There's been outrage amongst many people claiming the BBC pay ethnic minorities more then white people

[cakeorwine]

BBC report linked here

Pay gap report

And here's one of the tables that was used to justify the claim.

Telegraph report here. I've gifted it to you

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/bdb86271401b1980

So....what do you believe? Are the BBC paying ethnic minorities more?

Feel free to look at the links to make up your own mind.

I would be interested to know how confident you are in your belief and what do you think the main reason is for that level of confidence

The Telegraph thinks so

"The BBC pays white staff less on average than their ethnic minority colleagues in every pay band bar one, figures show.
Black, Asian, mixed and other ethnic minority employees received 13.2pc higher median pay than white workers in the corporation’s lowest pay band, and 5.3pc more in the highest pay band.
White employees’ median pay was higher – by 0.6pc – in just one out of seven pay scales. This is despite the BBC’s commitment to “fair, clear and competitive” pay."

I've also attached the top comments and a picture of The SImpsons for some reason......

The comments

"Imagine the outrage if it was the other way around 🙄"

"Yep, institutional racism is alive and well in the BBC!"

"This is racism pure and simple. I am appalled"

"Some animals are more equal than others"

"Of course it is. But like most things there are two tiers of legality in this country. There isnt a judge or tribunal anywhere that would convict in favour of white men."

"Two tier Britain is real. And it’s terrifying."

"Stop paying the Licence Fee.
Stop funding the enemy"

"I see it all the time. I love Escape To The Country but they always interview locals that are non British and it is obvious that they are making a point"

"So if you’re fat, trans, and black you’re on a winner"

"indeed all the white employees should take them to a tribunal ... where is their union when you actually need it?"

"The "Equality Act" is a misnomer. Being normal is not a protected characterstic."

I'm not outraged. I didn't know until this thread. Now I know and I don't care.🤷‍♀️

You daft racist...

So basically OP you are just trying to stoke outrage?

Most organisations who report on ethnicity pay gap metrics record the opposite result and I’ve never seen a thread on here calling that issue out.

I’m so glad the UK invested in maths and sciences in recent decades. I was expecting a depressing thread filled with divisive nonsense but the smart people turned up first. Thank goodness.

Now now!

I believe the OP is trying to kind of preempt outrage. Baiting people a bit to create an opportunity to discuss the math around it.

It’s manipulated data to produce an headline. And good to dive deeper to see the different conclusions that can be drawn.
I needed to look at some data for an equality assessment for a public sector department once. Because the headline was that progression to higher grades was skewed towards white males.
The department was very low grade heavy. Bottom heavy triangle. Based in an area with very high diversity(very predominantly S Asian). So lower grades were local people. Younger people. 50% women.
Around 80% of entry level staff were S Asian. Then there were middle managers at about 1:12. About 70% S Asian.
Higher managers. Three. One S Asian woman, two white male.
Head of department white male.
All the higher and head manager roles had been taken by people from the wider organisation via fair competition.
I concluded that progression reflected a higher representation from the wider organisation. People who moved location for the higher grade role. Entry level jobs reflected the local area population.
But some people will just see that it’s a large group of S Asians managed by white males and conclude something unfair has happened regarding progression.
Some will conclude that the department unfairly employs mostly S Asians.
I agree with PP it may be a location thing. London based staff are paid more and are more demographically diverse. I don’t believe minorities are paid more for the same role.

I find the horror that people might point this out quite funny. There is loads of data on stuff like this in all sorts of areas. Ethnic minorities are not all created equal. A lot of minorities out perform their peers in school, at university and in the work place. Why wouldn't they? It is interesting and we can learn from it. It is not something to be shocked by and hidden.

I also think ethnicity data is probably extremely unreliable. I know quite a few people who write 'prefer not to say' or 'other'. Some big up an obscure bit of their ancestry or deliberately lie on forms and applications, depending on what they think wil benefit them. I know people who have changed their names to pretend they are from a more favoured ethnicity. That is necessary in some countries and must happen a lot all over the world.

I also agree with people that it is unlikely that people from ethnic minorities are paid more for the same role. However we do know for certain that women are often paid less for the same role, so who knows?

@PinkFrogss exactly this

I would want to see the “London/SE data” reported separately from rest of Britain

Skewed maths aside, given there will always be a pay gap of some sort due to performance, negotiations etc (for example I believe I earn circa 20k more than a colleague doing the same job as they were promoted in this organisation and I was head hunted and negotiated) and pay gap generally sways the other way then it’s only right some organisations will have an average paying BAME more.

My last company had circa 8pc median and 38pc mean ethnicity pay gap and employed circa 10k people in London and a further 15k across the UK. I’m sure there are many more like my previous employer and the BBC will be unusual.

I'm an ethnic minority and I can totally believe this. At my work place a woman from London gave us a racial toolkit which was disgusting to read tbh, saying that white people need to be aware of their privilege and all shit like that. Had I been an opportunist minority I'd be using my identity to get ahead.

Far from it. The people who are trying to stoke outrage are the media such as The Daily Telegraph, Daily Mail, GB News plus online

I don't know if you read my update.

But essentially it's a mathematical concept called Simpsons Paradox

White employees have a slight pay gap with ethnic minority employees when you look at the 2 groups as a whole

But when you put the employees into bandings, it appears that ethnic minorities are paid more

The media who reported this only reported on the second finding and ignored the first finding.

It worked to generate outrage and they didn't bother with the first finding.
I've attached The Telegraph and Mail reporting

That's why I posted links to the original report so people could read the report before making their minds up

If anyone had said they were shocked that ethnic minorities were paid more, I would have then discussed with them how they came to that opinion and then raised the finding that overall white employees are paid more

It's all about critical thinking .how opinions are formed and how people change their mind when new information is presented to them.

