To think society is too focused on equal representation?

[Confusedabouttheworld23]

Watching the news today, I saw how there is outrage over a lack of BAME winners at the BAFTAs. As an Indian heritage person myself, I fail to see how this is a huge problem from a few key reasons.

Firstly, , statistically the UK is predominantly a White country and therefore it is not statistically significant if one year there were no BAME winners. In fact a statistician tweeted that you need to look over a period of 5/6 years to see if there is systemic racism in the BAFTAs. In fact in 2021 or 2022, half of the winners were BAME, showing that you cannot read too much into such a small sample size.
As a subpoint, BAFTA voters are predominantly going to be White if this is representative of the UK Population. If it is true that people resonate with those who predominantly look like them, it is no surprise and not a huge issue that the majority of UK award winners are White. If one were to go to India for example, most if not all award winners would be of Indian heritage, this is completely fine and reflective of a country’s demographics,

Secondly, with so many other issues in the UK, I feel that a focus on equal representation is being totally blown out of proportion. We need to focus on just working hard, trying to better ourselves and get through the tough economic times we are experiencing at the moment.
A lack of diversity in acting seems almost trivial compared to other significant issues affecting the UK population - I am much more concerned about rising inflation, housing costs than the number of people who I feel represent me in film.

Thirdly, it is argued that we need to encourage more people from diverse backgrounds to go into film and other arts in the UK, and the main way to do this is to award and recognise BAME artists/actors. However, is it really a huge issue if those from BAME backgrounds go into other sectors of the economy. For example, Indian heritage people often go into STEM, finance etc, rather than the Arts which has resulted in them being one of the most economically successful groups in the UK. This is not a huge issue therefore, and hence there is not a need to push for increased diversity in the Arts to the extent that we are doing so today.
I just feel that everyone needs to just work hard and get through life, rather than focus on issues which in the grand scheme of things are not that significant.

I always presumed the awards should be merit, and that if there is to be awards then surly if the actors and actresses ect, are the best for x films, arts ect then surly that's what should matter more?

When awards are given in open categories with no thought to diversity then they are predominantly won by white men.

And that’s nothing to do with merit.

That’s why there are female categories, for a start. Look what happened when they got rid of that at the BRITs.

@Hawkins003 Yes I completely agree, merit should come above diversity for any awards based scheme. I suppose the counter argument is that merit in the arts are subjective, but even though this may be true, it takes many years to prove system racism/bias- you can’t draw conclusions from a single year.

@noblegiraffe I think, if I’m not mistaken, fewer top British women artists released music this year compared to men, and this was one of the big reasons as to why men won the majority/all the votes this year.

From the BBC:
Part of the reason for this year's showing is that fewer major female stars like Adele and Dua Lipa put out new music in the last 12 months.
In 2022, there was just one British female solo artist with a new album among the top 100 best-sellers - Florence and the Machine, at number 89. In comparison, there were seven men in the top 100.
And women are represented in other Brits categories - female duo Wet Leg have four nominations, the joint highest with Styles; while Taylor Swift, Beyonce and Lizzo outnumber the men on the best international artist shortlist.

YABVVVVU. Representation matters. What do you as an 'Indian person' (Your words) know about the importance of representation for black Caribbean people, let alone any other ethnic group. What about how structural and systemic racism (Windrush anyone?) impacts representation for black communities. To say the everyone needs to just work hard shows ignorance and privilege. Stay in your narrow lane.

Also BAME is shit title.

I think, if I’m not mistaken, fewer top British women artists released music this year compared to men, and this was one of the big reasons as to why men won the majority/all the votes this year.

The reason that there wasn’t a best female artist is that they scrapped the category. If they hadn’t scrapped it then a female would have won it.

There will always be people arguing that merit awards are perfectly fair despite the long history of them being blatantly unfair.

Look at the Oscars as another example.

No idea why the OP is saying you can’t judge things based on a single year when there are decades and decades of evidence.

@noblegiraffe I am not denying that there was bias in the past and that there is definitely no bias now. I am saying that we can’t judge if recent progress has been made, based on one year. We need to wait for a few years and then do analysis. Over a long period of time, there may be more diversity but it is surely unrealistic to think that we can just click our fingers and in a year or two significant diversity has been achieved. There may be regressions along the way- significant change never occurs in a linear fashion.

in addition, surely we should be celebrating the works of art themselves rather than worry about the characteristics of the artists.

