Important article by Lionel Shriver

Yeah, it's interesting. A friend of mine, who grew up underprivileged and as a black woman in a large, increasingly decrepit American inner-city, married a guy, also black, from a very well off family of academics. She is very bright and struggled through family stuff to get a degree, and has done pretty well for herself. He, however, is a golden boy, and it's like everything he's ever wanted to do has been facilitated, right up to a cushy tenured university position at a very young age, positions on boards, etc. He's totally wedded to the whole ant-racism movement. My friend became less enamored with the movement after he revealed himself to be a cheating twat - not just, I think, because she was bitter at his entitlement, or even because it was so clear he'd been privileged in every way over many other people, but also because she realized the whole thing made her feel pretty miserable and hopeless. It was kind of a scales dropping from eyes moment, not unlike what you see sometimes from women that have fallen for gender ideology.

Our family background over generations, of course, has a lot to do with our current circumstances. Race can be a big factor in how families managed in the past. But it's only one factor, there are all kinds of other things that create generational poverty, lack of stability, lack of cultural capital. There are whole groups of people who have been part of recognized underclasses who are not black, even in the US. In my own family propensity to alcoholism seems to have reared its head again and again, affecting family prospects over generations. And there are other things as well.

You can see similar weird dynamics when sexuality is used as a diversity target in groups, gay men in particular often do really really well in high paying professional spheres, so giving them a leg up in employment over others seems pretty weird.

It's just way too reductive, and as you saw, wealth so often is the real factor that is an advantage - and wealth of your parents, not ancestors 5 generations ago.

I love Lionel Shriver's writing. I think she's hugely incisive about culture. I subscribe to The Spectator partly to read her work.

I think this article is a good reflection of the reality of what is happening and railing against reality because it's 'bigoted' sounds a little bit like some other people we know....

GC views are currently included in the views held by those (the majority in the USA at least, and maybe here too by the next election) who are rejecting the 'progressive' agenda of social justice above actual justice, equity above equality, promoting discrimination based on race, using a power structure of identity as the only interpretation for all inequity, and using language as the key weapon in all this.

Tbh if you cannot see the links between this and the TRA movement and the public rejection of it you are not trying very hard.

It looks like just another rendition of 'you can't say that because that makes you a bigot.' and you'd think once you'd had this tactic used on you you'd think a bit more deeply before applying it to others.

GC feminists who still thinks this is a separate issue from all the other identify politics, which the good people like them are right about amazes me. It really does.

Anyway I think she's reflecting a cultural and political shift which is real and coming your way. If you are worried about it, you may want to do more than just shout bigot, as the USA election has shown that's not going to work anymore.

I often think that the one privilege which is totally accepted and not compensated for is the biggest privilege of all: wealth.

So if you come from the right minority in the right field, but are privately educated and grew up in a stable rich home with lots of books etc, you can still have an easier ride than a white male with no disabilities who went to a sink school and grew up in a less than ‘nice’ home.

I think it is this that causes massive divisiveness more than anything else. People will fight tooth and nail for their wealth to continue to buy them and their descendants privilege.

I really wish, with these kinds of initiatives, that there was a requirement to go to the rejected individuals and say, "sorry, we haven't chosen you, not because of anything to do with you personally as an individual, but because of the group identities we see you as representing".

I suspect that many would balk at saying that straight out to a real person, even if it didn't dawn on them that creating a social norm where it's ok for individuals to lose out for being members or certain groups due to their unalterable characteristics might be really dangerous.

There has to be some way other than 'wokeism' to make the world a fairer place by undoing centuries of injustice, we can't just abandon the fight for social justice because it has been hijacked by TRAs. The struggle continues.

We could always try the old fashioned methods: making sure people have access to descent education and stable families and good medical care; making discrimination in the work place illegal and frowned upon; encouraging people to enter sectors they are interested in even if they are non-traditional for their families or larger communities.

The move from that kind of approach to wokeism and DEI hasn't exactly increased success in these areas, it's resulted in a real worsening of race relations and attitudes, and it's split the communities it's meant to be helping as well. The people in the US who most support this stuff are white university educated people, blacks less so, Hispanics don't like it, and Native Americans seem to like it least of all. This is the kind of thing that is pushing these groups away from voting Democrat.

It's also tended to reward members of targeted groups who are a already in a good place. That was one of the interesting things about Claudine Gay, she was from an extremely privileged background - arguably, if we are talking in neomarxist terms (or whatever you want to call that ideology) very much a member of an oppressor class. Who seemed to have no qualms about ousting a black faculty member from an underprivileged background who wasn't falling into line with the proper anti-racist talking points.

It's not LS causing the perception that some people might be diversity hires - it's the people who are hiring people because of their sex, race, sexuality, or gender identification.

Probably about half of jobs you apply for in Canada ask you for this kind of information. I don't give it on principle, however I know that particularly in large organizations that can work against being hired - there can be a lot of pressure in organizations like that to hire according to internal diversity quotas, so they won't bother with applications where they don't know what they are getting, and the assumption tends to be they are white and straight.

"picking the applicant from the least represented group where a number of equally well qualified applicants could do the job equally well... Lionel Shriver's examples of this are from the US, and we have to be careful not to import ill-fitting arguments against policies that are in force in the US but not on this side of the Atlantic"

The situation in the UK isn't better and it's not about choosing between "equally well qualified" [sic] candidates.

