you think that's just discrimination you're not much of a feminist.
Disadvantage doesn't mean the same as discrimination.

Geography - lots of evidence for differing interests and skills and aspiration based on geography.

Each of those obviously impacts outcomes and makes understanding discrepancy really complex.

I think discriminating against people at employment isn't the way to address discrepancy. It's immoral, won't work and will have negative outcomes.