That's a fair point, plus if different people are not joining the arts ect, then by default it will then be a certain type ect,

Hopefully I've worded that as respectfully as best as possible

Perhaps to you op representation is meaningless- you might be in the minority of ethnic minorities who's able to live a successful and or privileged life however the vast majority of ethnics here do not have such privilege mainly due to lack of diversity.
Your point on the awards as a stand alone isolated point is right however you can't generalise and say that we place too much focus on equal representation. I find this comment very insulting !

But is that also due to misogyny in the industry promoting male artists above female artists?

The BAFTAs is not purely about British film and most categories are not voted for by the British public. Therefore the fact that the UK is predominantly white should irrelevant.

My view is that Michelle Yeoh should have won best female actor due to her amazing performance regardless of ethnicity. Cate Blanchett was a dull choice and I also think Danielle Deadwhyler would have been a very worthy winner. My suspicion is that unconscious bias played a part (possibly linked to class as much as race - Everything, everywhere all at once was shockingly overlooked so maybe it was too wacky for the judges).

I think you’ve made a cracking point OP. I’m inclined to agree wholeheartedly.
@Socrateswasrightaboutvoting you don’t have to know about every race/culture/gender to be able to get along in life. There is no reason why you can’t treat people with the respect and love and reward they deserve fairly rather than ensuring all the groups are represented in a lopsided psuedo-fair society.
This just ends up with the standards of (insert industry here) being stifled to maintain the representation and innovation held back. By not focusing on merit and focusing on ‘other characteristics’, the ‘best’ person doesn’t get the job/role, and in some way, this is just another form of (insert characteristic) based discrimination. Imagine if thé olympics said ‘you know what guys, I don’t care how fast you are at the 100m, we actually want each race to participate equally in this final so we’re gonna have to bump a few of you.
IMO it shouldn’t really matter what race/gender/sex/age you are, the cream always rises to the top. And we shouldn’t be trying to stop it!

So there seem to be two things - misogyny in the music industry so male artists get more promotion, fewer female artists releasing albums so a reduced pool of artists to choose from for particular nominations.

What's the best way to tackle this - tackle the misogyny or just say we need a separate category for men and women? Why not go further - a category for women over 50, gay women etc. Why just stop at sex?

Tackling the issues in the industry that impose barriers on people is important.
The change in how awards are given is highlighting the issues.

(The Law of small numbers applies to the recent Brit changes)

The issue is this

we look at outcomes, and we see clear evidence of racism

so we try and force a change on the outcomes

that doesnt work

so we need to find and eliminate the sources of racism, and the outcomes will change themselves

We should not be aiming for equality of outcome but equality of opportunity, which we have actually got already. Thank you OP for your considered, well articulated post. All my Indian friends have expressed similar views.

For example - this is a true story, and I am related to someone very high up in this organisation who told me about this trial

Huge international organisation, employing thousands in many countries

In Uk, and in USA, their ethnic monitoring indicates that whites have an unfair advantage in recruitment

So they removed all identifying features from application forms before shortlisting, names, places of birth, names of schools, unis, photos, etc so recruiters could not know the ethnic origin of anyone they were shortlisting or inviting to interview

Result - the advantage shifter hugely more towards white men when shortlisting, they were hugely favoured based on blindly assessing only the paper application

Women and ethnic minorities on the whole made weaker applications. ( statistically speaking - obviously, many individuals are doing just fine, this is an overall picture)This was particularly pronounced in the US, but also clear in the UK too

So, we all know that woman and people from ethnic minorities are equally capable of good qualifications, applying and doing a good job as white men, but in general, overall, they are not doing so, statistically speaking.

This is evidence of systemic racism and sexism, throughout education and society, something is holding thee people down

Well, what needs to be done is the sources need to be found and challenged

This company cant do that though, this company can only do what it can to redress the balance, at the employment stage, and that is in their interests, as they will then likely be getting the best people to work for them, even thought they may not have made the best application

So they now go for the quota approach - not because it gives minorities and woman an advantage, or means men higher merit are being held back, but because it gives them the best people,

and meanwhile, we do need to find and eliminate the sources of racism in education and society. Which is not an easy task, particularly as many sources are misidentified, many accusations turn out ot be unfounded, and illwill on all sides seems to be rising

40% of all nominees were not white, yet 100% of winners were. Statistically that is odd, considering the number of available awards.

