Two black cleaners? Really?

[Fresta]

Watching 'How to Spend it Well' on ITV.

AIBU to think that having a load of kids make a mess and then getting two black women in to clean up after them is not really an image we should be reinforcing?

What were they thinking?

Why women cleaners? Why black women? Why couldn't it have been a man and a woman?

@namechanged0983 You're really not understanding what I've said are you?

The social justice warrior thing is stifling now.

OP, are you black?

@Dinosaursaremyfriends no I don't.

Sorry. What's the point of this post?

What has their ethnicity got to do with anything.

Should cleaners only be white men, then?

I used to have a white, male cleaner. A gay, white, male cleaner.

Fresta why don't you save your energy for real issues and stop trying to find offense if everything? I've had it with this overly PC snowflake era.

I guess the black woman on our road got her jaguar from doing menial work, ditto the family on an adjacent road with their half million pound house cos black people can only be cleaners

Yabu.. it’s a non issue!

Perhaps Britain is doing a better job than America, but here, we are very conscious that the people doing all the work we don’t want to do are not white. In our city that is overwhelmingly white, it is very obvious. So obvious that I had to start explaining the economic consequences of inter generational racism to my DD when she was 3 because she noticed the ridiculous divide even at that age.

A THREE year old noticed a divide in what people were or weren't doing as a job and their skin colour too, enough for you to explain the economic consequences of inter generational racism?
Yeah, sorry but I call bllx.
At 3 you're just about discovering you, never mind what you said.

I cannot get worked up about this at all.

we are very conscious that the people doing all the work we don’t want to do are not white

My husband is a 26 yo white male.
His current job, and for many years now, has been a cleaner for a big supermarket chain. He gets NMW and cleans shit up on a daily basis. On a good day it's just in the toilets he cleans, on a bad day it's on the walls, ceiling, floors, and just generally round the store.
It's full time, get his hours in early and means he gets lots of free time later in the day. He hates the job, he doesn't want to clean up other people excrement, but it works for us as a family so he stays there.
I used to work there with him for a while, and our manager (who managed, didn't clean) was a black Nigerian man. I didn't think about it then, because I just went to work, got paid, and came home.
Maybe it's because we're working class, maybe it's because we've always been happy to accept shit jobs instead of no jobs at all, but I wouldn't just tar every scenario with the same brush.
I've been the white woman doing the jobs no one wants to do, and I've known plenty of black men and women in much higher roles than mine.
I think if I were the ladies on the show I'd be pissed off that people who were offended on my behalf were trying to take paying jobs away from me when I have my own bills and life to worry about.

? Am I supposed to vet the people I employ to do household tasks based on their ethnic origin to make sure I don't inadvertently reinforce patriarchal racial stereotypes? Or just ask around and employ the first sound person who wants the job? Cos I thought the latter was the way to go. Is woke broke?

Seems like lots of people have missed the point.

There is a stereotype about cleaners being black, and at a hospital I work in 90% of the cleaners are black.

If you are making a tv programme, why not go against the grain? It's a bit like making them from Eastern Europe. I don't thknk this was deliberate but it's certainly a missed opportunity.

Of couse there are white male cleaners. This isn't the point being made.

Also all the 'so I shouldn't employ..?' replies have missed the point too

Seriously?! People like you are the reason we can’t do or say ANYTHING anymore!
They’re well known cleaners from a programme that followed them cleaning up
after deaths and evictions etc..
Go embarrass yourself somewhere else..

I haven't read the replies yet but am so shocked.

This thread appears so racist! These women have a specialist cleaning business for homes in bad condition. It is very specialist and expensive work.

I run a domestic cleaning service and although personally myself and my husband are skilled to do end-of-tenancy cleaning and used to do for years before age made this level of work painful for us and we are now domestic only, we would not be asking or training our domestic cleaning staff to do that kind of work. It required separate skill sets and training, as does hoarder cleaning, as does trauma cleaning.

So what you diminish as 'two black cleaners' are in fact, two highly trained women in business who have skills and training behind them that domestic cleaners have no knowledge of.

I might add, the staff who work within my company are trained to handle the chemicals we supply and to use effective cleaning methods, it's just a less intensive skill set then the specialist stuff that these ladies tackle. Not many can tackle that sort of jobs correctly, effectively and within the current legislation and that is why these projects can command £1,000 plus.

Also I'd like to add, since I do employ domestic cleaners within my business, I would NEVER discount anyone for a job with us on grounds of race/culture/background etc and why it should even be an issue I cannot fathom. Anyone with a responsible and hard-working attitude to our training will be offered work when we have it available and we pay well.

It's shocking to think that two highly skilled almost 'celebrity' cleaners are diminished in this way.

Fresta, the fact you are even devoting energy to this issue is pathetic and exactly the problem with social justice warriors like yourself.

If you are so concerned with social justice and progress in the world why are you wasting your time watching programmes like that and then getting upset about the demographic mix of the cleaners they use. Just look out your window, there a billion and one problems out there where campagning would help, why not devote your energy to that.

Or would that involve actually doing something, and you’d far rather spend the time getting outraged on the sofa and type about it on your iPhone?

I'm not angry. Just amused how easily the social justice warrior arguments fall apart. @dworky

Hi all,
We're just posting to say that we've had many reports about the tone and direction of this thread and we'd like to enlist your help to keep things on track.
This type of discussion can attract subtly racist posts, which we delete.
If you see anything which breaks the talk guidelines, please do report and we'll take action. We want the conversation to flow, of course, but where we think any poster is being disingenuous we need to act.

If you are deleting disingenuous posts then surely you have to delete the whole topic since the op is about as disingenuous as they come.

I semi watched it and I just assumed they were a cleaning team who probably applied to go on the show and they just happened to be the ones best suited to the show. The fact they were female and black is irrelevant imo.