To think positive promotion of BME imagery in local authorities is misplaced

[wantanewname]

Local authorities seem to have a policy whereby photos promoting e.g. a school, museum etc have to if possible have at least one BME (black and ethnic minority) person in the photo.

Now, I can totally understand this if for example the local authority is e.g. trying to increase literacy levels in children and finds that literacy levels amongst some BME groups is lower than amongst e.g white groups and therefore uses a photo of a black child in a library. This I can understand. What I find hard to understand is the idea that this applies across the board. For example, does it do any good when a local authority is photographing a school in a very white area to use the few black pupils in every photo? I think in that instance it is patronising to the public - implying that their knowledge of the school/area is wrong and creates a warped view that there isn't a lack of diversity that needs to be addressed in certain areas when there actually is.

Or is there something I'm missing? I notice this in local authority literature all the time and think that they are actually creating more problems with their attempts at diversity? It annoys me because it doesn't seem well thought out...just wondered what other people think about this?

[edam]

I wondered that, MrsDV. And why marriedinwhite seems to assume that only married, middle class people actually plan their babies. Does she think working class people can't count? Better not mention that theory next time she has to call a plumber out...

[marriedinwhite]

It wasn't so much a subliminal message about the gays and single mums as one that excluded married, middle class white people. I just remember feeling it excluded us and shocked at the pc message. I don't mind that it included lots of different types of families but I didn't feel it was inclusive of mine and we aren't in that much of a minority.

[Birdsgottafly]

Local Authorities get there direction from the Government, the statistics are there, as to who under achievies and why.

Some of the answers are better funding all around, that certainly won't happen now.

We have this government wanting to drop parts of the Human Rights Act and would then probably start to have a go at the Equality Act.

I don't think the inclusion of all possible EM's is part of a bigger plan, tbh.

They are totally seperate.

There was a lot of research around a lack of different faces across the media ate time when Adopter's tended to be white (70's).

All of research hows that it makes a huge difference to how everyone feels about inclusion and if they are a valued member of society when a cross represetation of all possible EM/disabilities are shown.

[AmberLeaf]

And no Amber the pictures didn't have actual labels but they didn't need to have them. The subliminal messages were there. I don't have the book anymore but I recollect the feeling of looking at it and the realisation that it certainly hadn't been written for me

Oh bollocks! you're putting your own spin on it

Hilarious suggestion that a lesbian couple didnt plan their baby! I think that would require way more planning than you and your husbands middle class baby.

[AmberLeaf]

Why would a married middle class couple need to feel included though?

[LizzieVereker]

How kind of you not to mind that the book included different types of families including "the gays"... Hopefully you were made to feel more included by the fact that every other form of media in 1996 did not include "the gays" in their depictions of families.

I expect the working class couple were only identifiable by the fact they were smoking. Or looking at a positive pregnancy test saying "cor blimey missus 'ow did that 'append?"

[marriedinwhite]

Somewhere in that book I remember something saying "and lots of women don't plan their babies and have to come to terms with lots of changes they weren't expecting". Don't recall it being aimed at the blonde woman with one earring in each ear and the man in a suit and collar and tie who both had wedding rings in the picture. That couple, ie, us, was absent - yet all the couples at ante-natal classes at the Chelsea & Westminster Hospital were all like us.

[AmberLeaf]

I remember that book too I think, I was pregnant in London 17 years ago, must have been the same one.

[Lilithmoon]

marriedinwhite how could you tell the models represented an unmarried couple and a working class couple? How do they look different from a middle class couple?
IMO your intention is to derail and inflame this discussion.

[whateveritakes]

marriedinwhite didn't assume that only married, middle class people actually plan their babies.
The leaflet was implying it by not representing a white middle class couple. I can only imagine they leave out the white middle class couple because of the assumptions about them. Therefore any "other" type of family having babies planned or unplanned, black or white, gay or straight will be "different" because the are represented.

[Birdsgottafly]

"i don't mind that it included lots of different types of families but I didn't feel it was inclusive of mine and we aren't in that much of a minority."

I had to study this subject as part of my BA.

It isn't so much as your group is considered a minority, but that other groups are marginalised.

The effect of marginalisation on life chances became recognised properly in the 90's. One way of counteracting marginalisation is to make it visable amd mainstream.

[Birdsgottafly]

Married, if you think back to the changes that were just about to happen 18 years ago, new Labour, CTC, Surestart, you can see how it is all linked.

[marriedinwhite]

Well it made me feel marginalised and I don't believe that can be right. I also don't think that is helping society to be truly inclusive at present and I fear it will back fire. I genuinely fear that because it really isn't what I want, what I would support and it terrifies me and yet the "system" seems intent on feeding the hand that might attack.

I am not trying to inflame I would like to ensure that things do not inflame and that we can be an inclusive society. I am genuinely fearful of where things might end up at present.

[AmberLeaf]

Im sure it affected your life in an awful way? hmm

Sounds like you are making excuses for particular opinions.

[nailak]

white british are the ethnic group which use our childrens centre the least, so on the cover of this terms calendar we have a white british father and child...

[Lilithmoon]

Quite Amber.

[LizzieVereker]

I appreciate that you genuinely felt marginalised married, but would it not be fair to say that most other representations of families then did depict your "normal"? And therefore your sense of marginalisation is not as profound as that of someone who never sees a child in an advert, a toy or a picture in a book that represents their ethnicity or family set up? And I'm really not sure that class distinctions were that evident in the 90s.

It just reminds me of the conversations I have every year when my very white (remarkably so in a diverse area of E London) marks Black History Month. There are always a few students and sometimes parents who ask "Why are you making a fuss about black achievement?" and, even more delightfully "When are we having White History Month then?". I want to mutter "because EVERY month is white flipping history month!" The positive promotion of minorities and the disenfranchised will not marginalise the majority any time soon.

[marriedinwhite]

Would you like to be more precise AmberLeaf I don't talk in riddles. FWIW, I felt so marginalised as a new mummy I developed severe pnd; that's because the system marginalised people like me because those working for it seemed to resent providing support.

[Emphaticmaybe]

I thought Married was going to start talking about 'rivers of blood' next - but seriously Married are you saying that it's not really the white, wealthy middle and upper classes who are worried about the over-representation/privileged treatment of black and ethnic minority groups but infact the white, uneducated working class.

Really - the working-class who are far more likely to live along-side these groups, go to school with, work with, marry and have children with - these people are the ones we need to watch because they've had enough? I don't think so - pretending to fret on the behalf of another group to cover your own prejudices I think - politicians do it all the time.

[marriedinwhite]

Well the BNP isn't taking in hold in Putney, Wimbledon, Fulham, etc., Emphaticmaybe. it is in Barking, Dagenham, etc.. You work it out.

[marriedinwhite]

My DH is working class stock from Inner City Leeds Kim. It's people like his mother's neighbours I worry most about.