Do you have a kid in a UK university? I do. When applying for any oppportunity, be it summer internship or a prestigious research project, application forms ask if kids are an ethnic minority, gay, trans, or first in their family to go to university. Those get the few slots available. If you are white, straight, from an educated family, you have no chance of getting a place.

This is in the UK, in 2024.

The idea of picking the applicant from the least represented group where a number of equally well qualified applicants could do the job equally well, is not new. It was one of the methods used to try to increase the number of women in non-traditional areas.

If there are a number of equally well qualified applicants for one post, a choice is going to have to be made on some basis, so why not on the basis of increasing the diversity of an organisation, which is beneficial on a strictly business basis?

This is not the same as adjusting required qualifications downwards. Lionel Shriver's examples of this are from the US, and we have to be careful not to import ill-fitting arguments against policies that are in force in the US but not on this side of the Atlantic.

She claims that 'Numerous black female hires' 'are sometimes conspicuously under-qualified' and 'owe their appointments to that fungal way of thinking'.
She gives just one example, leaving every other black female appointed to a responsible position under the shadow of being a 'diversity ‘buy one, get one free’ appointment.

The boringly common SM slur against women politicians, even if they are highly qualified and have years of relevant experience - 'Oh she's just a diversity tick-box candidate' - is an example of hard it is for people to be taken seriously if their face doesn't fit the traditional idea of a politician or a car mechanic or a professor or a gas-boiler technician or a brain surgeon. Lionel Shriver's mission-creep from challenging trans ideology to undermining 'numerous black female hires' is turning the clock back.

There has to be some way other than 'wokeism' to make the world a fairer place by undoing centuries of injustice, we can't just abandon the fight for social justice because it has been hijacked by TRAs. The struggle continues.

If Lionel Shriver knows of a better fox-hole....

This was just a supreme court case in the US, institutions like Harvard were weighting applications by race. So the SAT scores required to get in were differerntiated significantly depending on what your race was. If they went just by SAT scores, the campus would have been more than 40% Asian.

Basically, in order to get a "balanced" racial profile for students, Asians have to score well above the white students, who in turn need to score above black and Hispanic students.

Asian students, unsurprisingly, objected to this.

I heard on a radio programme about a year ago that European and Asians get passed by for college scholarships. Say, for example, a child of a Greek or Asian immigrant - not a super privileged group.

For example, just today while helping my son look for jobs, we saw the hospital has a position for a cleaner open. However, you have to "identify as black/African descent." Which is to say, people of European or Asian descent are not welcome to apply.

No, they get not hired.

You’re saying that in Canada, people can get fired because of their ethnicity. Do you have a recent example?

Meant to quote this.

This a thousand times. A family member told me Richard Dawkins was ‘problematic’ because he’d said words to the effect that if he had to choose he preferred CoE garden party religion to Islam. Hell yeah, don’t we all. Especially women.

Shriver has every right to express her views, but my heart sinks every time biological reality is mixed with in bigotry. Shriver does not speak for me. Her vision is to keep the world for people like her she approves of.

I guess when you earn your living by churning out copy week after week then you may well tend to fall into predictable habits that don't require much thought or reflection. Columnsts all do this. They become known for a certain style - and they just keep replicating it.

This. BLM, SJWs, TRAs, Antifa, Palestine supporters in their kaffiyehs — all of them are fuelling a major right-wing backlash that is likely to see Reform in government here in 2029 unless checked. Trump in the US, Farage in the UK. The far-left is preparing the ground for Farage in the way Biden did for Trump.

But TRAs can’t dismiss GC views just by railing against whichever person they find distasteful espouses them, because GC views are believing in material reality. It’s pointless.

It’s like Flat Earthers dismissing the material reality that the earth is a sphere because someone they think is nasty believes in that material reality. Is it a successful way to counter an attack on their belief system to attack the nature of the person claiming it? Of course not. And it isn’t for GC views either because TRAs know it’s their nonsensical ideology being pointed out by anyone and everyone of all persuasions.

And it’s been done to death for the last 5 years or so, and hasn’t worked, so I have no idea why people are getting worried about one article from Lionel Shriver, who is by far nowhere near the “worst” person to believe the earth is a sphere GC views.

I think it’s good to see it then you get the measure of someone

I found it an utter load of nonsense…what a load of diatribe…totally affronted!

she is beyond out of touch with how people live

I find that article pretty nasty.

Thank you, that’s exactly what I meant.

My worry is that she gets a platform, and uses it to lump GC views in with a bunch of right wing batshittery.

Lots of right wingers do this though. Like Trump with his "Kamala is for they/them, President Trump is for you".

The fact is that a lot of right wing people have seen through the batshittery of the genderist movement. So they'll talk about this alongside their other opinions.

It has nothing to do with left wingers, feminists and anyone else who objects to genderist batshittery. If you think it does you're suffering from the same misconceptions as the left-wingers who think that all righteous people should hold the same set of views which all go together with no room for nuance or disagreement of any sort.

Agree, this is one woman's opinion, much of which I disagree with, and agree she has the right to express these views.

My worry is that she gets a platform, and uses it to lump GC views in with a bunch of right wing batshittery. I am just not confident that we have enough prominent people brave enough to speak up providing the more moderate, nuanced view, so the end result is that the moderate view gets lost and it becomes really easy to say that anyone with GC views must be racist/bigoted etc.

I am getting braver by the day. I think we all must. It's time wimms