Stating facts does not change people's minds. Debates don't change people's minds. People need to change their mind themselves with challenging questions from others to explore their thinking

It's also a classic case of media manipulation

If you watch the YouTube video, you will see a perfect example of Simpson's Paradox in action,

It has real world applications - basically one group performs well at a general level but that changes when the groups are sub divided.

It came from Berkeley Admission data

Simpsons Paradox Explained - Statistics By Jim

45% of men who applied to Berkeley were successful
30% of women who applied were successful

Outrage - women are being discriminated against!!

But they looked at the 6 largest departments success rate

Dept 1: Men 62% Women 82%
Dept 2 Men 63% Women 68%
Dept 3: Men 37% Women 34%
Dept 4: Men 33% Women 35%
Dept 5: Men 28% Women 24%
Dept 6: Men 6% Women 7%

So that's weird. At a general level, men are much more successful but in the top 6, women are more successful in 4 of them

It's all about the numbers of men and women applying for each department and the chances of them getting in when you look at the applicants vs places

e.g. English gets lots of applicants so it is harder to get into
Greek studies has few applicants so it's easier to get into

The findings were

• Women tended to apply for the departments with lots of applicants vs places, lowering their overall acceptance rate.
• Men were inclined to apply for the departments with fewer applicants vs places, boosting their rates.

It was relevant in Covid

In September 2022, 12,593 COVID deaths occurred in the United States. Of those, 39% were unvaccinated, while 61% were vaccinated.

So being vaccinated increased your chances of death from Covid???That's what the data suggests right?

Vaccinated people tend to be older and have more underlying health issues

When you adjust for age and other risk factors, the CDC finds that COVID vaccinated and boosted individuals have an 18.6 times lower risk of dying from COVID. The vaccines are working!

This is why it's important to know the numbers involved otherwise you can jump to the wrong conclusion

And if you're still reading, I can't draw any conclusions without seeing the actual data. Then I would present it in a different way

That would be interesting.

They do a working class category but showing London and South East vs the rest of the UK would be interesting

If you use Power BI, you can easily dive into data

An example could be people working in sales. Sales Team A could be out perfoming Sales Team B

But each person in Sales Team B is more succesful at closing sales than each person in Sales Team A

You need the actual data

You said you would 'only engage' with those who 'thought it was true' so you could 'explore their thinking'.

So you are using what you consider as material that 'stokes outrage' to only engage with people who believe it so you can engage with them.

If that isn't 'stoking outrage' yourself then I'm not sure what is.

Maybe you need to have a look at why you are trying to get the clicks up.

You do seem pretty determined in your endeavours.

It's only fair that people of ethnic minority background are paid more than their white counterparts in all vocations. After all, they are much more likely to get abused and murdered in this country so whatever it takes to help equalise the balance is A-OK with me. They should also get priority treatment with the NHS and pay less tax but I don't think the racist bigots in this country are quite ready for THAT conversation yet!

Excellent point. I would think it is similar at the BBC.

Ethnic minorities being more likely to top out in the band after being passed over many times for promotion to the next band.

White people in the lower end of the band because they are being promoted faster.

That creates a within band pay gap that appears to show white people being paid less, but that is a consequence of a larger picture where ethnic minorities are being discriminated against for promotions.

Clearly this is not fact, but a scenario that is more likely than the BBC engaging in positive discrimination. Generally, when such a gap is noted, a 3rd party investigates as to the root cause.

How do you know ethnic minority people are paid more?

What leads you to that belief and how confident are you that they are paid more?

Thanks

So what you are really saying is that it would be much easier to draw some conclusions if you had the underlying numbers?

It's because it was in the news literally this week and many people will have read it online

I could have used the unvaccinated vs vaccinated Covid data

You will have seen that I didn't give my opinion but provided the source report and some of the media reporting.

I don't care about clicks as this is not monetized

I do care about critical thinking, media manipulation and gaining an understanding of how people form their beliefs and whether their confidence in that belief can be altered when new information is presented. You will see that I have started that conversation with someone who does seem to believe that ethnic minorities are paid more and seems supportive of it

I would hope that anyone reading this will realise that when statistics are presented, they might not be telling you the whole truth.

*In September 2022, 12,593 COVID deaths occurred in the United States. Of those, 39% were unvaccinated, while 61% were vaccinated.

“So being vaccinated increased your chances of death from Covid???That's what the data suggests right?”

The main issue was not vaccinated people tend to be older with more health conditions, the main issue in how the above is reported is that the # of vaccinated far exceed the # of unvaccinated. So when deaths are 39%: 61% in a population of 20%:80% you can easily see that those in the minority 20% unvaccinated have a much higher risk of dying. The unvaccinated deaths would be 1/4th of vaccinated deaths, or 1/5th of total deaths if the vaccine did not work. I know you get the maths, but it is shocking how many people do not.

I don't know if they are paid more, chances are its made up by Russian infiltrators to bait the racists in this country. All I am saying is that they should be paid more, for the reasons I lined in my post.

Yes. Not just underlying numbers, but a full investigation into the hiring, promotion, and salary setting policies and actions for the past ten years minimum.

@Bubstar ”I'm an ethnic minority and I can totally believe this”

believe what exactly?

I think you said that it's only fair that ethnic minority employees are paid more.

I've linked to the report in the OP so you could look at the page re ethnic minority pay gap and then draw your own conclusions.

You clearly don't have to but I'm interested to see what you believe after you've read the report

Thanks in anticipation