There's a lot going on there considering the proportion of different groups in the country.

The UK is 82% white according to the recent census. So if 60% of nominees are white, then that's a lower proportion compared to the population

And yet all of the winners were white.

So...a lot going on.

I agree partly with what you are saying, in that the focus isn't really on proportional representation which I think is probably the best way to achieve equality of opportunity but instead some kind of representative tokenism.

Ideally achievement in all fields of life and representation should roughly reflect the demographics of the population. So for example, just over 50% of the British population is female so you would expect half of BRIT award winners to be women. There may be years where this is slightly skewed towards one sex because how music releases happen to have fallen over time but a strong bias towards men is alarming and non-representative. This implies there is something structurally wrong with the music industry that favours men and would require at the very least further investigation.

What I don't agree with is where people demand that all minority groups are represented in all things always otherwise it's discrimination of some kind. More than 80% of our population is white so if you were to put a production with five cast members together then statistically you could have only one person from an ethnic minority and this would be representative. I think that a lot of people would find the 1:5 ratio unacceptable and unrepresentative though. Then you would be asked why nobody is gay (3% of the population) or trans (0.5%). I think in a bid to avoid criticism, some minority groups are now overrepresented to a point where it is almost tokenism and done for effect.

Conversely, other groups are massively unrepresented and nobody seems to care. The working class are barely seen, especially if you're white and a bit of a 'chav'. I see people around like this all the time around town and yet can't recall seeing an actor or actress who genuinely seemed to represent this type of person. Most of the time it's middle class people playing those parts. Older women are not represented properly and nobody seems to care. After 35 you can be cast as a 25 year olds mother and that is considered acceptable.

This.
Why is it so hard to comprehend?

Don't be daft.

I kinda know where you are coming from OP - as I’m E Asian and attitudes towards careers in my culture seem pretty similar.

I think you’re right about statistics - basing things on 1 year isn’t really sensible. But I do think using statistics (over multiple years) and caring about representation matters on a deeper level. If you’re looking at the numbers as an end in itself - I can see it’s pretty pointless. But if you’re looking at the more varied output of such diversity then I think there is a point. I really enjoy watching Mindy Kaling’s Never Have I ever on Netflix or the Fresh off the boat sitcom or listening to the comedians Sindhu Vee or Ken Cheng. They capture funny stuff that is part of the immigrant experience that I guess it might be hard for others to do in the same way.

I suppose the Arts often involve quite a bit of sacrifice and hard work/poor pay to ‘make it’, and awards are not a goal in themselves but a way of encouraging people in this career and giving them publicity - so they can make entertaining shows that I enjoy. Diversity also makes it a valid career path for the Asian (and other ethnic minorities too) kids to point out to their parents - ‘I wanna be like Ken Cheng whose show you loved’. I’d still give them the speech - ‘for every Ken Cheng there are 1000s who don’t become famous…. But there are lots of accountancy jobs that… blah blah’. But who knows - they might make it as a star and make some great shows for people.

When I were a lass and it were all fields round here, drama college (like all third sector education) was free. So I went. I was estranged from my family, had been self-supporting since I was 17 and through hard work and sacrifice, I got in. Tutoring was free, I got a loan for living expenses and I worked. I'm white, Scottish and came from a family that wouldn't even qualify as working class.

Nowadays that route wouldn't be open to me and as a pp has said, arts training is almost exclusively reserved for the rich.

It was a huge issue to me that I went into that sector of the economy. It was a huge issue to me that working class voices were represented.

You cannot possibly speak from all people of colour and say that they don't care about seeing themselves on the screen, and then reaching the highest levels of that profession when they get there.

FWIW I do think that we're quick to apply an American lens to everything and yes, you do need to look over a length of time and apply some critical thinking to see if there is evidence of racism or if it's 'statistically OK' to have an all white BAFTA. But saying that a lack of diversity in the performing arts isn't important is a really ignorant thing to say. Art matters, it matters to who we are as a nation, it matters to who we are as humans, and it also contributes a huge amount to our cultural capital, which directly translates into $$$

Why do you think that is?

And why just stop at categories for men and women? Why not drill down more into a whole range of awards for under represented groups?

If it's an award for women, are there particular types of women who always win?

Same as for men - are there particular groups of men who usually win the male awards?